Category: Film

Film Review: Detective Story

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again – I truly love it when I stumble across an old movie I’ve never seen before that blows my socks off. A few days ago, this 1951 Kirk Douglas crime drama did just that. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Detective Story is based on the stage play of the same name by 1934 Pulitzer Prize for Drama winner Sidney Kingsley and it’s directed by Roman Holiday and Ben-Hur legend, William Wyler.

By virtue of the story originally written for the stage, it’s a character study and in this case the character, or rather characters, are a squad room full of plain-clothed detectives at the 21st Precinct in New York City. The action takes place over the course of a working day and apart from a brief foray into the streets of the city, we remain confined within said squad room. We see the various detectives attending to their tasks – mundane police procedures included – as well as the various criminal elements that they apprehend that day. It’s all very gritty. But don’t misinterpret that as heavy going and oppressive, for it isn’t. Certainly not at the outset anyway. Yes, the tension builds to a dramatic climax, one that will take your breath away, but along the way there’s subtle humour and questions of morality too.

The main thrust of the plot involves, naturally enough, Kirk Douglas’s character – Detective James McLeod – and his wife Mary (Eleanor Parker) who just so happens to have a skeleton in her closet. McLeod is a tough, no-nonsense cop who sees the world he inhabits as black and white. You break the law, you pay the price. No leniency whatsoever. His current focus is on bringing down disgraced doctor Karl Schneider (George Macready) for having performed abortions on several women which subsequently lead to their deaths however, the more McLeod pursues the closer he gets to a truth that will turn his world upside down.

For the most part, this movie is a filmed stage play and as such there’s a degree of claustrophobia present in its viewing, perhaps even more so than if you were sitting in your theatre seat before the stage. Obviously, this sense of confinement is intentional because the film actually benefits from it. We are in a living, breathing squad room after all, and around us are all the individuals you’d expect to find there. Even when Lee Garmes’s camera lens pulls tight onto action in the foreground, the squad room’s heart still beats in the out-of-focus background. The company of actors, those playing the detectives and the criminals at least, are rarely off the set. It gives the whole thing an organic feel.

The acting – leads and support – is all round solid too. Douglas gives a towering performance as the cop who’s too unforgiving for his own good although oddly enough when it came to Oscar time, he was overlooked. Eleanor Parker got nominated, as did Lee Grant (in her big screen debut, no less) who plays a young shoplifter. There were also nominations for Best Director and Best Writing in the Screenplay category. Like Lee Grant, Joseph Wiseman, who plays a slightly unhinged burglar called Charley Gennini, was also performing for the first time in front of a movie camera. Wiseman would later go on to cinema immortality playing Dr. No, the first bad guy in a popular spy franchise. His performance here couldn’t be more different.

Like all good dramas, it’ll imprint traces of itself in your mind and you’ll be thinking about it long after the music has flourished and the credits have rolled.

 

 

Film Review: Paris When It Sizzles

You every get that feeling when all you want to do is to sit down in front of the TV and watch something that doesn’t require too much effort? Something that doesn’t ask too much of your concentration? Maybe you’ve been on your feet all day toiling and sweating and you’re physically exhausted or maybe you’ve got too much on your plate and it’s hard to focus on any one thing and all you wish is for something to take your mind of it for a little while. Either way, sometimes losing yourself in a slice of good-looking, light-hearted silliness can be just the ticket. Paris When It Sizzles is just such a slice of good-looking, light-hearted silliness.

It’s a 1964 romantic comedy and it stars William Holden and Audrey Hepburn who ten years earlier had set tongues wagging by having a brief romance of their own while making the film Sabrina. Holden was married at the time, after all. However, this most delicate bloom of an actress decided to end the relationship either on account that her lover was plagued with alcoholism or that he’d undergone a vasectomy and couldn’t have children. Or both. Years later Holden apparently still carried a torch for her so one can imagine their feelings when Paramount Studios insisted on them making the film together. Fortunately for us, if there was any awkwardness between the stars, it didn’t translate to the screen.

The plot revolves around Holden’s playboy screenwriter Richard Benson (he played another screenwriter in Sunset Boulevard 1950) who hires Hepburn’s secretary Gabrielle Simpson to stay with him in his hotel room over Bastille weekend in order to type up the screenplay that he has promised to his boss, Alexander Myerheim (Noel Coward). Trouble is, even though he’s already been paid for it, he hasn’t got a clue what he’s going to write and the several possibilities he comes up with stink. But he is soon inspired by the lovely Gabrielle and comes up with the title, The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower. The rest of the film flits between their growing relationship in the hotel room and the imagined film playing out as Benson narrates. The end result is of course, utterly predictable but the journey is a lot of fun and it involves inept police and international spies. It also takes a few hilarious potshots at the movie business and there are several noteworthy cameos too, particularly from an uncredited Tony Curtis.

I laughed loudest at Curtis’s antics (his comedic ability has always appealed to me – see Some Like It Hot, The Persuaders etc) particularly towards the end when he shares the screen with Holden but the truth is, while the film has some incredibly silly moments, the entire cast manages to carry the absurdity of the story in an almost pantomime-like style and for me, this ensures there are laughs to be had all the way. There are a couple of marvellous cameos too (don’t we just love cameos?), one if which is the voice of one of the greatest singers the world has ever known. Check it out. I guarantee you’ll laugh – or at the very least giggle.

The film was directed by Richard Quine whose other credits include Bell Book and Candle (1958) and How to Murder Your Wife (1965). George Axelrod, – he of The Seven Year Itch (1952) fame – adapted the screenplay from an earlier French film called Holiday for Henrietta (1952). The music is from Nelson Riddle – composer, bandleader, arranger – who worked with some of the greatest singing talents ever and the exterior shots of Paris, which make you just want to go there, come courtesy of cinematographer Charles Lang, whose credits include A Farewell to Arms (1932), Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Magnificent Seven (1960). Whether it’s a bright sunny day or a neon-lit night shot, seeing Paris on film always makes me want to jump on Eurostar.

While it might not have a place in the pantheon of romantic comedies like say, Hepburn’s Roman Holiday (1953) or Jack Lemmon’s The Apartment (1960), it is worth a look. It teems with that glamorous ’60s European chic and there are some great lines from some of Hollywood’s greatest stars. And besides, you didn’t want to be  entertained too much anyway.

 

Film Review: A Town Like Alice

I’m not sure what I was expecting when, a few days ago, I sat down to watch this film. It was one I’d heard of but never before given a viewing for whatever reason. The title suggests something domestic and perhaps slightly delicate and pretty and yet the blurb on the TV guide said it was a WW2 drama starring Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch. So after two hours of well-crafted cinema, intrigue became enlightenment and awe.

A Town Like Alice is a gripping 1956 British drama film based on the book of the same name by Nevil Shute. It tells the harrowing story of a group of women and children forced to march hundreds of miles across Malaya from village to village by the occupying Japanese forces who refuse to take responsibility for them. It is at once awful to witness the hardship and suffering the group has to endure and yet uplifting to behold the strength of the human spirit in times of woe.

The film opens with Jean Paget (played by Virginia McKenna), in a London solicitor’s office shortly after the war. The solicitor informs her that she has a large inheritance and, asked what she wants to do, Jean decides to go to Malaya to build a well in a small village. As work gets under way, she recalls her three years of living in the village and the journey she endured to get there during the war.

Flashback to 1942 and Jean is working in an office in Kuala Lumpur when the Japanese invade and take everyone prisoner. The men are sent off to labour camps and the women and children are told they must walk to a women’s camp fifty miles away. Jean being fluent in Malay, is therefore a prominent figure within the group and helps arrange the acquisition of food and medicines they require from the locals. But after an arduous march in unbearable heat and mosquito infested swamps, the women are told by the camp commanders that they are not wanted and are therefore forced to march on in search of another camp. And so their journey continues with disease and danger always close behind.

Along the way, the group meets young Australian soldier, Joe Harman (Peter Finch), also a prisoner of war, who drives a truck for the Japanese. He and Jean quickly forge a friendship and often meet behind their guard’s back to share a cigarette and swap stories. It is here that he tells her about his hometown of Alice Springs and this is where the story’s title comes from. Joe is appalled by the suffering the group has to endure and helps them by stealing food and medical supplies from his Japanese captors. However, a theft of chickens is investigated and with Jean being the initial suspect, Joe confesses his guilt to save her and the rest of the group. For his troubles, he is beaten and crucified to a tree and left to die. The women are forced to march away but a while later, when their guard dies, Jean begs that the group be allowed to stay in a village where they will gladly work and become part of the community. This they do until the end of the war when they are repatriated.

Returning to the present day in the village where the well is being built, Jean learns that Joe Harman didn’t die against that tree and that he survived the war and returned to Australia. She therefore travels there to search for him. Likewise, he travels to London in search of her and after some disappointment, the two finally meet in the airport at Alice Springs. Very moving it is too.

This is where the film differs from the book because where the cinematic story ends, the novel continues to explore Jean’s new life in the Australian outback and examines all the joys and difficulties that that throws up.

The film was shot mainly at Pinewood studios although some exteriors were filmed in Malaya and Australia. It was directed by Jack Lee (arguably his best known work) and distributed by The Rank Organisation. It was the third most popular film at the British box office in 1956 and won BAFTAs for both McKenna and Finch. Give it a look and you’ll see why. Their performances are faultless. But then, the same could be said of the entire cast. The film itself was nominated too as was the screenplay. The pacing is spot on – your attention and interest in the characters never wanes – and the look of the film is frighteningly real.

All in all, an incredible tale of triumph over adversity – a great film made from a great novel.

 

Film Review: Rififi

Ah, the heist movie! Love them or loathe them, just thinking about them conjures up images of a group of misfits enduring painstaking preparation overseen by some intelligent mastermind. Of masked gunmen overpowering unsuspecting night-watchmen. Of safecracking equipment and smoke grenades. Of fast getaway cars. All the ingredients for a thrill-a-moment spectacle.

Hollywood obviously loves them. The success of remakes like Ocean’s Eleven (and its sequels), The Italian Job and The Thomas Crown Affair is proof that, for the most part, we do too. There are of course, dozens of titles worthy of viewing, both old and new, but if you want to watch one of the most influential of them all, then I recommend the 1955 French classic, Rififi.

Even though Rififi is filmed in glorious Paris, the French capital has never looked so bleak. Director Jules Dassin, argued on more than one occasion with his cameraman by insisting he didn’t want to shoot in sunshine. He wanted the overall look of the film to be grey and cold and consequently it’s about as far removed from the glitz and glamour of somewhere like Ocean’s Eleven’s setting of Las Vegas as it’s possible to get. Dassin wanted gritty realism and boy! – that’s exactly what he got. Indeed, so real is it’s actual heist scene – an incredible 30 minute segment void of any dialogue or music – that upon its release in ’55, several countries banned it on the grounds that it was akin to watching a training film for anyone wishing to commit burglary. A reviewer in the Los Angeles Times referred to it as a “master class in breaking and entering as well as filmmaking”. Burglaries mimicking the film’s scene began occurring around the world. Dassin responded to critics by claiming that the film showed how difficult it actually was to carry out a crime.

Jules Dassin was American by birth and found success as a director in the ’40s, particularly with a number of noir films. But when the communist witch hunts burned through Hollywood like wildfire he was blacklisted and consequently decided to move to Paris to continue looking for work. Nothing came his way for five years until he was offered Rififi, an adaptation of Auguste Le Breton’s novel of the same name and despite shooting on a low budget and with a no-name cast, the film revived his career.

The film follows Tony le Stéphanois (played by Jean Servais), an ageing gangster recently released from a five year prison stretch for jewel theft. Down on his luck, he meets up with two gangster friends Jo le Suédois (Carl Mohner) and Mario Ferrati (Robert Manuel) who propose to him a smash-and-grab job from a parisian jeweler’s window display. Initially Tony refuses but when he learns that his girl has hooked up with nightclub owner and rival gangster Pierre Grutter (Marcel Lupovici), he accepts the job on condition that they go for the safe inside rather than simply what is in the window. Mario suggests they bring in expert Italian safecracker César le Milanais (played by Jules Dassin under the pseudonym Perlo Vita). The four men then concoct and rehearse an intricate plan to break into the jeweler’s and disarm the (then) state-of-the-art alarm system. The heist is pulled without any major hiccup but the problems arise, as they so often do in this type of story, in the aftermath. And with that, I shall say no more about the plot. I should hate to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it.

Not only did Rififi revive its director’s career but it also found success in America, making Dassin the first artist to come back from the Hollywood blacklist. The film was praised by audiences and critics alike and won several awards during the ’55-’56 season. It also quickly became a hugely influential marker for many heist films that followed. If you’ve never seen it, give it a look and see what all the fuss is about. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

 

Happy Christmas TV!

So, what will you be watching on television this festive season? Or rather, what won’t you be watching? It occurred to me while browsing the upcoming TV highlights yesterday that, in these days of digital enlightenment, the second of these two questions is the easier to answer. To explain, let me go, as I often do, back a few years…

Who can recall those bygone days when you generally had to be at home to receive a phone call? Or when you wanted to gather some random tidbit of information like, say, the names of all the capital cities on the African continent? Naturally, you would have to heave a great encyclopaedia off a shelf, blow the dust off its cover and then leaf through its cluttered pages, wouldn’t you? And who is seasoned enough (by the passing of time, not the addition of salt and pepper) to remember when we had far fewer options when it came to what to watch on TV? Fact is, until March 1997, we in the UK only had four channels to entertain us. Seems almost beyond belief now, doesn’t it? And if you go back to November ’82 there were just three! I mean, how in the world did we cope? And in case you’re now curious, BBC1 first aired in November ’36 (as BBCTV), then came ITV in September ’55 and then BBC2 in April ’64 (at which point BBCTV became BBC1).

With only four channels to choose between it was a relatively easy task to plot a course through the ocean of programming over the festive period. With full belly and dragging energy levels, the time spent in front of the TV often took up a significant portion of the holiday. Of course, there were grumblings about the repeats – particularly the scheduled movies – “How can that be on again? That was on last year. Why couldn’t they have shown so-and-so instead? I haven’t seen that one in ages.” At one time, James Bond’s appearances during our post-lunch snoozings were as regular as the Queen’s speech. But we would watch those repeats all the same, moaning as we did, but nevertheless enjoying their festive familiarity.

And that’s the difference today. Assuming that TV still has priority over all other forms of entertainment, we don’t need to sit through repeats anymore. Unless that’s what blows your hair back, of course. With many of us now having more channels to watch than we can shake a remote control at, not to mention the shelves of DVDs we own as well as computers that can stream virtually anything that’s ever been filmed, we are able to watch pretty much anything we like. And if we miss something because we were out or it clashed with something else we were watching, there’s always ‘catch-up TV’. Which means the good old Christmas TV schedule seems to have lost its influence a bit, doesn’t it? And yet…

The self-titled ‘Legendary’ double edition of the Radio Times is perhaps one of the most eagerly awaited magazines of the year and has been for as long as I can remember. Prior to 1991 of course, we had two magazines to buy and to study because the TVTimes was the only place to read the ITV and Channel 4 listings. Now though, both magazines give the same information so really it’s just a question of taste (perhaps an interesting article or interview within the pages of one) or loyalty as to which one we carry home with our shopping.

Today, menus and schedules on our TV screens may tell us what we’re currently watching and what’s coming up but I, for one, still enjoy turning every page of the Christmas Radio Times, red pen in hand, marking everything that’s of interest. I’m quite positive I won’t get to watch half of it but it’s nice to see it’s on. These chronicles are inventories of our viewing pleasure and whether we cheer or grumble as we leaf through them, most of us now have the power to go ‘off-piste’, so to speak, to take control of our own screens.

A headline caught my eye today which stated that Downton Abbey is scheduled to go head to head with Eastenders on Christmas day in the battle for ratings. Once upon a time, this would have meant disappointment for some household members and possible arguments for others as one of these shows would have to have been missed. Unless you had a video recorder. And let’s face it, using one of those was always a bit of a rigmarole. Today we just push a button on the remote and watch one show straight after the other. There’s not even any need to heave our turkey-stuffed selves out of our chairs. Really now, we’ve never had it so good.

And so whatever you end up doing this Christmas, whether or not it involves catching some of the festive TV and, yes those obligatory repeats, I wish you and yours the best of the season and a Happy New Year.

 

Film Review: The Fast Lady

Okay, so winter may not arrive officially until the 21st of next month however unofficially, in my mind it’s moved in already and taken over like an occupying force. I reckon we can all admit to having enjoyed a long warm summer this year and that’s an increasingly rare thing to say but don’t those glorious days of sandals and sun lotion seem an age ago already? And what’s replaced them? Wind, rain, chills and that annual pain-in-the-neck, the common cold. Yes, you’ve guessed it – I’ve got a stinker already!

For the last two days I’ve been shuffling around like a think-headed, red-eyed zombie, my joints aching and my nose itching and streaming so much that I wonder just where the hell all that fluid comes from. It may not be quite debilitating but it certainly makes you feel miserable.

So, last night as a counter-measure, I prescribed for myself a good dose of humour. A hearty laugh is always a sure-fire tonic and the sort of dose I was thinking of administering would be found in something like a Carry-On film or one of those slightly daft yet rib-tickling comedies from the ’50s or ’60s, starring a role-call of familiar faces from British cinema in its heyday.

I settled on a film that was completely unfamiliar to me – The Fast Lady from 1962. It tells the story of enthusiastic cyclist Murdoch Troon (played by Stanley Baxter) who one day is run off the road by impatient Charles Chingford (James Robertson Justice) in his Rolls Royce. Troon tracks the man down to his beautiful home with its manicured lawns and demands compensation for his damaged bicycle. It is here that he meets Chingford’s beautiful daughter Claire (Julie Christie) and the two are instantly attracted to one another. Learning that she is a lover of sports cars as well as “the men who drive them”, Troon decides to buy a car and pass his driving test.

Fortunately for Troon, his friend and fellow lodger is Freddie Fox (Leslie Phillips), an under-performing used car salesman with a keen (make that VERY KEEN) eye for the ladies. On discovering that Charles Chingford is the owner of a local sports car dealership, Fox sees the possibility of getting in with Chingford as well as selling Troon a car. And the car in question is a 1927 vintage Bentley named The Fast Lady.

What follows is all perfectly charming and uncomplicated fun as Troon, determined to be the man he thinks Claire wants him to be, takes his first driving lesson and then later, his test. He also has to deal with Claire’s bad-tempered father and the man’s extreme dislike of him and the two go on to make a wager that, should Troon lose, means he must never see Claire again. Meanwhile, Freddie Fox schemes, Claire Chingford coos, her father blusters and Troon, a rather clumsy Scot, soldiers on seemingly oblivious to the disaster he leaves in his wake. All very amusing.

The film was directed by Ken Annakin, a man of great talent and diversity. Not only did he give us such Disney classics as The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men and Swiss Family Robinson, he also directed big scale war movies like The Longest Day (the British segments) and Battle of the Bulge as well as riotous comedies like Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines and Monte Carlo or Bust!

Perhaps best known for his hilarious television shows which first appeared in the ’60s, Stanley Baxter – a Scotsman himself – plays Murdoch Troon with a believable measure of innocent heroism. He’s not as naive or hapless as, say, Norman Wisdom in his slapstick comedies, but he’s not a million miles away either. He’s a likeable chap though and you root for his character from the off.

Leslie Phillips is perfect doing what he does best and there’s only one other actor I can think of who nailed the cad as well – albeit to a more rotten degree – and that was Terry Thomas. Julie Christie, in only her second film role, seems quite at home in her part. Annakin captures her extraordinary beauty in several well-framed close-ups and it’s no wonder that she would soon become a global star. Three years later, when she starred as Lara Antipova in Dr Zhivago, Life magazine hailed 1965 as “The Year of Julie Christie” such was her impact on the silver screen. James Robertson Justice as her father, is excellent as always, and his domineering and acerbic Charles Chingford is similar to his Sir Lancelot Spratt in the Dirk Bogarde “Doctor” movies.

Along the way, the familiar faces of numerous comedy and character actors from the era pop up in cameos, among them Frankie Howerd, Dick Emery and Bernard Cribbins. I loved seeing how the roads and the high streets have changed over the years (the film was shot in and around Beaconsfield apparently) and also enjoyed car-spotting all those models that are now only seen at classic car rallies. The Fast Lady enjoyed great success at the British box office upon its release and fifty years later, it still has the ability to take your mind off your worries.