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The Square Ring (1953)
From Comedy to Tragedy and Back Again
Boxing is a popular sport in Britain, but it is one which the British cinema tends to ignore. There have been plenty of American boxing films- there have been nine entries in the "Rocky" franchise alone- but "The Square Ring" is about the only British one I can think of. The action takes place over a single evening at a boxing stadium, where six bouts are taking place. There are six storylines, each concentrating on one of the boxers taking part in each bout. (We do not learn very much about their opponents). Uniting the film is the figure of Danny Felton, a former professional boxer himself, who acts as trainer to some of the six.
Between them the six boxers embody just about every cliche known to the boxing movie. There is Jim 'Kid' Curtis, a former champion trying to make a comeback. (Despite his nickname, Kid is at 34 the oldest of the six, too old, it is implied, for the sport. The actor playing him, Robert Beatty, was actually 44 at the time. This was long before George Foreman won a world championship in his mid forties). There is Eddie Lloyd, a young rookie making his professional debut after fighting as an amateur, who becomes disillusioned when he loses to a dirty fighter using illegal tactics which the referee does not spot. Whitey Johnson is a punch-drunk has-been. (Or perhaps, more accurately, a punch-drunk never-was and never-will-be). And Rick Martell is a crooked boxer planning to throw a fight as part of a gambling scam. (Just about every boxing film from this period seemed to make use of this particular storyline; it even surfaces in "On the Waterfront". If real-life boxing had been as corrupt as the movies tried to make out, bookmakers would doubtless have refused to offer odds on it).
The film was based on a stage play by the Australian dramatist Ralph Peterson. I haven't seen the play, but I understand that it had an all-male cast. The film-makers decided to add a female element, so we also get to see the wives and girlfriends of some of the boxers (and, in Eddie's case, his mother). Kid is hoping to be reconciled with his estranged wife, but she hates boxing and does not welcome his attempt at a comeback. Rick is played by Maxwell Reed and his girlfriend Frankie by his then real-life wife Joan Collins.
Peterson's play appears to have been a hit in the theatre, but the film was less of a success. From my point of view there are too many different plotlines; it might have been better if the film-makers had concentrated on only two or three. The story, as one contemporary critic pointed out, veers uneasily from comedy to tragedy and back again. Kid Curtis is a genuinely tragic figure, but someone like Whitey Johnson is treated as a figure of fun, when his story should really be nearly as tragic as Kid's. Despite the presence of a few well known faces- a young Collins, Jack Warner, Sid James, Alfie Bass- this is a film which has largely disappeared from view over the last seventy years. It doesn't stand comparison with American boxing films like "Body and Soul", "Champion" or "Raging Bull". 5/10.
Fear in the Night (1972)
Once Again Assembled Here
"Fear in the Night" is a 1970s British horror film made by Hammer Film Productions. Unlike many of Hammer's offerings from this period, however, this one is not a tale of vampires and werewolves set somewhere in a historic Mitteleuropa. It is a psychological thriller set in contemporary Britain and with Hitchcockian overtones, down to a trademark blonde heroine in distress.
The young heroine, Peggy, has recently married Robert Heller, a schoolmaster. Robert teaches at a boys' boarding school in the Home Counties, and the newlyweds will live in his house in the grounds of the school. The night before she is due to move down to the school, however, Peggy is attacked in her London home by a mysterious figure with a prosthetic arm. She survives, but is badly shaken.
The following day Peggy and Robert move into their new home. We immediately notice that there is something odd about the school. From the colours of the leaves on the trees it is clearly October or November, when the boys should be at school, but the school is empty. (In Britain the autumn term starts in early September and does not end until mid-December). The only other people on the premises are the headmaster Michael Carmichael, who also has a prosthetic arm, and his much younger wife Molly. Molly is beautiful but cold and distant, and she and Peggy take an instant dislike to one another. When Peggy is again attacked by the mystery assailant with the prosthetic arm, she becomes convinced that Michael is trying to kill her. Or is he? The story ends with a couple of twists which reveal that things are not what we have been led to believe. (I won't reveal what those twists are). Today twists like these have become stale and hackneyed through overuse, especially in the eighties and nineties. In 1972, however, they probably seemed much fresher and more original.
There is a particularly atmospheric opening sequence. On a dank autumnal day we see shots of the outside of the school while an unseen choir of boys voices sing the traditional beginning-of-term hymn, "Lord, behold us with thy blessing, once again assembled here". The use of this hymn is doubtless intended to be ironic; the only people assembled here are not the boys but Michael, Molly, Robert and Peggy, and some of them are assembled for purposes which most definitely would not receive the Lord's blessing. The camera then continues to pan around the school grounds, finally coming to rest upon a corpse hanging from a tree. At this stage we do not see whose corpse this is, but we will find out at the end of the film. This haunting, unsettling atmosphere is something that will persist throughout the film.
This could have been no more than a mundane twist thriller, but it has the benefit of four very good performances from its stars- Peter Cushing as the strange, tormented Michael, Joan Collins as the icy Molly, Ralph Bates as the seemingly calm and rational Robert and Judy Geeson as the haunted, psychologically fragile Peggy. (We learn that she suffered a nervous breakdown a few months before her marriage). This is a gripping thriller, still worth seeing more than fifty years on. 7/10.
The Pure Hell of St. Trinian's (1960)
Not a Great Loss
Ronald Searle's cartoons about the girls of St Trinian's School have inspired a number of British comedy films, dating back to "The Belles of St. Trinian's" from 1954. The stories are set in a British girls' boarding school, and the basic joke is that the girls, far from being sweet and innocent, are all juvenile delinquents inclined to violence and dishonesty. Generally speaking, the younger a St Trinian's girl is, the worse her behaviour. The staff obviously take a permissive view of their responsibilities as educators, as they make little if any attempt to restrain the girls' anarchic tendencies. (Searle appears to have borrowed the name from a real-life "St Trinnean's"(sic), a progressive girls' school in Edinburgh. That school closed down before his cartoons were published, but apparently its old girls had a hard time trying to explain that they did not actually attend Searle's (fictitious) school).
"The Pure Hell of St Trinian's" from 1960 was the third in the series. At the beginning of the film, the St. Trinian's girls commit an act despicable even by their own normal standards of bad behaviour, namely burning down the school. (This struck me as completely out of character, as one of the girls' few redeeming characteristics was a certain affection for their alma mater. In the first film in the series they were even fighting to prevent it from closure).
The girls are put on trial at the Old Bailey, and are found guilty. Rather than punish them, however, the judge releasers them into the tender care of Professor Canford (University of Baghdad), ostensibly a liberal, progressive educator who has the girls' best interests at heart. Canford reopens the school in a new building and appoints a new headmistress, Matilda Harker-Packer. (Unlike the two previous films, where the headmistress was played by Alastair Sim in drag, Miss Harker-Packer is played by a female actor). Canford, of course, is not the saintly Simon Pure he appears at first sight. He proposes taking the sixth-form girls on a cultural cruise around the Greek Islands, but his real object is to sell them into slavery to an Arab sheikh. Can the girls foil his dastardly scheme?
The "St Trinian's" films are probably not the place to go if you are looking for political correctness, but "The Pure Hell..." seems particularly culturally insensitive even by the standards of early sixties British comedies. The latter part of the film is set in the desert sheikhdom of Makrab, and Arab culture is seen in terms of all the usual stereotypes- camels, belly-dancers, harems, eunuchs, you name it. Something else which might raise modern eyebrows is the way in which the sixth-form girls are all portrayed as sultry temptresses; they may all be supposed to be over sixteen (and probably played by actresses over twenty), but the sexualised portrayal of teenagers is not something we are so keen to encourage today.
Although the film is supposedly about the girls, for long periods they seem to go missing from the action, which concentrates more on the adult world. It was a running joke in the series that the police and the bureaucrats from the Ministry of Education are continually reduced to a state of despair by their inability to control the St Trinian's girls; even the Army don't have much success. The jokes, however- running or otherwise- never seem to raise much laughter. The script seems tired and unoriginal, and the cast, including well-known names such as Joyce Grenfell as a policewoman and George Cole as a cockney spiv, just seem to be going through the motions. Although I enjoyed watching the other "St Trinian's" films during my childhood, I don't remember this one, and probably missed out on it. Which, I now realise, was not a great loss, as this is one of the weakest of the series. 3/10.
This Is My Street (1964)
Overloaded with Sub-plot
"This Is My Street" is an example of the social realist kitchen sink dramas that were popular in the British cinema during the late fifties and sixties. The phrase "kitchen sink" originated in the visual arts, where it was used to describe the work of painters such as John Bratby, but it was quickly taken up by critics to describe the novels and plays of writers such as John Osborne, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe and Stan Barstow, works which were frequently turned into films. This film also has a literary source, this case a novel by Nan Hayward. Most kitchen sink films had a young man at their centre, but here the nearest the film has to a protagonist is a woman, Marge Graham.
Marge is a young working-class housewife from Battersea, the area of South London featured in Ken Loach's television play "Up the Junction", also made in 1964. The "street" of the title is Jubilee Place, a row of terraced houses. The film also touches upon the lives of some of the street's other inhabitants, especially Marge's mother Lily who lives next door to her, Lily's lodger Harry, and another neighbour, the good-time-girl Maureen. Marge's husband Sid is an unambitious layabout whose main occupation is drinking in the pub with his mates, and she thinks she could do better. Mr Fingus, the lecherous old manager at the shop where she works, is always making advances towards her, but she has her sights fixed on Harry, just as lecherous as Mr Fingus but younger and better looking. Harry owns a nightclub and drives a flashy car, which gives him a certain status in the eyes of an impressionable girl like Marge. (What is never really explained is why Harry, who is obviously not short of cash, cannot find any better accommodation than the small spare bedroom in Lily's little terrace house).
Harry, however, is no more able to remain faithful to Marge any more than Marge is able to remain faithful to Sid, and when Harry meets Marge's younger sister Ginny he turns his attentions to her, even though Ginny already has a boyfriend, a young doctor named Paul. A sub-plot deals with Maureen's affair with a wealthy married dentist, Mark.
Some kitchen sink films- "A Taste of Honey", "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", "A Kind of Loving", "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner", "Alfie"- have become classics of the British cinema. "This Is My Street" has not and remains little known today. Most of the better known kitchen sinks had a big-name star- Alan Bates, Albert Finney, Michael Caine- in the main role, but there is nobody of a similar status here. The name most recognisable to modern film buffs will probably be that of a young, pre-stardom John Hurt, but he only has a relatively minor role as Charlie, a work colleague of Maureen's and Mark's rival for her affections. The best acting performance probably comes from Ian Hendry as Flash Harry. (Hendry probably could have become a major star if it were not for his health problems, especially alcoholism). June Ritchie as Marge is not as good here as she had been in her film debut as Ingrid (a more sympathetic character than Marge) in "A Kind of Loving".
As a contemporary review in the Monthly Film Bulletin noted, the film is "overloaded with sub-plot". The main characters seem to be Marge and Harry, and the film might have been better if it had concentrated on the Marge/Harry/Sid triangle. The addition of Ginny and Paul to the triangle, making it a pentagon, seems to have been done in order to make some comments on class differences; one of the reasons why Harry prefers Ginny to her sister (apart from his love of novelty) is that she is more educated and works in a middle-class profession as a teacher. Paul is always polite to Ginny and her family, but finds it hard to hide his distaste for Harry, whom he calls a "barrow boy". As for the Maureen/Mark sub-plot, that might have been better omitted.
"This Is My Street" is not the weakest of the kitchen sinks: it is, for example, rather better than something like "Bitter Harvest" from the previous year, which seems curiously unfinished, as though a couple of reels of film had gone missing and not been replaced. It is, however, not one of the classics of the genre, and the neglect into which it has fallen is perhaps not undeserved. 6/10.
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Hollywood's Social Conscience
In the early days of its history, racism was a problem which Hollywood preferred to brush under the carpet, largely because it was itself a part of that problem. It concentrated on films by white Americans, for white Americans, about white Americans. Black actors were relegated to minor roles (often as servants) and the experiences of black Americans ignored. It did not make many openly racist movies (although there were notorious exceptions such as "Birth of a Nation"), but it did not make many anti-racist ones either. When it did, it preferred to concentrate on anti-Semitism (as in "Gentleman's Agreement" or "Crossfire") rather on discrimination against black Americans. (Again, there were occasional exceptions, such as the excellent "Intruder in the Dust").
Things began to change in the late fifties and sixties, when Hollywood belatedly developed a social conscience about racial issues. Sidney Poitier was America's first big-name male black star (Dorothy Dandridge was the first big-name female black star), and therefore the default choice whenever there was a role which needed to be played by a black man, generally in an issue movie making some worthy point about racism. The days of casting black actors in leading roles which could equally well have been played by white ones still lay some way in the future. "The Defiant Ones" and "Lilies of the Field" were both issue movies of this type, and in 1967 Poitier made two more, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "In the Heat of the Night".
Although the story is set in the Deep South, most of the filming actually took place in Sparta, Illinois. (It was felt that making a film with an anti-racist theme anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line would not go down well with local people). The name "Sparta" was kept so that the town signs would not need to be changed, but for the purposes of the film the town is supposed to be in Mississippi. The film-makers were apparently unaware that there really is a small town called Sparta in Mississippi, although not in the same location as its fictitious namesake, which is in the north-west of the state, near the border with Arkansas.
Virgil Tibbs, a black police officer from Philadelphia, is passing through Sparta on the night that a wealthy white industrialist named Phillip Colbert is murdered. Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of the murder, on little evidence other than the colour of his skin. The Sparta police department is all white and, up to and including the local police chief Bill Gillespie, deeply prejudiced against black people. Upon learning that Tibbs is indeed a police officer, Gillespie reluctantly orders his release. Tibbs wants to leave town as soon as possible, but his superior in Philadelphia asks him to stay in Sparta to help with the investigation, as he is one of Philadelphia's top homicide detectives.
Like "The Defiant Ones" the film is about two men, one black and the other a bigoted white, learning to work together. The difference, of course, is that here the two are on the right side of the law; in "The Defiant Ones" the characters played by Poitier and Tony Curtis were escaped convicts. The process is a difficult one. Gillespie looks down on black people and finds it difficult to believe that Tibbs can hold a senior position in another police force. Tibbs despises Gillespie, not only for his bigotry but also for his crime investigation methods, which are crude and primitive by Philadelphia standards. Apart from Tibbs himself, Gillespie manages to arrest several other people (including one of his own officers) believing that they are the killer, before he is forced to admit that they are innocent.
Tibbs himself is not infallible. He suspects that the killer is Eric Endicott, Sparta's wealthiest citizen and a man with a prime motive to hate Colbert. Colbert was planning to build a new factory in the town, something to which Endicott was passionately opposed, believing that the factory would damage his own business interests. Endicott is also an overt racist; when Tibbs is questioning him he loses his temper and slaps his face. Tibbs responds by slapping him back, a revolutionary gesture in 1967 when Americans were shocked by the idea that a black man could strike a white man with impunity. It turns out, however, that Endicott had nothing to do with the killing and that the real murderer's motives had nothing to do with the factory.
When first released in 1967, the film was both a critical and a commercial success. It was nominated for seven Oscars, winning five including Best Picture and Best Actor for Rod Steiger. (Poitier was not even nominated, but then he already had an Oscar for "Lilies of the Field". It is always easier to win a first Oscar than a second one as the Academy likes to spread the honours evenly). I must admit that I have never agreed with this decision. My Best Picture for 1967 would have been "The Graduate" (with Disney's version of "The Jungle Book" as runner-up) and its star, Dustin Hoffman, would have been Best Actor. Yes, "In the Heat of the Night" is a well-made detective thriller which holds the attention, and Steiger is certainly good. It has a lot more going for it than the dull "Gentleman's Agreement", which seems to have won "Best Picture" on the strength of its worthy theme alone. In my view, however, it does not have quite the same depth of meaning as "The Graduate", one of my all-time favourites. 8/10.
Doctor Who: The Steel Sky (1966)
Could Have Been a Classic
"The Ark" is one of only three serials from the third season of "Doctor Who" to survive intact, the others being "The Gunfighters" and "The War Machines". The First Doctor and his travelling companions Steven Taylor and Dorothea "Dodo" Chaplet arrive on a vast spaceship ("the Ark") at some far-distant date in the future. They learn that the Earth is about to be destroyed and that the ship is carrying the whole of the human race to the planet Refusis, which they believe will make a suitable new home for humanity. Most of the ship's human inhabitants are in suspended animation; only a few, known as "The Guardians", remain to operate the ship. The ship also carries representative samples of Earth's flora and fauna, and members of an alien race known as "Monoids", who act as servants to the humans. (The Fourth Doctor adventure, "The Ark in Space", was based around a very similar scenario; "Doctor Who" writers often used to recycle used material in this way).
Although the serial consists of only four episodes, it is effectively divided into two separate adventures. In the first two episodes, Dodo, who is suffering from a cold, inadvertently infects the inhabitants of the spaceship, both human and Monoid, with a virus to which they have no resistance' The Doctor has to race against time to find a cure before it can develop into a deadly plague- and before he and his companions are executed by the Guardians, who believe that they were infected deliberately. The third and fourth episodes are set 700 years later when the Ark reaches Refusis. The Monoids have carried out a coup and now control the Ark, with the humans acting as their slaves. They plan to claim Refusis for themselves and to wipe out the humans with a bomb. They have not, however, reckoned with the planet's inhabitants, the Refusians, an advanced race who are invisible, existing only in spirit form without a body.
This was the first story in which Jackie Lane's Dodo acts as a companion to the Doctor. It seems a shame that so few of Dodo's adventures have survived the Beeb's wiping policy, as she came across as a lively, loveable young lady. The serial also shows how William Hartnell's First Doctor evolved from the rather unsympathetic old curmudgeon of the first season to a much more wise and benign elderly gentleman by the end of his tenure. The main problem with this serial are the Monoids, weird-looking hairy creatures with no facial features other than a single eye, created by the actor holding a ping-pong ball in his mouth, who are just too comical and eccentric to make convincing or frightening villains. (They are rather similar in appearance to the equally implausible Jagaroth who appear in the Fourth Doctor story "City of Death").
That problem apart, however, this is not a bad serial. The sets are better than one might expect from a programme which became notorious for its low budgets and cheap production values, and the story is exciting and fast-paced, certainly better paced than some of the First Doctor's adventures which could drag on interminably. With more believable antagonists this could have been a classic Doctor Who adventure. 7/10.
Cactus Flower (1969)
Screwball in the Swinging Sixties
The last Ingrid Bergman film I saw was "Indiscreet" in which a middle-aged bachelor pretends to be married in order to dissuade his girlfriend from getting ideas about marriage. And "Cactus Flower" is another film starring Ingrid Bergman in which a middle-aged bachelor pretends to be married in order to dissuade his girlfriend from getting ideas about marriage.
Julian Winston, a Manhattan dentist, is in a relationship with a much younger woman named Toni Simmons. Julian is unmarried, but tells her that he has a wife and three children. Despairing that Julian will never leave his supposed "wife" for her, Toni attempts suicide, but is saved by the intervention of her neighbour Igor Sullivan. Her suicide attempt finally persuades Julian that he should marry her, but he is unwilling to admit that he has been lying to her, so he tells her that he will divorce his wife.
Toni, however, insists upon meeting "Mrs Winston" to make sure that she is happy with the divorce arrangements, so Julian persuades Stephanie Dickinson, his dental nurse, to pose as his wife, and his friend Harvey to pose as his wife's supposed lover. The film then explores all the complications arising from this situation. The title refers to the fact that Stephanie grows cacti as a hobby; one of her plants flowers in the course of the film, and a parallel is drawn between this event and Stephanie, who has previously been rather prim and starchy, blossoming into a beautiful and confident woman.
In 1969 Goldie Hawn was already well known as a comedienne thanks to "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In", but this was her first appearance in a major role in a film, and brought her an Oscar for "Best Supporting Actress". (This was her only Oscar win to date; she has only received one other nomination, for "Private Benjamin"). Whether this really was a supporting performance is debatable owing to the film's rather lopsided structure; in the first half Toni is very much the leading female character, but in the second half more stress is placed upon Stephanie. Hawn is certainly cute and adorable here, and probably deserved "Best Supporting Actress", but I doubt if she would have won "Best Actress", where she would have had to compete against Maggie Smith who won that award for "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie".
"Cactus Flower" has one thing in common with Goldie's next film, "There's a Girl in My Soup" from the following year. Both films involve a romance between Goldie's character and a much older man. The classical romantic comedy rule book contained no prohibition against an ending in which a lovely young woman became the bride of a man old enough to be her father. Indeed, at one time such endings were positively encouraged in Hollywood, but by 1969/70 they were starting to look just a bit too nineteen-fifties and out of place in the brave new world of the swinging sixties and seventies. So Toni here (like Goldie's character Marion in the later film) does not actually end up with Julian but with a boy near her own age, in this case Igor.
Julian winds up falling in love with Stephanie, who is much closer in age to him and who has long cherished a secret passion for him. Ingrid Bergman at 54 was in fact several years older than Walter Matthau, although she certainly looked younger. When I reviewed "Indiscreet", made eleven years before "Cactus Flower", I said that Bergman. Whose previous experience had mostly been in serious drama, never really seemed comfortable with romantic comedy. Here, however, she is a lot better, and makes Stephanie a highly sympathetic character, a beautiful older woman who has hidden her beauty and her love of life for too long, but who eventually rediscovers them. I was less keen on Matthau, who seemed miscast. He was, certainly, a gifted actor in comedy, but his characters normally seemed to be grouchy or eccentric, as in "The Odd Couple" or (at a later stage of his career) "Grumpy Old Men", and he doesn't really seem right as a smooth rom-com hero like Julian.
The film was based upon a successful Broadway play, which was in turn based upon a French play, "Fleur de Cactus". ("There's a Girl in my Soup" was also based upon a hit stage play). Yet, despite its French origins, "Cactus Flower" comes across as typically American, reminiscent of the screwball comedies of the thirties and forties. (I could certainly imagine Julian being played by that great screwball exponent Cary Grant). It has the sort of witty dialogue and engaging characters one associates with the great screwballs, and still holds up well after more than fifty years. 7/10.
The Captive Heart (1946)
Too Many Subplots
The prisoner-of-war film was something of an established sub-genre of the war film in Britain during the years following the end of World War II. The Captive Heart, made only a year after the end of the conflict, was possibly the earliest of these: it was to lead to the likes of "The Wooden Horse", "The Colditz Story" and "Danger Within". The Americans also got in on the act with "Stalag 17", and in my view all the best films in this genre- "Bridge on the River Kwai", "King Rat" and "The Great Escape"- were made by American studios about British POWs.
This film is set in a German POW camp between 1940 and 1945. Unlike many later POW dramas, this one is not strongly focused on the theme of escape. Early in the film some of the British prisoners start digging a tunnel, but their plan is foiled when it is discovered by the Germans, and after that we hear little about escaping. There are a number of sub-plots: one concerns a Scottish officer coming to terms with his blindness, another about a Welsh soldier whose wife dies giving birth to their daughter, and one about a young officer whose relationship with his sweetheart is damaged when he receives a poison-pen letter from aa jealous ex-girlfriend saying she has been seen with another man.
The main plot, however, deals with Karel Hasek, a Czech who escapes from a German concentration camp and who assumes the identity of a dead British officer, Geoffrey Mitchell. He is captured by the Germans who, believing that he really is a British soldier, send him to the camp. Some of the prisoners are suspicious of him, so he tells the senator British officer his story. To avoid arousing the suspicions of the Germans, he begins writing letters to Celia, the wife of the real Captain Mitchell.
Unknown to Karel, the relationship between Captain Mitchell and his wife was an unhappy one; they were separated and on the verge of divorce. When Celia begins receiving letters from the prison camp supposedly written by her husband, however, their poetic style and the tender concern expressed in them mean that she falls in love with him all over again, never suspecting that her husband is dead and that the letters are being written by another man. The Germans begin to suspect Karel's true identity, and the other prisoners hatch a scheme to ensure his repatriation to Britain. But what will happen when he has to meet Celia and admit the truth to her?
I found the Karel/Celia plot both interesting and touching; the actors playing them, Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, were husband and wife in real life. I wished, in fact, that the scriptwriters had concentrated on this particular story. The various subplots are never well developed enough to become interesting in their own right, but take up enough time to detract from the main story. "The Captive Heart" is not a bad film, but it could have been a better one with fewer competing storylines. 6/10.
Wonder Wheel (2017)
Woody the Tragedian
Woody Allen, of course, began his career as a comedian, and is probably best known for his film comedies. It is clear, however, that Woody has long harboured the ambition to be more than just a funnyman. Many of his comedies have touched upon serious themes, but his film output has also included a number of serious dramas unreceived by humour, such as "September" (aka "Woody Tries to Be Chekhov") or "Match Point" (aka "Woody Debates with the Ghost of Dostoyevsky"). These films, however, have not always been Woody's best- indeed, I would rate "September" as one of his worst. "Match Point" is rather better, but still far from being a Woody classic.
In recent years, however, Woody has made two much better serious dramas which have made me think that he might indeed have a vocation as a tragedian. The first of these was "Blue Jasmine", from 2103, a film strongly influenced by Tennessee Williams's "A Streetcar Named Desire". The second was "Wonder Wheel" from four years later. This film was also influenced by the work of a twentieth century American dramatist, in this case Eugene O'Neill. A gift of a volume of O'Neill's collected dramas plays a part in the plot.
Although "Wonder Wheel" is a far better film than "September", it shares with that film (and with some of Woody's other more serious dramas, such as "Vicki Cristina Barcelona") a complicated network of emotional relationships. The action takes place on Coney Island during the early 1950s. (The film's title derives from a famous Coney Island Ferris wheel). The narrator, who addresses the audience through the "fourth wall", is Mickey Rubin, an aspiring young playwright whose day job is as a lifeguard. Mickey is carrying on an affair with an older married woman, Ginny Rannell, whose husband, Humpty, operates a carousel in an amusement park. ("Humpty" is a nickname, presumably referring to his fatness; his real name is Harold). Theirs is a second marriage for both Humpty and Ginny; his first wife is dead, and her first marriage ended in divorce because she was unfaithful to her husband. Ginny is haunted by the failure of her first marriage, but this does not prevent her from treating her second husband as badly as she treated her first.
Carolina, Humpty's daughter from his first marriage, arrives on Coney Island. She and her father have been estranged for a number of years ever since she married a mobster named Frank, much against her father's wishes. Upon learning that she has left Frank, however, her father relents and allows her to stay, even paying for her to take courses at college. When Mickey meets the attractive young Carolina, he feels an instant attraction towards her. The film explores the complications arising from this situation, which becomes even more complicated when Frank's mob associates turn up looking for Carolina.
The word "tragedy" is not much used in connection with modern drama, possibly because it sounds too portentous, but to me it seems appropriate to "Wonder Wheel", perhaps even more than it does to "Blue Jasmine". Things do indeed end tragically for one character, and do not end particularly happily for any of the others. There is little receiving humour, and yet the film is not dull and depressing like "September". The reason is that the film is a lot better acted, which means that one can more easily identify with the characters and with their struggles and problems.
I was not particularly taken with Justin Timberlake, previously better known to me as a singer rather than an actor, as Mickey, but the other leading performances were much better. Jim Belushi's Humpty is a sort of working-class American Everyman, who reacts to the disintegration of his world by retreating into simple pleasures like drinking beer and fishing with his friends. Juno Temple is good as the naive young Carolina and Kate Winslet gives a brilliant performance as Ginny. Like Cate Blanchett's Jasmine in "Blue Jasmine", Ginny is a woman with a huge capacity for self-deception, who can always convince herself that happiness is just around the corner, even though reality has a nasty habit of turning up to strip away her illusions.
The film is visually attractive; seldom can a run-down amusement park (which Coney Island was in the fifties) have looked so attractive, and the cinematographer Vittorio Storaro was singled out for praise by many critics. The critics were, admittedly, less generous about the film as a whole, but to me it is, along with "Blue Jasmine", evidence that Woody has, belatedly, mastered the art of making psychologically acute serious dramas. Or tragedies, if that's not too portentous. 8/10.
The Natural (1984)
A Metaphor for Life
One thing I have noticed about movies with a sporting theme is how certain sports seem to lend themselves to a cinematic treatment more easily than others. I cannot, for example, think of a single memorable film about golf, tennis or even soccer, the world's most popular spectator sport, and only one ("Chariots of Fire") about athletics. On the other hand, there are a number of distinguished films about boxing, and the same is true of baseball. I think the reason is that these two sports often take on a metaphorical significance in the cinema so that the film is about a lot more than the game itself. Boxing is generally used as a metaphor for a wider struggle against the hardships of life, as in "Champion" or the recent "Million Dollar Baby". Baseball, on the other hand, has a similar meaning for Americans to that which cricket has for the English, signifying fair play, sportsmanship and the supposed virtues of the national character.
"The Natural" was one of three great baseball-themed movies made in the eighties, the others being "Eight Men Out" and "Field of Dreams". Both those films dealt with the notorious Chicago Black Sox scandal of 1919, but did so in very different ways. "Eight Men Out" is a relatively straightforward historical drama, while "Field of Dreams" is a surreal fantasy. "The Natural", which only deals with the Black Sox affair by implication, falls somewhere between those extremes.
In 1923 Roy Hobbs, a Nebraska farmer's son and an aspiring young baseball player, is shot and seriously injured by Harriet Bird, an obsessed fan. (Bernard Malamud, who wrote the novel on which the film was based, may have been inspired by the similar real-life shooting of a baseball star named Eddie Waitkus). We never really learn the motive for the crime or what Roy does in the next sixteen years, but we next hear of him in 1939 when, at the advanced age of 36, he has just been signed by the New York Knights, a major-league baseball team. (The Knights are fictitious, but the other teams mentioned in the film, such as the Chicago Cubs, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Pittsburgh Pirates, are real).
The film then follows the ups and downs of Roy's career as his "natural" talent for the game- hence the title- lifts the once-struggling Knights from the bottom of the table until they are contenders for the National League Pennant. (The unexpected success of an underdog is a frequent theme in sports films). It also follows his relationships with two women, the glamorous if oddly named Memo Paris, the beautiful niece of the Knights' elderly manager Pop Fisher, and Iris Gaines, a woman he meets when she comes to watch a Knights game. Memo is also involved with a corrupt gambler named Gus Sands who is trying to bribe some of the Knights players to "throw" crucial games as the Black Sox did in 1919. The Judge, the Knights' equally crooked majority owner, is also conspiring with Gus as part of a plot to obtain Pop Fisher's minority holding and thereby increase his control of the team. As with all good sporting dramas, this one ends on a tense note, with the Knights playing the Pirates in the match that will decide who wins the Pennant. Will Roy hit the runs that will secure victory for his team?
Although the film is considerably more "realistic" than "Field of Dreams", it does contain some mythical elements. There are a number of parallels with the Arthurian Legends. Roy, whose Christian name means "king" in Old French, plays for a team symbolically called the Knights. Pop Fisher's surname recalls the legend of the Fisher King. Perhaps the most prominent mythical element is Roy's bat, "Wonderboy", the film's equivalent of King Arthur's Excalibur. Roy carved this bat himself from a tree on his father's farm which had been struck by lightning.
Robert Redford is one of those actors (the late Charlton Heston is another) who seems fated to be remembered largely for his work in the first half of his career. Although there have been some reasonably good later performances, posterity is likely to remember him for the likes of "Butch and Sundance" or "The Sting" rather than, say, "Indecent Proposal" or "The Last Castle". "The Natural" is, in my view, perhaps his last great film. His next, "Out of Africa", is a good film, but Redford himself was badly miscast, and all the succeeding films of his which I have seen have been to some extent disappointing apart from "An Unfinished Life". Here, however, he is excellent, making Roy a modest, seemingly simple, man, who nevertheless has hidden depths. Among the supporting cast I would single out Wilford Brimley as Pop Fisher, initially sceptical of Roy's talents but who later becomes his mentor and father-figure.
Like many sports films, and nearly all the best ones, "The Natural" uses sport as a metaphor for life. Roy here becomes an all-American hero, a man who shows that it is possible to succeed both in sport and in life if natural talent is combined with decency and strength of character. It confirms my view that Barry Levinson, the maker of films like "Diner", "Tootsie", "Rain Man" and "Good Morning Vietnam", is one of Hollywood's finest directors, capable of making deeply satisfying films about the struggles and triumphs of ordinary people. 8/10.
Law & Order (1978)
Powerful and gripping drama, well overdue for its recent re-airing
"Law & Order" was recently shown on BBC4 as part of that channel's policy of televising classic dramas, often from the seventies. It is a series of four connected plays dealing with the commission of a robbery. It is sometimes said that each of the four stories is told from a different perspective, but this is not quite correct. The first story is told from the perspective of Fred Pyle, the detective investigating the robbery, the second from that of Jack Lynn, a criminal, and the third from that of Alex Gladwell, the solicitor who acts for Lynn when he is accused of involvement in the robbery. The fourth story is again told from the perspective of Lynn, but he is now in jail, having been convicted of the offence.
When originally broadcast in 1978, the series was highly controversial because of author G F Newman's obviously jaundiced view of the police, the legal system, the prison system, and anyone connected with them. The police are shown as corrupt. Pyle is an amoral character who will do anything to obtain a conviction, including falsifying evidence. The only criminals whom Pyle does not want to prosecute are those who are prepared to pay him backhanders in exchange for immunity, or those whom he can persuade to give evidence against their fellows. He does not really care whether their evidence is true or false, so long as it will convince a jury. He is not in fact particularly concerned about whether the defendant is in fact guilty or innocent; Lynn, for example, was not involved in the robbery for which he was convicted, and Pyle knows it.
The prison staff are shown as brutal and prepared to use violence against prisoners at the least provocation, something which the prison governor tacitly encourages. Gladwell poses as a radical lawyer, but is in fact a cynical opportunist, prepared to act for both police and criminals if the price is right. He acts as Lynn's defence solicitor, or "brief", but does not mention to him that he is a friend of Pyle, the police officer who is trying to "fit him up" for the robbery. (The criminal fraternity tend to refer to all lawyers as "briefs", although strictly speaking the term is only applicable to barristers).
Newman was predictably denounced by the Establishment; some MPs went to far as to demand that he be prosecuted for sedition. (A ridiculous demand; the offence of sedition, which has since been abolished, required a direct incitement to disorder and violence). He was frequently referred to as a "left-wing playwright", although he himself has said that he does not identify with either the Left or the Right. Moreover, unlike some leftists, he never attempts to romanticise or sentimentalise criminals, or even to make excuses for them. Lynn has not been forced into a life of crime by unemployment or poverty; he has deliberately chosen that lifestyle because it affords him a higher standard of living than working honestly. (We learn that he owns a house worth £25,000, at a time when the average price was around £15,000).
Newman's dialogue is mostly written in a colourful Cockney vernacular; those not familiar with criminal slang may have difficulty following some of what is said. I am a lawyer myself, and even I learned a few new terms. (Criminals usually refer to informers by the familiar term "grass", but the policemen in the series tend to prefer "snout", which was new to me).
Another feature of the series is how cold and uninviting everywhere seems. You wouldn't expect a prison to be visually attractive, but the police station, Gladwell's office, the London streets and even Lynn's home seem equally dull and colourless. I had forgotten just how drab Callaghan's Britain could be.
There are three excellent performances in the main roles- from Ken Campbell as the sly, foxy Gladwell and from Peter Dean as the thuggish hard-man Lynn, full of righteous indignation over the fact that he has been convicted of a crime that he did not commit, but overlooking he has gone unpunished for numerous crimes, some of them involving violence, that he did commit. The best, in my view, is that from Derek Martin as the shamelessly corrupt Pyle, a man who is as great a threat to law and order in Britain as an overt villain like Lynn.
My main criticism of the series is that Newman tends to overstate his case. There doubtless were bent coppers and vicious prison officers in seventies Britain; Newman, however, does not seem to believe that there were any decent or honourable ones. Overall, however, this is a powerful and gripping drama, well overdue for its recent re-airing on BBC4. 7/10.
On Dangerous Ground (1951)
Film Blanc
For the first half-hour of its running-time, "On Dangerous Ground" is, in terms of its visual style, a typical film noir, easing all the conventions of the genre. We are plunged into a world where it always seems to be night-time, a world of police cars dashing, with sirens sounding, through the rainswept streets of a big American city, a world of sleazy bars and of seedy staircases leading to equally seedy apartments, a world of sultry blonde women and tough men. The main character is Jim Wilson, a tough guy detective who gets results but who worries his chief by the means he uses to get those results, normally beating confessions out of suspects. Eventually Jim beats up one suspect too many, and to get him out of the way his chief sends him to investigate the murder of a young girl in a remote up-country district.
From this point on the visual look of the film changes completely. There are a few night-time scenes, but the majority of the action takes place in the daytime, and the film becomes less a film noir than a film blanc, because it is winter and the countryside is covered in snow. Noir was a predominantly urban genre, but there were examples set in rural areas- "High Sierra" was one, and this is another. Wilson finds that the local people take an even more uncompromising attitude to law and order than he did in the city. In particular, Walter Brent, the father of the murdered girl, has vowed to track down the killer and shoot him.
The killer turns out to be a mentally handicapped young man, little more than a boy, named Danny Malden, who lives in a remote house with his blind sister Mary. Wilson and Brent track him down. Brent still intends to kill him, but Wilson has promised Mary, to whom he seems to be romantically attracted, that he will try and arrest him peacefully so that he can receive a fair trial. The film's dramatic climax comes when Wilson and Brent pin Danny down on a rocky outcrop.
The film has its weaknesses. I felt that it was too short and that many of the characters needed to be better developed. I wanted to know what sort of a person Wilson was and just why he took such a hardline stance on crime. In his attitude towards criminals he reminded me of another film noir detective named Jim, Kirk Douglas's character Jim McLeod in "Detective Story", also from 1951. The difference is that Douglas gives a better performance than Robert Ryan does here and the script does more to explain McLeod's attitude in psychological terms.
I also wanted to know more about the circumstances of Danny's crime and why, and how, he killed the girl. I felt, in fact, that the film-makers were too lenient towards Danny, trying to paint him as a boy more sinned against than sinning, and that the victim of his crime got overlooked. And why did Wilson the hardline cop in the city become Wilson the softline cop in the country? Was it only because he was hoping to enjoy Mary's favours if he showed compassion to her brother?
And yet "On Dangerous Ground" strikes me as the sort of film which, although the plot, dialogue, characterisation and acting are not particularly distinguished, can still be worth watching because of the brilliance of the direction. (David Lean's "Brief Encounter" is another example). Here the director Nicholas Ray shows his skill in bringing out the contrast between the hectic world of the dark city and the austere beauty of the snowy countryside, a beauty which lends a deceptive air of tranquility to the rural scenes because the snow-white country can hide secrets as dark as the blackest urban hellhole. 6/10.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
"I've nothing against them- I just wouldn't want a daughter of mine to marry one".
John Prentice, a widowed doctor, and Joanna Drayton, a young socialite, fall in love and want to get married. That sounds like the hook for a romantic comedy, and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" does indeed follow the standard formula for a rom-com. That formula can be expressed in mathematical form as A+B-C=D, where A stands for "boy loves girl", B for "girl loves boy" and C for some obstacle which much be removed to achieve happy ending D. The film, however, is not so much a rom-com as a serious "issue" movie, and the reason is the nature of the obstacle which stands in the way of a happy ending.
Joanna is white and John is black, although that is not a word you will hear much in this movie. Younger viewers will probably be surprised to learn that in the sixties "negro" and "coloured" were not only regarded as perfectly respectful terms but in some circles were actually preferred to "black".
In some States of the Union the relationship of John and Joanna would have made for an explosive situation indeed in 1967. At the time the film was being made, interracial marriage was still illegal in all the former slave states of the South, except Maryland. Anti-miscegenation laws were finally struck down by the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia in June 1967, after the film was finished but before it was released in December of that year. The film is not set in the Deep South but in relatively progressive San Francisco, but even there interracial marriage had been legalised less than twenty years earlier. California in the mid-twentieth century was quite not the liberal state it is today.
After Joanna introduces John to her parents Matt (a newspaper publisher) and Christina (an art gallery owner), John informs them that he will not go ahead with the marriage unless they both give the couple their blessing. Joanna is not informed about this arrangement, and John seems less worried about getting his own parents' approval. Christina is quickly won over, but Matt, although he is in theory opposed to racial discrimination, and has campaigned against it in his paper, does not really believe in interracial marriage. As people used to say, "I've nothing against them- I just wouldn't want a daughter of mine to marry one".
The rest of the film is essentially taken up with the question "Will Matt change his mind"? Of course, he does; no film which uses that sentimental old warhorse "The Glory of Love" as its theme song is going to end unhappily. The film ends with a dinner party given by Matt and Christina for John, Joanna, John's parents and the local Catholic priest, in the course of which Matt gives his approval to the young couple's union. Even so, he only does so after giving a long speech, in the manner of a judge's summing-up, setting out the pros and cons, a speech so equivocal that it suggests his approval is less than wholehearted.
Matt's main concern is not that he himself believes that interracial marriage is wrong, but rather "What will Mrs Grundy say?" He worries that John and Joanna, and any children they may have, will be the objects of other people's prejudices. Rather oddly, the only full-throated arguments against miscegenation are put in the mouth not of a white character but of a black one, the Draytons' maid Tilly, who objects to a man of her own race "getting above himself" by aspiring to the hand of a white girl. Some of Tilly's rants would qualify her as an honorary member of the Ku Klux Klan; she is the only character in the film who has no compunction about using the "n-word".
Matt and Christina are played by a real-life couple, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Joanna is played by Hepburn's niece, Katharine Houghton. This was Tracy's last film; he was in poor health and died less than a month after it was completed, and six months before it opened. He was himself very liberal on racial issues and believed strongly in the premise of the film, which explains why he did not pull out despite his health problems, but he looks old, sick and tired throughout. He was, nevertheless, nominated for a posthumous "Best Actor" Oscar. Hepburn won the "Best Actress" award, her second of four. It was certainly more deserved than her first Oscar, which had come thirty-four years earlier for the dull and uninteresting "Morning Glory". Nevertheless, this is not Hepburn's greatest role, and I can think of at least three more deserving performances in 1967- from Anne Bancroft in "The Graduate", Faye Dunaway in "Bonnie and Clyde" and Katharine's namesake Audrey in "Wait until Dark".
Sidney Poitier gives a good performance as John, but was not nominated for an Oscar. Poitier was America's first big-name male black star (Dorothy Dandridge was the first big-name female black star), and therefore Hollywood's default choice whenever they had a role which needed to be played by a black man, generally in an issue movie making some worthy point about racism. ("The Defiant Ones", "Lilies of the Field" and "In the Heat of the Night" are all issue movies of this type). The days of casting black actors in leading roles which could equally well have been played by white ones still lay some way in the future.
"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" was both a critical and a box-office success when first released, and was nominated for ten Oscars. Besides Hepburn's "Best Actress" it also won for "Best Story". Yet I feel that today, nearly sixty years on, it comes across as dated, even problematic in its attitude to race. According to the director Kramer, he and screenwriter William Rose were trying to debunk ethnic stereotypes. To this end they made John just about as perfect as any human being possibly can be. He is highly intelligent, polite, kind-hearted and morally principled. Moreover, he is not just any old doctor, but a brilliant academic who holds an important position at the World Health Organisation. This may not have been the film-makers' intention in 1967, but today it seems to be saying that a black man can aspire to the hand of a white woman, but only if he is perfect enough to count as an honorary white man. Had John been, say, a postman like his father, or even an ordinary doctor at the local hospital, the film might have taken a less liberal position. Kramer and Rose may have debunked existing stereotypes, but in doing so did they inadvertently create new ones? 6/10.
Two-Fisted Law (1932)
Entertaining Yarn
"Two-Fisted Law" is a cheap B-movie Western of the type which Hollywood turned out by the hundred during the early days of sound in the 1930s, but it still turns up occasionally on television. The reason, of course, is that it features a young actor, John Wayne, who would go on to become one of the great icons of the American cinema. Wayne, however, is not the star of this film. He plays a relatively minor role, and when the film was first released he only received sixth billing. When it was first shown on television in the fifties, however, he was promoted to second billing, immediately behind the film's star, Tim McCoy. Another actor who was to go on to bigger things, Walter Brennan, was moved up from seventh to third.
Most of McCoy's characters were named Tim after himself. (Similarly, Wayne played many characters named John. In this film, however, his character is called Duke, which was already his nickname). Here McCoy plays Tim Clark, an honest rancher who has got into financial difficulties after lending money to a local scoundrel named Robert Russell. Clark is forced to hand over his ranch to Russell and leaves to go prospecting for silver, but before he goes he finds work for his two loyal ranch-hands (of whom Duke is one) with his neighbour, Owen.
Two years later, Owen is dead, and his daughter Betty, who is Clark's sweetheart, discovers that her father also owes money to Russell which she is unable to pay back. Russell threatens to foreclose on Betty's ranch unless she marries him. Betty, however, despises Russell because of the way he treated Clark, and angrily rejects his proposal. Clark returns from his prospecting expedition, but is arrested on suspicion of having carried out a robbery at the stagecoach office in which a guard was killed. Can he clear his name and find the money to save Betty's land?
Tim McCoy was a well-known actor in the thirties, appearing mainly in Westerns, but today is largely forgotten. This was the first of his films I have ever seen, and, while it may be a cheap B-movie, he makes an engaging hero and the film is an entertaining yarn, better than a lot of Westerns from this period. 6/10
Some goofs. After Clark shoots Russell's henchman Yokum in a gunfight, Russell says that he "outdrew the second-fastest gun in the area". In fact, Clark did not outdraw Yokum. Yokum drew and fired first, but missed. Clark then fired twice, hitting Yokum both times. Russell saw the fight, so he should have known what happened. All the male characters and Betty dress in late 19th century costumes, but two other women are seen wearing the fashions of the 1930s. (This seemed to happen quite often in cheap Westerns from this period. Presumably the studio wanted to save on the price of authentic costumes).
The Final Countdown (1980)
Big Boys' Toys
In 1980, the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, while on naval exercises in the mid-Pacific, is caught in a violent electrical storm. And this is not just any ordinary storm. It turns out to be a time vortex which whisks the ship back in time to 1941. To be precise, to 6th December 1941, the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. At first the crew do not realise what has happened to them, but the truth gradually becomes clear. The crew, especially their commander Captain Yelland, have to decide whether or not to intervene in the battle and thus alter the course of history, as the Japanese fleet of 1941 would be no match for a warship from the 1980s with its more advanced weaponry. Three other characters who play important roles are Warren Lasky, a civilian efficiency expert working for the Defense Department, Senator Samuel Chapman, an influential 1940s politician and his assistant Laurel Scott. Senator Chapman and Laurel are rescued by the crew of the Nimitz after Japanese planes sink their ship.
Yelland decides that, as an American naval officer, his duty is to protect the interests of his country at all times, in the past as much as in the present, and orders his aircraft to attack the Japanese fleet. And then comes what another reviewer described as The Final Letdown. Before we discover how history might have been changed by the destruction of the Japanese ships and aircraft before they could launch their attack, another vortex whisks the Nimitz and its crew back to 1980.
And that's about it. I couldn't help thinking that it would have made for a more interesting story if the Nimitz had carried out its mission before being returned to 1980. It could have been a "be careful what you wish for" parable along the following lines. The Japanese High Command are mystified by the destruction of their fleet before it had a chance to attack Pearl Harbor, but a few survivors straggling back to Japan bring tales of how their ships were sunk by strange rocket planes. Calculating that the Americans have secretly been developing highly advanced weaponry, the Japanese abandon all thought of war with the USA and instead launch a surprise attack on the Russian Far East, just as Stalin has moved most of his forces in that area to fight the Germans in the west. Unable to cope with the demands of a two-front war, the Soviet Union collapses. Britain, bereft of allies, is forced to seek peace on Hitler's terms, leaving Germany triumphant. Meanwhile Chapman is elected Vice-President in 1944 and succeeds to the Presidency when Roosevelt dies the following year. Under his aggressive, militaristic leadership the US enters into a cold war with the victorious Axis Powers, which is threatening to become a hot war when the crew of the Nimitz arrive back in 1980... (This scenario was inspired by Stephen Fry's novel "Making History" in which a young man succeeds in ensuring that Hitler is never born, only to find out that he has changed history for the worse, not the better).
Or some other exploration of the possible philosophical and ethical issues associated with the concept of time travel. But this film prefers to shy away from anything of that nature. The result is a film which might appeal to military hardware buffs who will enjoy the sight of all the big boys' toys on display. Anyone else, however, is likely to find it something of a letdown. 5/10.
Let's Imagine: A Branch Line Railway (1963)
Don't let Dr Beeching take it away from you
In the late fifties and early sixties, John Betjeman, already one of Britain's best-known poets, also emerged as a leading television personality, making a series of documentaries for the BBC, mostly dealing with two of his great enthusiasms, architecture and railways. "Branch Line Railway", first broadcast in March 1963, followed another railway-themed programme he had made the previous year, "John Betjeman Goes by Train". That film described a rail journey between King's Lynn and Hunstanton in Norfolk; in "Branch Line Railway" he goes to Somerset to travel along the branch line from Evercreech Junction to Highbridge and Burnham-on-Sea.
"Branch Line Railway" is rather longer than its predecessor, and gives Betjeman more of an opportunity to discuss the history of the line. It was part of the Somerset and Dorset Railway, also known as the "Slow and Dirty", originally built as part of an ambitious scheme to connect the Bristol Channel with the South Coast in the hope that this would become a major route for the export of goods, especially coal, from Wales. It was anticipated that Evercreech would become an important railway junction and Highbridge, the site of the railway's locomotive works, an important railway town like Crewe or Swindon. In the event, however, the route did not attract the expected traffic and the railway failed, even though an extension was built to Bath; thereafter the line was jointly owned by the Midland Railway and the London and South-West Railway. Evercreech remained a village and Highbridge a small town.
When the film was shot in the summer of 1962, the line still used steam locomotives, which were eventually phased out by British Rail in 1968. The steam trains, the use of black-and-white photography and the presence of Betjeman himself- one of a number of eccentric but kindly and avuncular presenters used by the BBC in the sixties and seventies- all combine to give the film a powerful nostalgic appeal for the twenty-first century viewer. In 1963, however, the film had a more serious purpose than mere nostalgia. The early sixties were the period of the "Beeching Axe", a programme of railway closures, involving closing some 5,000 miles of track and over 2,000 stations, named after Dr Richard Beeching, the Chairman of British Rail who presided over it. Betjeman here makes a plea for this, and similar lines all across Britain, to be spared the axe. His closing words are "In ten years' time, when the roads are so full of traffic we'll all be going by train again, you'll be grateful you still have a railway to your town. Don't let Dr Beeching take it away from you".
In vain. In 1966 the whole of the former S&D line, including the main Bath-to-Bournemouth line, as well as the branch line, was closed. In strict profit-and-loss terms this might have been justified, but the importance of line as part of the nation's infrastructure and the service it provided to local communities were not taken into account.
Screen Two: Hotel du Lac (1986)
Better than the Book
Edith Hope, a middle-aged romantic novelist, goes to stay in a lakeside hotel in Switzerland. We are given to understand that she has been "banished" from England by her friends after some social indiscretion, and later learn that this indiscretion was an abortive wedding in which she jilted her fiancé, Geoffrey, at the last minute. Edith's private life is clearly a complex one, because while engaged to Geoffrey she was also carrying on a secret affair with a married man, David, an affair which is still continuing. (While staying at the hotel, Edith writes long letters to David, but never posts them).
White staying at the Hotel du Lac, Edith does not do very much apart from going for occasional walks or trips on the lake, which gives her time to observe the other guests, including Mrs Pusey, a wealthy English widow and her daughter Jennifer, Mme de Bonneuil, in exile from her chateau, now occupied by her son and daughter-in-law, and Monica, the wife of a diplomat attached to the EEC, who is on some sort of health cure. Eventually, Edith meets Mr Neville, a divorcee and successful businessman who proposes marriage to her, although this would be an "open" marriage which would allow both parties to take lovers.
"Hotel du Lac" formed part of the BBC's "Screen Two" series of television films. It was based upon a novel by Anita Brookner which had won the Booker Prize two years earlier. I read the novel after it achieved that success, but did not enjoy it. (Those were my salad days when I was green enough in judgement to assume that literary prizes were some sort of guarantee of good writing). The Edith of the book came across as a dull and prosaic individual, and not only did Brookner try to create a whole novel around so uninteresting a character, she also concentrated upon the least interesting part of Edith's story. The history of Edith's tangled relationships with David and Geoffrey could have supported a novel; the history of her stay at the hotel would have been dealt with better in a short story, and trying to stretch it out to novel length merely resulted in something bland and bloodless.
I did not, therefore, have any very high expectations of this film, but it turned out to be better than I had expected. I think that the reason was the Brookner's characters, often lifeless on the printed page, come to life in the hands of a gifted cast. This is particularly true of Anna Massey as Edith and Denholm Elliott as Neville, but there are also good contributions from Barry Foster as David (seen in a series of flashbacks) and Julia Mackenzie as Jennifer, who initially seems very much under the thumb of her domineering mother, but who later reveals a rebellious side to her character. The film was also mercifully free of some of the eccentricities of Brookner's prose style, such as when she describes Edith's hotel room as being "the colour of overcooked veal" or Monica as having "a face like a grebe? (I cannot imagine what a human with a face like a grebe would look like. Certainly not like the charming Patricia Hodge).
The film still suffers from some of the weaknesses of the book; we never, for example, learn why Edith decided at the last minute not to marry Geoffrey (or, for that matter, why she agreed to marry him in the first place). Overall, however, it is a well-made, understated TV movie. It reminded me of another film about the British abroad in a lakeside hotel, the 1995 adaptation of H. E. Bates's "A Month by the Lake". 7/10.
Margrete den første (2021)
Money Well Spent
In 1397 the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden agreed to form a union (known as the Kalmar Union, after the Swedish city where the union treaty was signed) to counter the threat of German attacks, particularly by the Hanseatic League and the Teutonic Order. The king of the union was officially the young Erik of Pomerania, but the effective ruler was his great-aunt and adoptive mother Margaret I of Denmark who had played the leading role in creating the union. (I refer to her as Margaret, which is how she is normally known in Britain, although the Danish form "Margrete" is used even in the English-language title).
The film, however, is not set at the time of the creation of the Kalmar Union, but five years later. It dramatises one of the strangest events of Scandinavian history, the affair of the "False Olaf". (There are parallels with the various "False Dimitrys" in Russia and the pretenders Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck in England). In 1402 Margaret was trying to negotiate Erik's marriage to Princess Philippa, the daughter of King Henry IV of England, in order to cement a military and diplomatic alliance between England and the union. In that year, however, a man appeared claiming to be Margaret's own son, Olaf, who had died in 1387. This claim was political dynamite. If Olaf were indeed still alive, he rather than Erik would be the rightful King of Denmark and Norway. Many denounced the supposed "Olaf" as an impostor sponsored by the Germans as part of a plot to undermine the union and the proposed alliance with England, whereas some, especially in Norway, accepted his claims.
Historians agree that the False Olaf, who was unable to speak a word of Danish, was indeed an impostor; he eventually admitted his imposture and was executed for treason. In the film, however, things are not so clear-cut. The man can indeed speak Danish, albeit imperfectly, and attributes the imperfections to his long years spent abroad. When Margaret is asked whether the man is her son, she simply replies "my son is dead", but later begins to have doubts. Has she recognised him as her long-lost son? Or has she deluded herself, desperately wanting to believe against all the evidence that her son may be alive? Whatever the truth, she acknowledges him as the rightful heir, much to Erik's fury, thus raising the real possibility that the union may collapse in civil war.
The film-makers could, had they wished, have made a film which followed the standard historical line that the False Olaf was indeed false. By exploring the possibility that he may have been genuine, they recognised that there are situations where ambiguity is artistically more satisfying than clarity, and this is one of them. This is a risky approach, because it makes greater demands from the actors, but fortunately they are equal to the task.
There are particularly fine contributions from Trine Dyrholm as Margaret, part grieving mother and part practitioner of a cynical Realpolitik, and from Jakob Oftebro as "The Man from Graudenz", as he is billed in the cast list. This billing, as does Oftebro's subtle interpretation of the role, leaves open the possibility that the man may have been the real Olaf, without ever excluding the possibility that he was just a nonentity from Graudenz (today in Poland but then in Prussia) who had been carefully coached in his role by his puppet-masters. Another good performance comes from Morten Hee Andersen as Erik, a rather spoilt and arrogant young man who suddenly sees his prospects threatened by the sudden appearance of the False Olaf.
Although the action takes place in the royal courts of Scandinavia, the visual look of the film is dark, possibly deliberately so to reflect the dark, tragic nature of its plot, and lacks the bright colours and pageantry found in many Hollywood films set in the Middle Ages. It was, however, made on a grand scale, and currently holds the record for the most expensive Danish feature film. With a stark story powerfully told and some excellent acting, I would say that the money was well spent. 8/10.
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019)
No Art to Find the Mind's Construction in the Face
Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy is regarded as one of America's most prolific serial killers, but he was only ever convicted of two murders, those of Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman, students at Florida State University. He was also convicted of three attempted murders, also of students at that university, and of a kidnapping in Utah, and was charged with another murder in Colorado, but escaped from the courthouse before his trial had finished. It was while he was on the run from Colorado that he committed the Florida murders. Bundy was eventually executed in the electric chair in 1989, but a few days before his execution he confessed to over 30 more killings, all of young women and girls, in various states, mostly in the West. Right up until making this confession, however, he had protested his innocence of all the charges against him.
Bundy was in many ways very different from the average person's idea of a serial killer. He was highly intelligent, having studied psychology and law at university. He was also handsome and charismatic, and could come across as charming. (Or as Shakespeare put it, "There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face"). Trials were given extensive coverage in the media and he attracted a large group of supporters, many of them women, who believed passionately in his innocence. During his Florida murder trial he married one of them, Carole Ann Boone.
"Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile" is Hollywood's take on these events. (The title of the film was the presiding judge's comment on Bundy's crimes when sentencing him to death). It follows Bundy's career from his days as a young student in the late sixties up until his execution. It also places emphasis on two of the women in his life, Boone and his earlier girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer, here referred to as "Liz Kendall", a single mother whom he first met when he was a student in Seattle. Liz initially believes inTed's innocence until the evidence presented during his Florida trial, which she is following on television, makes her begin to have doubts. Carole Ann, by contrast, is infatuated with Ted and remains blindly loyal to him until the last.
The film does not really tell us any more about the case, factually speaking, than we have learned over the years from documentaries. Anyone watching this film will probably be familiar with the facts of the Bundy case, as I was, so there is little tension and his final conviction will come as no surprise. Moreover, the film does not answer several questions. Questions like "What motivated a man like Bundy, who could have had a brilliant legal career, to become a killer?" (Bundy conducted his own defence at trial and impressed observers by his legal knowledge and forensic skills). Or "Why did so many women take the side of a man who killed women?"
The reason why it fails to answer these questions is probably because they are unanswerable, or at least only answerable via a psychological treatise rather than via a feature film. This is a common feature of films about real-life serial killers. For example, "Monster", about Aileen Wuornos, tries to explain her murderous behaviour in terms of her miserable childhood, but this only raises a further question of why many women with equally miserable childhoods do not grow up to become serial killers.
And yet "Extremely wicked..." is in many ways a film worth watching. (Much more so than the overrated "Monster"). Zac Efron has the necessary looks and charisma to convey the fascination which Bundy was able to inspire, while never losing sight of the man's dark side. There is another good performance from Lily Collins as Liz, a woman confronted with the almost unbearable truth that her whole relationship with Ted had been based on a lie and that the man she loved was indescribably evil. The film may not answer unanswerable questions, but at least it sheds some light on the man at the centre of this mystery. 7/10.
Doctor Who: Four Hundred Dawns (1965)
Crude and Unconvincing Animation
Three of the four episodes of "Galaxy 4" are currently missing; all four were wiped by the BBC in the late 1960s, but the third episode was recovered in 2011. All four episodes have now been reconstructed using animation and sound recordings.
The First Doctor and his companions Vicki and Steven arrive on an alien planet. The surface of the planet is an arid desert, and at first they believe it to be devoid of life, although it clearly has clumps of vegetation. Perhaps they meant "devoid of animal life". The script makes use of a plot line used in two serials of the second season, "The Web Planet" and "The Space Museum", namely two different alien races battling one another. Here the two races are the Drahvins, who have the appearance of beautiful women, and the ugly, vaguely reptilian Rills. In an original twist, the scriptwriter William Emms made the beautiful Drahvins evil and the ugly Rills good. The Drahvins have a vaguely fascist social system based upon unquestioning obedience to their leader, Maaga; the Rills are a philosophical race, generally peaceful and only resorting to the use of force in self-defence.
Whereas the Zarbi and the Menoptra in "The Web Planet" and the Xerons and the Moroks in "The Space Museum" were fighting one another for control of their respective planets, the planet in "Galaxy 4" is not worth fighting for because it is due to explode in two days time. (Exactly what will cause it to do so, and how the time of its destruction can be so precisely calculated, is never explained). Both the Drahvins and the Rills have crash-landed on the planet; the main question in the story is "Who will manage to escape before the planet self-destructs?" The Rills are unable to breathe the planet's atmosphere so must remain in their spaceship; they can only explore the surface by using robots which Vicki names "Chumblies".
The only other animated "Doctor Who" episodes I have seen were the two needed to complete the partly-missing serial "The Reign of Terror". Those were done in a very different style, one designed to match the look of the surviving four black-and-white episodes as closely as possible. With "Galaxy 4" the animators had a free hand. Although the original programme was broadcast in black and white, the animations are in colour, much more cartoonish than those for "The Reign of Terror". I must admit that I did not like them very much; they seemed crude and unconvincing, especially in their depiction of movement.
I never saw the original serial when first broadcast in the autumn of 1965; I was only a young child at the time. With a serial which now only exists in animated form, and where the original visuals can no longer be seen, it is difficult to comment on the quality of the acting. The storyline has points of interest, even if some of the cast, including William Hartnell, did not like it. The quality of the animation, however, meant that I did not really enjoy this story. 5/10, with the proviso that I reserve the right to revisit that mark in the unlikely event of the lost episodes resurfacing.
Torvill & Dean (2018)
Bland and Insipid
To anyone of my generation, particularly to anyone who shares my love of figure skating, the names "Torvill and Dean" will take us back to a winter's evening in 1984 when Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, two young people from Nottingham competing in the Winter Olympics at Sarajevo, electrified the world with their ice dance routine to Maurice Ravel's "Bolero". This routine received twelve perfect 6.0s and six 5.9s, including artistic impression scores of 6.0 from every judge, setting an Olympic record which has never been equalled since, and never will be, now that the system of scoring has been changed. (They achieved even better scores at the World Championships in Ottawa a few weeks later, but somehow nobody seems to remember that so well). What made "Bolero" so electrifying was not just the high marks or the technical skills involved, but also its dramatic and emotional content. Torvill and Dean were, along with their East German contemporary Katarina Witt, part of what might be called the "New Skating" movement which sought to turn figure skating from a sporting discipline into an art form.
To anyone of a younger generation, Torvill and Dean are, at most, names from the sporting history books. I was therefore surprised to learn that this filmed biography of the pair was made as late as 2018, 34 years after their greatest triumph.
There is perhaps a reason why no film about Torvill and Dean was made while they were still in the public eye. As I observed when I reviewed "On Thin Ice", another biopic about a figure skating couple, the Americans Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, there is a convention that films about sport, regardless of whether they are based upon fact or wholly fictitious, should be based upon one of two plots. One of these can be titled "Triumph against the Odds", and the other "The Rise and Fall of a Champion" (together with its variant "The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of a Champion").
The "odds" in that first title can be either literal (stories about the underdog or rank outsider who defeats a more fancied opponent) or metaphorical (stories about someone who overcomes injury or some other personal disadvantage in order to achieve success). "Rise and fall" stories tell the story of a champion who achieves success but then loses it, generally because of some character flaw or personal demons. Plots like this may seem clichéd, but the convention is a necessary one because no film can recreate the drama and excitement of a live sporting event. (In "Torvill and Dean", for example, we see little of the couple on the ice, apart fro some archive footage of "Bolero" at the very end). Film-makers, therefore, need to tell a human story, not just a sporting one.
Sporting films which ignore the convention tend to be bland and uninteresting. Not all sporting champions, however successful, gifted or widely admired they may be, qualify to have their lives made into a film, largely because most do not have a riveting human interest story underlying the tale of their successes.
And, to be honest, Torvill and Dean do not have such a story. They were what they seemed, a likeable young couple who, through talent, hard work and determination, achieved a run of wins at successive British, European and World Championships. Their crowning triumph in Sarajevo was not achieved against the odds; they were hot favourites to win. They did not rise and then fall from grace, turning professional immediately after the 1984 season. (They made a brief comeback at the 1994 Olympics, winning bronze, but that is not covered in the film). What human interest there is in "On Thin Ice" derives from Tai Babilonia's fight against depression and drug addiction after leaving competitive skating; there is nothing comparable in the Torvill and Dean story.
Because of my interest in the sport I often watch films about figure skating when they come on television. There are occasional good ones, such as the excellent "I, Tonya", one of the best films of 2017, but then that was about Tonya Harding, who had enough human interest in her life-story to fill several volumes. More often I am disappointed, and "Torvill and Dean" is one of the disappointments, a bland and insipid biopic. Anyone who wants to know more about the real Jayne and Christopher should watch the recordings of their performances on Youtube. 3/10.
Dance Hall (1950)
Dance Hall Generation
During my youth in the seventies and eighties my contemporaries and I found it difficult to understand what an important role ballroom dancing had played in the lives of my parents' generation. For many of that generation, including my mother, dancing at the local dance hall was their main form of social recreation and a popular way of meeting the opposite sex. By the time I was in my teens, however, that role had been usurped by the discotheque and ballroom relegated to the status of a rather eccentric niche enthusiasm.
"Dance Hall" from 1950 is a film which centres upon the ballroom craze. In some ways it anticipates the "kitchen sink" social-realist dramas which were to be a major feature of the British cinema later in the decade and in the sixties. It was made by Ealing Studios, better known for their comedies, and directed by Charles Crichton who was later to make two of the most famous of those comedies, "The Lavender Hill Mob" and "The Titfield Thunderbolt".
When the film occasionally turns up on British television, it is normally billed as "starring Diana Dors". In fact, Dors would still have been a teenager in 1950, and her role in the film is a relatively minor one, but she has become far better known than most of the actors cast above her, except perhaps for Petula Clark who today is more famous as a singer than as an actress.
The plot centres on four young women from West London who work in a factory and whose main recreation is dancing at the local dance hall. As might be expected, the main emphasis is upon their relationships with their boyfriends. The main story concerns Eve, a keen dancer, and her boyfriend Phil whose main love is flying and who has no interest in dancing. (This would suggest that there may be a difference in social class between eve and Phil, as flying is not a cheap hobby, but nothing is made of this aspect). Eve ditches Phil in favour of her dance partner Alec, but returns to him when she decides that Alec is not serious about her. Eve and Phil marry, but their marriage is put under strain by his jealousy of Alec.
Another strand in the plot concerns Georgie and her boyfriend and dance partner Peter, and their attempt to win an amateur dancing competition. At this period ballroom dancing was not just something people did for recreation, but also an amateur, and even a professional, competitive sport.
"Dance Hall" may have been a forerunner of the "kitchen sink" school of film-making, but it is not in the same class as the best of those films, like "A Kind of Loving" and "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning". Such films were generally powerful dramas with a strongly-drawn hero (or occasionally heroine, as in "A Taste of Honey") at the centre. There is nothing comparable in "Dance Hall"; both Natasha Parry as Eve and Donald Houston as Phil are forgettable, and we never feel any great emotional connection with them. Diana Dors was to call it "a ghastly film - quite one of the nastiest I ever made," and it is hard not to agree with her. In 1950 the main appeal of the film was probably to the dance hall generation themselves, who would have seen in it a reflection of their own lives as well as enjoying the music. To young people of today, however, to whom the dance hall subculture is even more alien than it was to my generation, a film like this is probably largely incomprehensible. 4/10.
The Night of the Generals (1967)
One-time prestige production, now largely forgotten
One night in December 1942 a prostitute is brutally murdered in German-occupied Warsaw. The death of a Polish prostitute would normally be of no concern to the Nazi occupiers, but because the woman was also a German agent, Major Grau of German intelligence begins an investigation. An eye-witness states that he saw a man in the uniform of a German general leaving the dead woman's room, and Grau's inquiries reveal that of the many German generals stationed in the city, only three do not have an alibi for the night in question- General von Seidlitz-Gabler, General Kahlenberge and General Tanz. Alarmed at where Grau's investigation seems to be leading, the authorities promote him and transfer him to Paris.
Fast forward to July 1944. Grau and all three generals are in Paris at the same time. The storyline becomes involved with the story of Operation Valkyrie, the plot to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Nazi government. Kahlenberge is a member of the plot while Seidlitz-Gabler is aware of it but refuses to commit himself to it, preferring to sit on the sidelines. Tanz has been kept in ignorance of the plot; the plotters know that he is loyal to the regime and would not hesitate to betray them if he got wind of it. In the meantime, another prostitute has been found dead, murdered in the same way as the woman in Warsaw.
All three generals are well played and individualised. Kahlenberge, like many high-ranking German officers, has been placed in an impossible position. He loves his country but hates the Nazi regime, and can only escape from that position by tearing up the sacred oath which, like all German soldiers, he has sworn to Hitler. Seidlitz-Gabler is cynical and self-interested with a reputation as a womaniser. He has no love for the Nazis but no great hatred for them either, and his main concern is to ensure his own survival. Kahlenberge is played by Donald Pleasence and Seidlitz-Gabler by Charles Gray, thus uniting two actors who are linked together in my mind for a quite different reason; both played James Bond's adversary Blofeld during the Connery era.
It will come as no surprise when Tanz is exposed as the murderer; Kahlenberge is too basically decent and Seidlitz-Gabler too cowardly and passive to kill women for the sheer pleasure of killing. Tanz's loyalty to the Nazi regime is less a matter of ideology than of psychology. His is a violent, hate-filled, warlike nature, so he is instinctively drawn to a violent, hate-filled, warlike political movement which gives him every opportunity to act on his sadistic impulses. Like Hitler, he delights in war and killing, and sees his compulsion to murder prostitutes as no different from the slaughter which he and his subordinates perpetrate on the battlefield. Peter O'Toole's style of acting is not to everyone's taste, but I felt that it was well suited here to his portrayal of this urbane but vicious killer.
Unfortunately, the other acting performances are not always of the same standard as these three. Omar Sharif is grey and anonymous in the key role of Grau, which is unfortunately appropriate given his character's name. (Grau is German for "grey"). Sharif and O'Toole had previously appeared together in "Lawrence of Arabia", also produced by Sam Spiegel. Tom Courtenay, whose work I have admired in other films such as "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner", "Billy Liar" and "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", is not at his best here as Tanz's driver Corporal Hartmann, who plays an important role.
I also felt that the film is overlong and poorly structured, with the action jumping between the 1940s and the 1960s. (The investigation is still continuing twenty years after the end of the war, even though Grau is by this time dead, having been taken up by a French detective who was in the wartime Resistance). The Operation Valkyrie subplot often overshadows the main murder mystery, which reduces the tension as we all know that the operation was doomed to end in failure. There is another, rather unnecessary, subplot about Hartmann's romance with Seidlitz-Gabler's daughter. In its day, "The Night of the Generals" was clearly regarded as a large-scale prestige production, but today it is largely forgotten, and I cannot say it really deserves to be remembered. 6/10, largely for some decent acting.
Some goofs. The pronunciation of German names is not always accurate. The final "e" in "Kahlenberge" should be sounded, and the name of Seidlitz-Gabler's wife Eleonore is approximately "Ellay-o-Nora"; it is not pronounced like the English "Eleanor". Had Operation Valkyrie succeeded, Germany's new head of state would have been General Ludwig Beck, not Rommel. Among the stolen paintings due to be shipped to Goering's private collection we see Chagall's "The Green Fiddler", which is in the Guggenheim Museum, New York, not in Paris. And it seems inconceivable that Goering would have bothered to steal a work by a Jewish artist.
Fire Over England (1937)
More Than a Swashbuckler
"Fire Over England" is the sort of swashbuckler which, had it been made in America, would probably have starred Errol Flynn. Flynn, in fact, was to make a similar film, "The Sea Hawk", three years later. Both films are historical drama about England's victory over the Spanish Armada. In "The Sea Hawk" Flynn plays Captain Geoffrey Thorpe, a thinly fictionalised version of Sir Francis Drake. In "Fire over England" the main lead, Michael Ingolby, played by a young Laurence Olivier, is a wholly fictional character with no historical equivalent.
Michael has a hatred of the Spaniards after they burned his father, captured in a sea-battle, as a heretic, and offers his services to Queen Elizabeth. The Earl of Leicester, the head of Elizabeth's intelligence service, offers him a dangerous mission to infiltrate the Spanish court pretending to be a pro-Spanish traitor and thereby find out the names of the real traitors who are plotting to kidnap Elizabeth. As in any good swashbuckler there has to be at least one lovely heroine, and here there are two as Michael finds himself torn between Elena, a beautiful Spanish lady who has fallen for him, and Cynthia, his sweetheart back in England. Cynthia is played by Olivier's real-life girlfriend (later his wife) Vivien Leigh. This was the first film they made together.
The film, however, is more than just a swashbuckler. Like many historical adventures on both sides of the Atlantic from the late thirties and early forties, this one has a political agenda. The producer Alexander Korda was strongly anti-Nazi and anti-appeasement, and used the film to draw parallels between the political situation in the Europe of the 1580s with that of the 1930s. King Philip of Spain is portrayed as a megalomaniac with ambitions of world domination, and the English war against Spain becomes a heroic fight for freedom. The message to the Britain of 1937 was unmistakeable; we have stood up to, and defeated, one tyrant in the past, and we must do the same to that Hitler fellow! The traitor Hillary Vane (played by a young pre-stardom James Mason) was probably intended as an unflattering portrait of the pro-appeasement lobby. Excerpts from the film were included in "The Lion Has Wings", the first British propaganda film made after the outbreak of war in 1939.
"The Sea Hawk", made in Hollywood after Britain had declared war but America had not, has a similar anti-Nazi agenda. Korda himself, after moving to America, was to make another film, "That Hamilton Woman", also starring Olivier and Leigh, which sought to draw parallels between Britain's fight against an earlier dictator, in that case Napoleon, and her fight against Hitler. This film made Korda unpopular with America's powerful isolationist lobby; according to one story he was summoned to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and only excused when the attack on Pearl Harbor took place the day before his scheduled attendance.
Flynn had a fairly narrow range as an actor, but within that range he could be very good, and in his day he was the unchallenged king of the swashbuckler. Even a major star like Olivier (who had a much wider range) does not make as much impact here as Flynn was to do in "The Sea Hawk". The best acting performances come from Flora Robson as Queen Elizabeth, an indomitable symbol of English courage and determination, and from Raymond Massey as King Philip. Massey resisted the temptation to make Philip into a ranting Hitler-style maniac; better to let the parallel speak for itself. His Philip is a ruthless fanatic, but a cold and calculating one.
"The Sea Hawk" still stands up well today and can be enjoyed as an exciting drama from the Golden Age of Hollywood, independent of the political considerations which inspired it in 1940. I don't think that "Fire over England" has stood the test of time as well. With a less charismatic hero and a sometimes muddled plot, it comes across today as a curiosity from a bygone age. 6/10
Some goofs. In reality Elizabeth I's intelligence chief was not Leicester but Sir Francis Walsingham, who does not appear in the film. Part of the action takes place near Lisbon, which the scriptwriter clearly believed was in Spain not Portugal. The name of Philip's palace, El Escorial, is misspelt in a title card as "El Escurial" and that of the Spanish Admiral Valdés in the cast list as "Valdez". (The spelling "Valdez" is largely found in Latin America; the two names are pronounced identically in Latin American Spanish but not European Spanish). Contrary to what is shown here, no Spanish ships were actually set alight by the English fireships; the point of using this tactic was to force them out into the open sea where they could more easily be attacked.
Josie (2018)
Does not succeed either as a thriller or as an "issue" movie
Hank is a middle-aged man who works as a guard at the local high school. Being British, I am not really familiar with the concept of a "school guard", and it would seem that Hank's job has less to do with protecting the schoolchildren than with sitting in his car in the parking lot and making sure that none of them try and bunk off before the official end of the school day.
Hank forms a close friendship with Josie, one of the students who has recently moved to the school. The film never explicitly states whether their relationship is sexual, or even romantic, in nature, but it is close enough to worry Hank's neighbour Martha, who warns him about what she sees as an inappropriate relationship with an underage girl. Another person who resents this relationships Marcus, one of Josie's classmates who sees himself as her boyfriend and who has a long-standing feud with Hank, who has often had cause to reprimand him for his bad behaviour.
Josie, however, does not come across as underage. She seems more like a woman in her termites than a teenage girl. She does not live with her parents or a guardian, but has a room in the motel where Hank lives, and never really explains where her family are. She is clearly hiding a secret, but is not the only one. Hank has a secret in his past. He formerly worked as a prison guard in the state prison at Huntsville, Texas. Part of his duties involved tying down death row prisoners about to be executed, but he quit his job after one of these men was found to be innocent after his execution. Despite quitting, he is still haunted by remorse about his part in the man's death.
This is a short film, at only 87 minutes in length shorter than most modern feature films. Paradoxically, however, at times it can seem overlong. For much of its length it seemed to me to be going nowhere; only in the last quarter of an hour does anything happen as we learn Josie's secret identity and events rush to their shocking conclusion. That doesn't seem a very efficient way of making a thriller, which needs to hold the audience's interest throughout. The film might have been able to make a meaningful statement about the death penalty had it not been so keen to condemn state-sponsored revenge while embracing an ethos of private revenge which undermines any point it is trying to make. "Josie" does not succeed as either a thriller or an "issue" movie. 4/10.