Category: Classic Films

Film Review: Separate Tables

I always derive great pleasure from watching a well-adapted film version of a stage play. I think it’s because fundamentally what makes a good story is its characters and a stage play is, in essence, nothing more than a study of its characters. Of course, there’s usually a plot of some kind that unfolds, twists and turns and events that occur to affect the behaviour of those in the tale and thereby expose more about them as people to us, the audience. For me, it always lays bare the artists’ talents in the writing and the performing departments because there’s no whizz-bang action and explosions to boggle our minds or death-defying stunts to draw our attention away from the human element of the tale. It really is basic storytelling, which some would argue is the purest kind.

Usually, a theatre audience will retain a certain detachment from the performance it watches, never really giving in to the world of make-believe on the stage, never completely forgetting that it is enjoying (or not) a group of performers. By contrast, the cinema audience gets drawn into the world on screen (assuming the director knows what he’s doing), the camera lens acting as its eye. Yes, we know the camera is mounted on a dolly which is being pushed by a Grip along a New York sidewalk but when it comes to watching the end product we forget this, we are there in the Big Apple jostling through the crowds on East 42nd Street and on into Grand Central Station. A scream comes from behind and the camera swivels around to investigate saving us in our seats the effort of looking over our shoulders. For all intents and purposes, we are the camera lens and we can get as close up and personal to the most intimate of moments between characters or we can stand on the edge of a bluff and behold the most spectacular of vistas below our feet. We’re not so much watching it as witnessing it. Think about it. It’s quite magical.

That’s why a well-filmed stage play can be so rewarding. There’s nothing to distract you from the humanity of the story. There’s no bustling sidewalks or majestic panoramas to enjoy. The entire story is expressed through dialogue and body language and little else. Yes, the camera (our eye) now has the freedom to move around the room, to close in on an object or a facial expression or some other detail but more often than not, there’s still a sense of confinement, of being indoors and away from the rest of the world. And in the case of Separate Tables this confinement is the ground floor of a small hotel in Bournemouth, a seaside resort on the south coast of England.

Based on two one-act plays by Terrence Rattigan (Table by the Window and Table Number Seven), Rattigan himself stitched them together and added a few characters to hide the seam. The film was directed by Delbert Mann who had, three years earlier in 1955, won the Academy Award for his romantic drama Marty, a film which also won Ernest Borgnine the award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. No question that the guy clearly knew what he was doing then.

Separate Tables boasts an all-star cast with David Niven, Rita Hayworth, Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster and Wendy Hiller – two of whom would go on to win Oscars for their performances.  Niven plays Major Pollock, a spiffing, moustachioed war veteran who happens to be hiding a shameful secret. Sibyl Railton-Bell (Deborah Kerr), is a meek and rather dour spinster suffocating under the firm control of her Victorian mother (Gladys Cooper) who also appears to be the hotel’s resident matriarch. The sober hotel owner Pat Cooper (Wendy Hiller) is in love with a long-term resident, the alcoholic John Malcolm (Burt Lancaster), who in turn gets a surprise visit from his ex-wife Ann Shankland (Rita Hayworth). The plot lines of these five individuals are woven together with a deft subtlety that is absolute poetry. Their characters start to evolve as soon as the film begins but it’s not until the sudden discovery of Major Pollock’s awful secret, a revelation that divides and illuminates at the same time, that we really get to see what these people are made of.

Niven’s performance is possibly one of the best of his distinguished career and garnered him his only Oscar. His Major Pollock is all bluff and twitter as he regales boorish tales of his time at Sandhurst Military Academy or during the North African campaign always with just a little too much zeal. It’s obvious from the get-go that he’s not all he seems and when his world does come crashing down, the contrast in his behaviour is extremely well-judged. Like-wise, Lancaster’s performance is spot on and the arrival of his ex-wife (Hayworth at first purring glamour and controlled serenity but then revealing pain and loneliness) claiming that they can’t live without each other gives him the opportunity to show how vulnerable and doomed his character is. Deborah Kerr, playing very much against type, is shy and awkward and again conveys a loneliness that seems to be very much prevalent in most of the characters here. Indeed, Major Pollock, having just been told by Sibyl that they know all about him and his secret, tells her that they are really much alike in as much as they are both afraid of life. She’s utterly reviled by Pollock’s guilt but totally devastated too because she was secretly in love with the old fellow. Finally, Wendy Hiller who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the proprietress does a great job of keeping a level-headed perspective on the gossip and bigotry that affects her guest as well as coming to terms with the fact that the man she loves still loves his ex-wife. She’s without doubt the most sane person under her roof. Without giving too much away, the final scene of this film is simply perfect – at first excruciating in its uncomfortableness but then extremely moving. Bottom line, a classic drama that’s all about great writing and stellar acting. Highly recommended.

 

 

Film Review: Grand Prix

The recent buzz surrounding Ron Howard’s new film “Rush” got me thinking about motorsport in movies and in particular, Formula One. Films with a sporting theme at their core are always a little iffy with audiences and often don’t mirror the success in box office receipts as the sports themselves do with fans however, there have been a few exceptions over the years. Boxing and baseball seem to be the safest bet in Hollywood for studio bosses and yet, considering F1’s global popularity it’s cinematic outings are somewhat rare.

Arguably the most famous racing movie to date is Steve McQueen’s “Le Mans” from 1971 and love it or loathe it, you have to concede that it is a bonafide racing spectacle. But it’s not F1. It’s an annual 24 hour endurance race. And if we discount Asif Kapadia’s excellent “Senna” that came out in 2010 on the basis that it’s a documentary rather than a dramatised biopic or adaptation, we have to go back to 1966 to find a film based on Formula One.

John Frankenheimer, who helmed “Grand Prix” began his directing career in television shows like “Playhouse 90” for CBS but after making the transition to movies he found critical and commercial acclaim in the early ’60s with a string of hits including “Birdman of Alcatraz”, “The Manchurian Candidate”, “Seven Days in May” and “The Train” – four cracking films that share nine Oscar nominations between them. “Grand Prix” was his most ambitious project to date and oddly enough, it would also be his first shot in colour. Which of course helped capture the splendour and spectacle that was (and still is, for some) Formula One.

The film boasts an international all-star cast headed by James Garner and Eva Marie Saint as well as virtually all the racing drivers you care to mention from the era. And what an era it was! With beautiful cars unspoiled by sponsorship logos and downforce addendum, circuits that were little more than country lanes in places with no corner markers or kerbing to aid the drivers, it was a great deal more exciting than the regulation-strangled sport of today is. But then it was also far more deadly and according to IMDB, five of the real-life drivers who participated in the film died in racing accidents in the next two years and another five in the following ten years. It’s no wonder things had to change.

The film puts us right down there on the starting grid from the get-go with a highly charged opening sequence designed by the legendary Saul Bass – the man who gave us perhaps some of the most iconic opening titles in the history of cinema (“The Man with the Golden Arm” and “North by Northwest” to name but two). We can almost smell the gasoline and the hot engines of the racing cars as the 70mm Super Panavision film captures close-up images of spark plugs being tightened by mechanics, rev counter needles flicking towards redlines, tyres, exhaust pipes, the expectant crowd waiting for the Monaco Grand Prix to start. All these images overlaid with the soundtrack of a race about to thrill us. It’s gobsmacking.

The same goes for all the racing sequences throughout the film as we behold several of the world’s greatest circuits in their earlier days, Spa and Monza (complete with the infamous banking section) being of particular interest for the way they have now changed. For F1 fans, especially those that find interest in its history, this movie is a must-see!

The plot away from the racing leans a little towards soap-opera melodrama but it injects a dose of glamour and gives the actors something else to do other than race. (Apparently James Garner was so competent behind the wheel that real F1 drivers Graham Hill and Jack Brabham told him he could have been a successful driver had he not gone into acting). The film follows the fates of four drivers through a fictionalised version of the 1966 season, their ups and downs and the women who love them and try to deal with this most dangerous of lifestyles. On the whole, the acting is faultless.

The main character of “Grand Prix” though is the racing itself and Frankenheimer, who had always been a bit experimental with camera angles, was adamant to never cheat his audience with back projections or speeded up film. With cameras mounted onto the racing cars, (sometimes even swivelling from an ahead shot of the track round to the driver!) and on a following or trailing Ford GT40 camera car driven by Phil Hill (the only American-born driver to win a F1 Drivers’ Championship) he really nails the action. Add this to real footage of the 1966 season and there’s very little else like it other than watching a current race. And if you’ve ever seen his 1998 thriller “Ronin”, you’ll remember the car chase and you’ll know how good Mr Frankenheimer is at capturing excitement via speeding cars. The film won 3 Oscars at the ’67 Academy Awards – Best Sound, Best Film Editing and Best Effects/ Sound Effects and it’s not hard to see why.

Ron Howard’s new film is rightly garnering the attention at the moment and it may even go some way to improving Formula One’s image in the United States however, it was undoubtably Frankenheimer’s “Grand Prix” that laid the cornerstone 47 years ago. If you’ve never seen it and you love racing, I urge you to do so. It’s a rush!

Film Review: The Stranger

Isn’t YouTube a marvellous resource? As a video library to delve into for few moments of pleasure it’s practically a bottomless pit of entertainment. The choices of things to watch are virtually limitless. But it should come with a warning just to remind you that it’s all too easy to end up spending hours rather than minutes of your spare time engrossed as you segue from one upload to the next. The suggestions that pop up at the end of each video do a fine job of enticing continued viewing.

But aside from the cute videos of pets and babies and the millions of other “caught on camera” moments, YouTube is for me, a great film library. Thanks to a copyright lapse in many old classic films, there are a plethora of great movies available and just one click away. I found one such film this morning. The Stranger from 1946 starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Orson Welles (who also directed) is a superbly put together drama that, thanks to its style, is also a fine example of film noir. Robinson is always good to watch and with great support from Welles and Young, the hour and a half that this film runs for, simply flies by.

Edward G. Robinson plays Mr Wilson – a “detective, of sorts” for the United Nations War Crimes Commission – who is hunting down a Nazi fugitive called Franz Kindler (Orson Welles). Kindler, having carefully erased all evidence of his former life and assumed a new identity – Charles Rankin – is now a prep school teacher in small town U.S.A. On the day we meet him, he marries Mary Longstreet (Loretta Young) who happens to be the daughter of the local Supreme Court Justice. In short, he’s managed to transform himself from a Nazi war criminal into a pillar of an American community.

Wilson releases Kindler’s former right-hand man Meinike (Konstantin Shayne) from prison in the hope that he will lead him to Kindler which of course, he does. All the way to the pretty town of Harper, Connecticut. But he loses him before he makes contact with Kindler. When Meinike (now a religious convert) and Kindler do meet, he begs his former superior to repent and to confess his sins. However, Kindler, afraid of being exposed by his former associate, strangles him instead.

The story unravels in a gripping, almost claustrophobic way as the determined hound chases down the wily fox. Wilson is pretty sure Rankin and Kindler are one and the same but without having witnessed Meinike meeting with him, he had no proof. So it’s left to Father Time and Kindler’s own fear at being exposed, a fear that will force him to make a paranoiac mistake – to betray his true identity to his pursuers.

As a screenplay, it’s a wonderfully taut piece of writing (Oscar nominated too) with very good dialogue – particularly from the authoritative figure of Wilson. Edward G. Robinson plays this to perfection and he lends his character an intelligent doggedness that is simply believable. Welles is also excellent at conveying a man desperately trying to hide something while Loretta Young is convincing as the new wife who refuses to accept that she fell in love with the wrong man. The town is dotted with other great characters too, in particular, Mr Potter the town clerk and proprietor of the local store/diner. He’s a hoot whenever he’s on screen.

Apart from the opening few minutes, all of the action takes place in Harper – a pretty little town where “there’s nothing to be afraid of” as quoted by Mary Longstreet. For a fugitive, it seems an ideal refuge but of course, for a local it seems like the last place on earth where something like that would occur. Welles’s direction confines us within the town, never giving us any long shot vistas of space and scenery, helping to create the sense of suffocation that Kindler must be feeling as his past captures up with him and his world closes in. Welles’ camera moves beautifully too on cranes and dollies and there are a few reminders of his Citizen Kane brilliance with emotive use of light and shadow in some of the interior shots as well as a lovely reflection in a camera lens. The film builds beautifully to a highly charged climax of which the set piece brings to mind Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

Curiously, The Stranger was the only film made by Welles that had any impact at the box office upon its original release. Hard to believe considering how highly some of his work is now regarded. Coming out shortly after the Second World War perhaps its anti-Nazi theme and the fact that war criminal fugitives really did exist, caught the public’s imagination. It contains, supposedly for the first time in a feature film, actual footage of concentration camps and although what we see is brief, together with Edward G. Robinson’s dialogue, it’s enough to horrify.

Overall then, The Stranger is a great waste of an hour and a half.

Classic TV Review: Colditz

A consequence of writing last month’s article about the 1970’s TV show, The Aphrodite Inheritance is that I’ve found myself pondering nostalgically over what else my parents would have sat down to of an evening once us kids were tucked up in bed. What else might they have watched that I was too young for that I would now find enthralling? The answer is, the more I delve the more I find. And the amazing thing with modern access to information is that it’s so easy to discover. A simple Internet search brought a flood of memories back with opening titles I’d only glimpsed before through the balustrades as I reluctantly made my way upstairs to my room and theme tunes that I’d heard only from afar as I lay in the dark waiting for sleep to whisk me away to some childhood dreamland.

One such show was Colditz, a gritty WWII drama co-produced by the BBC and Universal Studios. It originally aired between 1972 and ’74 with 28 episodes over two seasons and I well remember the opening sequence and the music. But it was on at bedtime and I never got to watch it. Of course there’s a very good chance that had I been permitted to watch it, I wouldn’t have understood what it was all about anyway but that’s the beauty of rediscovering things years later and I have to say – I’m extremely glad I have. Because it’s terrific television.

For those of you unfamiliar with the name Colditz, it was the prisoner-of-war camp in Nazi Germany during the Second World War and the place where Allied officers were sent if they were pains in the neck, i.e. prone to repeatedly escape from other camps. It was designated Oflag IV-C (Oflag being short for Offizierslager which means “officers camp”) and was situated in a thousand year old castle on a rocky outcrop overlooking the town of Colditz in Saxony. Its outer walls were seven feet thick and protecting it on one side was a sheer drop of two hundred and fifty feet to the Mulde river below. The Nazis considered it to be escape-proof but history tells us otherwise.

The first three episodes of this 50 minute show introduce three of the central characters and their subsequent capture by the Germans early in the war. Capt. Pat Grant (Edward Hardwicke), Flt. Lt. Simon Carter (David McCallum) and Lt. Dick Player (Christopher Neame) prove themselves to be problematic prisoners for the Nazis by their numerous attempts to escape. They are therefore finally sent to Germany’s maximum security facility where “escape is impossible”. The fourth episode finally takes us to Colditz after the capture of Flt. Lt. Phil Carrington (Robert Wagner) and from then on the series deals with the relationships between prisoners of various nationalities and their German captors as well as the prisoners’ constant attempts to escape. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Great Escape, it’s a bit like that only not as spectacular but a good deal grittier and more realistic.

Indeed, the technical consultant on the series was Major Pat Reid (the character portrayed by Edward Hardwicke being based on him) who was in real life the British Escape Officer at Colditz. He was one of the few who actually managed to successfully escape from the castle and after the war he went on to write about his experiences in two best-selling books which in turn would go on to be the basis of a film (The Colditz Story directed by Guy Hamilton in 1955), this TV show and a popular board game in the early ’70s. The majority of the events depicted in the series have some basis in reality and while all character names are fictitious, many of them are based, albeit loosely, on actual people. It therefore gives the show a very “real” feel.

This accuracy in the writing together with generally superb performances from all the actors is what makes this TV show one of the most riveting I’ve seen in a long time. Jack Hedley who plays Lt. Col. John Preston, the Senior British Officer and therefore the man who assumes full responsibility for the British prisoners does a fine job with his role. His stoicism and command of his men is a thing of beauty as is his respect for their wishes and duties. His relationship with the camp Kommandant (masterfully played by Bernard Hepton) is wonderfully multi-layered and as such, a very interesting one to see evolve when the two men share the screen.

But in all honesty, I nitpick by naming certain actors. The entire ensemble is spot on. The scripts are intelligent and always within the realms of reality thereby easily impressing upon the viewer how life would have been for those military men forced to wait out the war behind lock and key far from their homes and loved ones.

Gerard Glaister, who together with Brian Degas created the show, was a flyer in the RAF during the war and would go on to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his duties. Originally training as an actor at RADA, he would draw on his wartime experiences many times throughout his career as writer/producer with a number of other TV shows set during and after the Second World War. One of these was yet another series I remember glimpsing the opening titles to as I trudged reluctantly upstairs to bed – Secret Army and I may well review that at some point in the near future. I caught one fragmented episode on YouTube and loved it.

With today’s TV schedules crammed full of inane “follow some weird individual with a camcorder and make a reality TV star out of them” nonsense (there are exceptions of course with some very good series currently produced), I find it a refreshing change to seek out the programmes my parents would have tuned into. Turns out they had some pretty good stuff to watch. It also explains why they insisted on me being in bed at a certain time.

And there I was thinking they simply wanted me to get a good night’s sleep. Early to bed and early to rise…yeah whatever!

 

 

 

Film Review: Carve Her Name with Pride

This 1958 British movie set during the Second World War tells the story of the courageous Special Operations Executive agent, Violette Szabo. It’s based on R.J. Minney’s book of the same name which is itself based on fact.

Violette’s parents were a French mother and an English taxi-driver father who had met during World War I. She was born Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell in Paris on 26 June 1921 and that’s where she spent her early years. Some time later the family moved to London where Violette attended Brixton Secondary School until she was fourteen. She found work as a hairdressing assistant and then as a department store sales assistant.

The movie doesn’t cover that early part of her life but it picks it up around this time, when she was a young woman working in London. It was on 14 July 1940 that she met Etienne Szabo, an officer in the Free French Army, at the Bastille Day parade in London and after a whirlwind romance, the couple were married just 42 day later on 21 August.

Their happiness seemed complete when Violette became pregnant with their daughter, Tania, but then Etienne was sent to North Africa where he died at the Battle of El Alamein in October ’42. He never saw his child.

It may have been for reasons of revenge or simply because she felt she had to do her bit for the war effort in the hope that her husband’s death wouldn’t have been in vain but whatever the reason, some time after receiving this tragic news Violette agreed to work for the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

She underwent intense training in everything from weaponry and explosives to cryptography and unarmed combat and on 5 April 1944 with little Tania tucked up in bed under the roof of her parents’ house, she was sent on her first mission into German-occupied France. Together with an SOE colleague, her task was to reorganise a resistance network that had been broken up by the Nazis and under the code name “Louise”, which also happened to be her nickname, she led the reformed group into blowing up a railway viaduct. Despite being picked up and questioned by a suspicious Gestapo, she was released and managed to return to England on 30 April. Mission accomplished. She’d proved herself to be courageous, capable and reliable.

Unfortunately, her second mission wouldn’t go quite so well. She was flown into central France on 7 June ’44, the day after D-Day, with the task of coordinating the activities of the local Maquis to sabotage German communication lines to aid the Allied invasion of Normandy. She was riding in a car that came upon an unexpected roadblock and after a brief running gun fight, during which she remained behind to allow her Resistance accomplice to escape, she was captured and taken for interrogation to Limoges.

Refusing to give up any information, she was transferred to Gestapo headquarters in Paris for further interrogation and torture but she remained uncooperative to the Germans and was moved to Ravensbrück concentration camp in August ’44. There she endured hard labour and malnutrition. Having been reunited in Paris with two recently caught fellow agents whom she had befriended during their initial training, Lilian Rolfe and Denise Bloch, the three women were executed by SS firing squad in February 1945. Violette was just 23 years old. Her body was cremated in the camp’s crematorium. The film ends with her daughter Tania, accompanied by her grandparents to Buckingham Palace, accepting the George Cross from the King.

As a movie, it’s perky and, in the right places gripping. Director Lewis Gilbert, whose career spanned six decades and included titles like Reach for the Sky (1956), Sink the Bismarck! (1960), Alfie (1966), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Educating Rita (1983) does a great job in pacing the action. Virginia McKenna who plays Szabo in a BAFTA nominated role, really got her teeth into the character and spent weeks training physically for the part. She manages to portray Szabo with a realism that leaves you feeling terribly sad as the end credits roll and yet so thankful to her and all those other individuals who gave their help and in many cases, their lives, to defeat Nazi Germany.

I remember (albeit a little vaguely now) what I was doing when I was 23 years old and it certainly wasn’t dodging bullets, blowing up viaducts and having my body scarred by torture. If you’ve never seen this movie or heard of Violette Szabo, then I recommend you check it out. She was a true heroine and paid the ultimate price for the risks she took but her memory will live on.

Classic TV Review: The Aphrodite Inheritance

When I stumbled upon this 1979 BBC mini series recently it was a blast from the past. Admittedly, over the years I’d think of it every once in a while and try to recall what it was about but all I could remember was a man driving quickly along a sun-baked dusty road. Turns out that’s exactly how the series opens. I wasn’t quite yet a teenager when I sat down and shut up at my parent’s bidding to watch with them this Cyprus-set prime time drama and I have to say, I hadn’t a clue what was going on. Far too grown up and complicated for a boy who probably watched the opening theme tune and then started to play with his Lego. Well, it’s taken over thirty years but I’ve finally watched it. And understood it. And I totally see why my parents insisted on my being quiet while it was on.

Written by Michael J. Bird, who had a thing for dramas set in the Mediterranean and had already given us The Lotus Eaters in ’72 and Who Pays the Ferryman? in ’77, The Aphrodite Inheritance ran for eight episodes and tells a story of greed, betrayal and murder. And Greek mythology.

David Collier (Peter McEnery) arrives in Cyprus following the tragic death of his brother Barry, who was living and working on the island as a construction engineer. It appears he’d been driving too fast on a coastal road and plunged over the edge of a precipice. David liaises with police inspector Dimas (Godfrey James) and assumes that his brother’s affairs will be wrapped up fairly quickly.

However, after the funeral a beautiful woman named Helene (Alexandra Bastedo) confides to David that his brother was murdered. She draws him to a deserted village where she presents him with a suitcase she says was owned by his brother which is filled with £50,000. She says it’s proof that Barry was up to no good. David finds the news hard to believe and when he asks Helene to accompany him to the police to tell them, she refuses saying she cannot get involved. She then disappears leaving David to drive back to town alone. On his way back with the cash, he is forced off the road and knocked unconscious and the case is stolen by a playful chap named Charalambos (Stefan Gryff) who just so happens to be a friend of Helene.

When David informs the inspector of these events and what Helene told him, Dimas is rightly sceptical because there’s no evidence that his brother was murdered. There’s no Helene either, and no case with fifty grand in it. In short, Dimas reckons David Collier is slightly bonkers.

Anyway, as the story unfolds there are plenty of strange goings on for David, plenty of weird coincidences that occur and draw him deeper into a plot that involves the lost tomb of Aphrodite. Along the way we meet another of Helene’s friends, the magnificent bandit Basileos (Brian Blessed). We also meet the seemingly untrustworthy American millionaire Hellman (Paul Maxwell), as well as dishonest partners and killers with big guns.

I don’t really want to say more than that because I think it would give greater enjoyment if the unfolding of the plot and characters therein retain their mystery just as they did when the series was first aired. I suppose that’s one downside to the Internet; because it’s all there to read, you can often spoil the surprise.

I admit that the story is a little slow in a couple of places and there are one or two scenes that invoke a slight cringe-worthy wince, which can promote the tendency to get up and put the kettle on or cast your eyes over a newspaper just to hold sleep at bay, but take my word for it, it’s well worth staying with it. While it may not be outstanding, it is highly enjoyable and quite intriguing.

The actors are all well placed and aside from the main characters, many locals were used as extras to add authenticity. Godrey James plays a great police inspector and Peter McEnery looks like a boyish version of Ian Ogilvy only without the suavity. Oh yes, and Alexandra Bastedo plays the mysterious beauty rather well too.

Give it a look if you can. It’s far more rewarding than a lot of current TV.