M K Aston

Film Review: How Green Was My Valley

Not that it holds any significance but the first time I heard of this movie was during an episode of Frasier, that sitcom, which in this reviewer’s opinion, is quite possibly the cleverest and finest ever produced. Intrigued by Doctor Crane’s appraisal of the film, I sought out a copy to see why that pompous Seattle-based shrink regarded it so highly. And as the end credits rolled, I could do nothing more than concur with the good Doctor’s assessment. It truly is a masterpiece. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards and ended up winning five including Best Picture and Best Director – this in a year when such future classics as Sergeant York, Citizen Cane and The Maltese Falcon were also competing.

Set in a small coal-mining town in the South Wales Valleys at the end of the nineteenth century, the film follows the lives of the Morgan family, told in retrospect through occasional narrations by the youngest of the clan, Huw (a splendid performance by a twelve year old Roddy McDowell). It follows them through socio-economic upheaval, the passing of a way of life and the disintegration of their close-knit family unit. It is at once moving, tragic and uplifting.

Director John Ford (who, with a total of four, holds the record for most Best Director Oscars won) was always adept at giving us the idyllic family scenario and never more so than here. Living in a frugal household with five brothers – all coal-miners like their father – and a sister (the breathtakingly lovely Maureen O’Hara), Huw’s childhood seems perfect as the film begins. Love and respect abides in his home while the surrounding Welsh countryside (filming actually took place in the Santa Monica Mountains) is beautiful and not yet spoiled by the byproducts of mining. With moments of simple humour, Ford gives us a vision that is almost fairytale in its wholehearted goodness.

But then, trouble casts a shadow across this happy existence when the owner of the mine reduces the wages he pays. The miners strike in protest but not before Huw’s father Gwilym (Donald Crisp) fails to attempt a mediation and ends up estranged from the other miners as well as all his sons bar Huw.

Along with this economic turmoil that tears apart the very fabric of the townspeople’s existence, Ford interweaves a story of forbidden love between Huw’s sister Angharad (O’Hara) and the town’s new priest Mr Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon) who refuses to act on her declaration of love because he cannot expect a wife to share his life of spiritual servitude, however dutiful she may be. We also get our heartstrings pulled during Huw’s first few days at school when he encounters bullying but then they are gratifyingly massaged back into place when his unkind headmaster becomes an unwilling pupil himself, albeit fleetingly. It’s a touching moment that will make you laugh and cheer.

The film gives us a glimpse of the political changes happening in the world at the time, when younger workers bandied together in unions to fight against unfairness from their employers, an idea that might have produced a bad taste in the mouths of the town seniors, but things were a-changing and the time-honoured moralities and simple ways of the past were sadly slipping into history. Tragic indeed but no one can stop the locomotion of progress!

For some reason, this film flew below my radar for many years (as did It’s A Wonderful Life) and after watching it, I thought, “How could I not have seen this before?” But ultimately, the satisfaction comes from finding them, however eventual that may be because for true Filmofiles (if there is such a term), it’s one of life’s great pleasures to unearth a classic that has passed you by.

A truly remarkable film from a truly remarkable film-maker.

Film Review: North By Northwest

If ever there were to be a radio programme called Desert Island DVDs and (unlikely I know but) in the event that I were to find myself one of the show’s castaways, invited on to divulge eight film titles I would want with me on that small sandy speck amidst a turquoise sea, North By Northwest would most definitely be one of those eight. These two hours and sixteen minutes of pure Tinseltown magic have enthralled me many times over the years and I hold an unwavering certainty that they will do so each and every time I decide to view them in the future.

This most spectacular of all Hitchcock’s thrillers can surely lay claim to be a Blockbuster movie years before the term was widely bandied about by the Hollywood marketing machine. It has everything that a rip-roaring edge-your-seat adventure flick should. Even before the MGM lion (uniquely seen here against a green background) has cleared its throat, Bernard Herrmann’s stunning soundtrack sets the mood with its menacing intro of timpani and double bass. It builds quickly into a full-on orchestral frenzy, an unmistakable musical interpretation of a chase which, after all, is the theme at the very heart of the movie.

The opening title sequence designed by Saul Bass is a thing of beauty too and is supposedly the first feature film to use kinetic typography in its title. This is an animation technique that uses moving text to evoke an emotion or idea, in this case, the moving titles against a backdrop of an office building give the impression of a lift (or in U.S. parlance, elevator) going up and down. Watch it, it’s terrific. It’s artful.

The film stars arguably that most debonair of all leading men ever to have graced the silver screen, Cary Grant. Grant plays Roger Thornhill, a New York advertising executive who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets mistaken for a government spy and shortly after, a murderer to boot and from then on, he’s a fugitive after the truth to prove his innocence while trying to evade the good guys as well as the bad. I shall refrain from divulging any more detail of the plot and instead encourage anyone who hasn’t seen it to do so very soon because it really is about as fine a mystery/thriller as you are ever likely to see.

The original screenplay was penned by Ernest Lehman who stated that he wanted to write “the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures” and he was nominated for an Academy Award for his efforts. It’s an absolute cracker of a script, full of intrigue and sophisticated dialogue, wit and wonderful locations plus it includes two of cinemas most iconic sequences, one involving a crop-duster plane and the other a climb over the heads of spectacular Mount Rushmore. Once seen, never forgotten.

Hitchcock’s masterpiece it may not be, scholars and critics tend to reserve that particular appellation for Vertigo or Psycho but North By Northwest is not without its share of praise. The American Film Institute rank it highly in many of their 100 Years of… categories and seventh in their 10 Top 10 Mystery films. The film’s name has influenced a music festival in Texas “South By Southwest” and numerous scenes from it have been parodied on TV shows such as Family Guy. The grey suit worn by Cary Grant throughout most of the movie even has its own accolade. In 2006, a panel of fashion experts brought together by GQ magazine named it the best suit in film history as well as the most influential on men’s style. Apparently, it has since been copied for Tom Cruise in Collateral and Ben Affleck in Paycheck.

But perhaps this is delving a little too deep and some of you might say, “Oh come on, it’s only a film, after all.” Nevertheless, only a film it may be, but when a collection of highly talented individuals come together and work as a team they can sometimes produce something extremely worthwhile and having already recommended this film for viewing several paragraphs ago, I will end with the admission that that is how I regard the two hours and sixteen minutes of this movie – extremely worthwhile!

Podcasts – An Alternative To Bad TV

Rightly or wrongly, I was rather quick to blame a recent spell of forgetfulness on an assumed wasting away of what Hercule Poirot would call my “little grey cells”. I suspected immediately it was partly influenced by our current evening television scheduling for in the main, prime-time TV being what it is (or rather what it has become), I felt certain it was having an adverse effect on my cognitive abilities. Today’s frightful concoction of reality shows and soap operas all blended together within a barrage of overtly annoying advertisements meant that while watching TV, my brain was completely surplus to requirements. Yes, I needed my eyes in order to see the characters on the screen and my ears to hear the steady stream of flapdoodle emanating from their mouths, but my brain? Not needed at all. So rather than forcing my precious cerebral matter into temporary dormancy for a few hours every evening as I sit glued to my TV, why don’t I let it go out for a walk by itself, around the park or along the seafront perhaps? At least it’d be getting some exercise.

Obviously this wasn’t a viable possibility but nevertheless, drawing a line firmly in the sand, or in this case, the living room carpet, I decided to try a little experiment and to abstain from regular evening viewing for as long as I could. And to help me achieve this incredibly far-reaching goal, I finally took up the advice given to me about a year ago by a friend who commented that I must surely get tired of listening to the same music on my iPod day in day out and why didn’t I listen to a podcast instead? At the time, I had no idea what a podcast was but having delved and explored, I became enlightened and learned that a podcast is simply a digital episode of a programme, any programme, be it old or current radio broadcasts or a series of discussions or informative dialogues from anyone who wants to share something with the rest of us. And six months on, I’ve become a rather avid podcaster, or is a podcaster the person who records a podcast? Perhaps I’m a podcastee then. I don’t quite know. Oh dear, this terrible withering of my brain! Oh, beware all you who sit in front of your HD TV flat-screens from dawn ’til dusk, beware the degradation of your cerebral cortexes. Anyway, I’ve become an avid listener of podcasts and I’m feeling rather confident that the atrophy of my encephalon has reduced considerably, nay perhaps even reversed such has been the steady curve of my learning.

I’m truly astonished at the amazing selection of listening material available online and I virtually guarantee that if you can think of a subject, any subject at all that has ever been discussed by human beings since they stopped their cave-painting in favour of a civilised confabulation around the evening fire, it’s highly likely there’s a podcast covering it. Politics, philosophy, music, current affairs, education, sports, science, cooking, entertainment, it’s all there and the best part is, it’s all free!

My personal favourites at the moment are found in the history category. For some reason, I can’t learn enough about the past. Perhaps it’s because I’m getting old and as my future gets shorter its significance lessens and so I find greater comfort in looking back, who knows, but I’m thoroughly enjoying learning all about the Second World War in one particular podcast, the history of England in another and an extremely entertaining and interesting selection of historical topics (usually people and events) from around the world in another. Compared to the (mostly) colourless and irksome voices from the television, these podcasters (note to self: investigate to see whether that is the correct noun) with their great passions for their subjects are inspired listening and I’m seriously considering putting the TV on eBay.

But won’t you miss the dramas and detective shows? I hear you ask. Not at all, I reply and I’ll tell you why. Because among these great online libraries of digital recordings can be found the types of show of which you speak. And to mention just two of my favourites – The Adventures of Philip Marlowe and Richard Diamond, Private Detective – both radio detective dramas from the 1940s and ’50s and both an absolute thrill. You can find all manner of others too if you look, Sherlock Holmes and Sam Spade among them as well as westerns like the Long Ranger and Gunsmoke.

I find it immensely rewarding listening to thespians of fine vocal ability acting out these stories while unseen studio hands create precise sound effects to bring life to their make-believe scenarios; their efforts really do install perfectly vivid images in my mind, the way that good story-telling should. It’s interesting too to listen to these old shows and to remember that the past generations who had nothing more to bring entertainment into their homes than the modest radio, a Bakelite tabletop set perhaps, would have considered them compulsory listening as they sat around comfortably beside the hearth and tuned in for the weekly instalment of their favourite characters. It doesn’t take much for me to picture a gentleman of similar age sitting comfortably by the fireside, slippers warming his toes and pipe smoke yellowing his moustache and Brylcreemed hair.

Another added bonus to this form of programming is that you don’t have to be sedentary all evening to enjoy it which means you can put the kettle on or get the washing in whenever you so desire, not at the prescribed time dictated by an ad break. If you are like me and are partial to a gentle stroll in fair weather then your podcast can engage or amuse you as you wander which is to my mind, making very good use of time. Now whilst I am not opining that all TV is hopeless – certain well-produced dramas are well worth sitting down to as are numerous documentaries and wildlife programmes – I am saying that I’ve realised (hopefully just in time for my cerebrum) that it’s far too easy to simply sit in front of the “box” all evening and to let the controllers of our national broadcast stations fill our minds with all sorts of intelligence sapping nonsense.

Maybe now I’ll even join the ranks of those listeners dedicated to The Archers.

High Street Blues

The following post is like any good discussion or debate in that it brings up two points of view and in much the same way as a battery has two electrodes, the positive anode has its negative counterpart, the cathode.

I was journeying through the South East countryside recently on a rather long and ponderous bus ride that took me through places I’d never heard of, and it occurred to me just how miserable our small town and village high streets look for the most part. If they aren’t a few locals milling about short of being ghost-towns where dusty little bric-a-brac shops seem to be permanently closed and tiny Post Offices-cum-newsagents-cum-grocers are open for just a few hours every day either side of lunchtime, they are filled with half-empty charity shops, dreadful kebab parlours and sparsely-furnished coffee shops where the lattes and cappuccinos don’t really taste like coffee at all but rather scorched bland milky wetness. In fact, in many cases the only thing missing from these high streets is the occasional ball of sagebrush blowing across the road whipped up by some lonely breeze. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking charity shops, I’ve picked up one or two bargains from their bookshelves myself over the years but how many do we really need? In some high streets you’ll see three, four, perhaps even five charity shops doing battle, each one purporting to help improve the lives of the sick and aged of our society as well as those unfortunate animals who find themselves without a loving home. But once upon a time there would have been jumble sales in village halls for this kind of aid and the high streets would have been home to good old fashioned sweetshops or ironmongers, greengrocers and butchers.

Nowadays of course, everyone and his uncle drives five miles to their local superstore where every conceivable shopping need is catered for. You want bread, beer, Brussels sprouts? Go to the superstore where you can buy one and get one free. You want to buy a new TV or a cordless drill? Go to the superstore and save 10% on both. You want banking, insurance, a new pair of shoes? Go to the superstore, it’s all there and more often than not at a better price than can be found elsewhere. And isn’t it great that we can all go home with a bargain? Why, we’ve probably even bought things we didn’t really need but hey! they were on special offer so what the heck! I’ve actually saved money! And yet what a double edged sword it is.

It’s understandable that we all want a bargain, we all want to save pennies in these lean times but unfortunately the flip side is, the superstores get all the business and therefore all the power. And so, poor old Somersbottom’s Bakery in the high street has to close down because they can’t afford the rent anymore and dear old Mrs Wigglesbury behind the Post Office counter who’s been the smiley face and chatty friend to all for two generations has closed down because our great leaders in their slimy corridors of power have decided that we don’t need her anymore. Perhaps if we stopped using our cars for every single little trip – to get the paper or a pint of milk – perhaps if we hadn’t all rushed out to save a few quid at the nearby superstore, our rural community shops that had previously supplied us with our weekly needs might still be around. But maybe that’s what our government wants.

Okay, that was the negative. Now for the anode of my thoughts. Micro Pubs! I saw an article on the news recently regarding this fairly new concept which seems set to become a minor explosion around the country and it made me almost ‘whoop’ with joy. I find it heart-warmingly wonderful that certain enterprising individuals have taken it upon themselves to open up these tiny drinking establishments and bring a little life back into these derelict premises that litter our country high streets and hopefully it’ll spark the beginnings of a resurgence in rural community life. Not only does a Micro Pub recycle these business properties that have become casualties of our times but they also utilise the terrific home-grown products of our often struggling Micro Breweries that would otherwise probably struggle to survive. Great British Ale!

How many of us are put off by the frightful noise and garish flashing lights of our pubs today where you can hardly hear yourself speak over the din and the person serving you barely offers more in the way of chitchat than the price you must pay, where the beer is often overpriced, poorly kept and mostly fizzy and foreign? I’ve often heard it said that the only way a pub can make money these days is to serve food and while that’s all well and good and some of them serve very good homemade food indeed, many of them serve nothing more than microwaved muck that they market as “hearty fare”. And anyway, shouldn’t food be what restaurants serve? A pub should be a place to go for a nice pint or two, to chat with friends or strangers who may or may not become friends themselves, not a place filled with every kind of entertainment from bleeping video games to the incessant screening of sporting fixtures. If you want those things go to an arcade or a sports club. Once again, it’s the case of a single concern trying to accommodate all for the sake of profit over good neighbourly service and while it might be construed as convenient, killing two birds with one stone, so to speak, it bypasses that crucial connection of trust, kindness and loyalty between purveyor and consumer that we all secretly wish was still present in our retailing experiences.

I for one sincerely hope that the emergence of the Micro Pub will herald the coming of the Micro Greengrocer and the Micro Fishmongers and Ironmongers and the return of many other shops of yesteryear so that all our high streets thrive once again and we don’t have to jump in our cars and drive five bumper-to-bumper miles polluting the air with our overpriced petrol just to buy a new pair of socks. Or maybe that’s what our government wants.

Film Review: The Hill

“They went up like men! They came down like animals!”

So ran the tagline to this 1965 drama set in a British military disciplinary camp located in the Libyan desert during World War Two. Why should you see it? Because not only is it one of Sean Connery’s finest performances, possibly even the finest, a performance void of the glamour, fanciful action and droll dialogue that his (up to then) three Bond movies had entertained us with and helped make him the global star that he was but it’s also packed with terrific performances from all the main players, it has splendid black and white cinematography and a script that crackles with grit and reality, racism and black humour in equal measure. Ray Rigby’s screenplay is brought to life by the masterful Sidney Lumet who once again manages to capture the claustrophobia of this confined space much as he did for those 12 Angry Men.

Continue reading Film Review: The Hill

Film Review: So Long at the Fair

This period mystery made in 1950 and starring a very young and incredibly beautiful Jean Simmons really is a little known gem of British cinema and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it. Chances are, a good number of you haven’t even heard of it because it rarely crops up on anyone’s list of must-see movies. But do yourself a favour and don’t let that put you off – it’ll grip you from beginning to end!

Simmons plays Vicky Barton, who along with her brother Johnny (David Tomlinson – perhaps better known for his roles in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Mary Poppins) is en route from Naples to the Paris Exposition of 1889. She is brimming with excitement at her first visit to the French capital and can’t wait to be one of the first people to climb the new Eiffel Tower. Johnny though is more reserved, one might even describe him as stuffy but he’s willing to endure the sightseeing to please his dear little sister. Vicky is keen to stay in Paris for at least a week but he’s only booked their hotel rooms for two nights and doubts whether they will be able to extend their booking on account of the crowds that have descended on the city for the Expo. He’s also tired and keen to get home to England.

On arrival at their hotel, Vicky and her brother are welcomed by owner and manager Madame Hervé (Cathleen Nesbitt), a chalk cliff-faced widower if ever there was one and she gives them the keys to their rooms, 17 and 19. Johnny is about to sign the hotel register when he is distracted by a missing item of luggage and while he pops outside to their coach to retrieve it, Vicky signs the register instead. After having settled into their rooms, Vicky drags poor tired Johnny out for a night on the town and following dinner they head to Moulin Rouge where she encounters George Hathaway (Dirk Bogarde), a charming young artist living in Paris. However, George is with friends and so their encounter is only brief.

Back at the hotel, Vicky leaves her brother in the lobby to enjoy a nightcap and she heads up to her room with the threat that she’ll drag him out of bed at 9 in the morning. As Johnny enjoys his drink, George appears with his friends who just so happen to be staying in the same hotel. He asks Johnny if he has change for a 100 franc note because he doesn’t have anything smaller to pay his cab fare but the best Johnny can do is lend him 50 francs, which he does. George promises to pay him back in the morning. And so nightcap imbibed, exhausted Johnny finally retires to his bed behind door number 19.

In the morning when Vicky trots down the corridor towards her brother’s room his door isn’t where she thought it was and on closer inspection, door number 19 opens to reveal a communal bathroom. Assuming she must have remembered his room number wrongly, she asks Madame Hervé which room her brother is in to which she is told – “Your brother? But surely you are here alone.’ Startled, she asks the hotel porter who confirms that she arrived on her own and the register backs up their story because only her name is in it. In fact, there’s no evidence of her brother at all, not even the room he was supposed to have taken. And so begins a wonderfully paced yarn full of Victorian etiquette and charm that will keep you guessing right up to the end.

I would be doing you a disservice if I revealed the rest of the plot so I won’t but I will say that Vicky seeks help from the dashing young George who is only too happy to come to this fair maiden’s aid. Simmons is just terrific as the confused and rather helpless innocent abroad and Bogarde plays his part of the raffish young hero as easily as he does in many of his movies. The sets and costumes are splendid as are the exterior shots; you’d never guess it was filmed entirely at Pinewood and to add to the film’s overall authenticity many of the British supporting cast (who are all excellent by the way), speak French like natives. The audience is not distracted by unnecessary subtitles either and it works because even if you don’t understand the language, you understand body language. Sometimes a shrug of the shoulders or a wave of a hand can relate as much as any line of dialogue.

Written by Hugh Mills and Anthony Thorne and directed by Terence Fisher and Antony Darnborough the film has parts that will make you giggle and others that will send a shiver down your spine. Imagine being a stranger in a strange land with no money and very little knowledge of your environment only to be told the person you arrived with (and more worryingly your guardian – the person who was looking after you) was but a figment of your imagination! A hard to imagine scenario, isn’t it but scary nonetheless. But did it really happen? Well, according to legend it did (with a slight variation on the characters) although there is no evidence to back up this claim (sounds like poor young Vicky).

So Long at the Fair is an intriguing British noir, a dark little tale set in the city of light. It’s worth a look for many reasons not least because there’s something frighteningly real about it. Has such a thing really happened before? And in today’s complicated and technologically advanced world could such a scenario happen at all? Surely not. But just suppose the day before the opening ceremony at London 2012…