Tag: British Film

Film Review: Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Not to be confused with the 1969 musical remake starring Peter O’Toole in the lead role, this 1939 Oscar winner manages to be funny, sentimental, sad and uplifting over the course of its near two hour run time.

I caught it over the Easter weekend – the perfect time to see such film – and how fortunate I was because it’s yet another one of those notable movies of yesteryear that had so far escaped me.

Mind you, it’s not a film that’ll bring about a surge of adrenaline, so shelve it for another day if you’re up for some fist pumping action. Instead it’s a gentle character-led tale about the life and career of a teacher at a boys’ boarding school set in England.

The body of the movie is a memory so at the outset, we see the aged Mr Chipping (admirably played by Robert Donat) confined to his bed with a cold. His long career at Brookfield Pubic School is relayed to us in flashback and it begins in 1870 when we see the 20 year old Mr Charles Edward Chipping arrive for his first day as a teacher of Latin.

That first day is a bit shaky and the little rascals in his classroom give the poor idealistic new arrival a bit of a hard time. So he gets strict which earns him their respect but not their affection. But as the terms come and go and the years pass by, his relationship with his pupils improves and his position at the school gains importance when he is made senior master.

At one year’s end though, his high hopes of being appointed house master for the following year come to nothing and so to stop him from languishing in sorrow, the German teacher, Max Staefel (Paul Henreid), persuades old Chipping to join him on a walking holiday in his native Austria.

It is here that Chipping meets Kathy Ellis (the lovely Greer Garson), a forward thinking English woman who is also on holiday. Despite their obvious differences of character and age (she is about half his 50), they fall completely in love and marry.

Back in England, the new Mrs Chipping makes quite a stir at the school with her charming, friendly manner and her influence on ‘Chips’ as she calls him subsequently influences his ability to interact with the boys. Alas, tragedy arrives shortly after when his beloved wife dies in childbirth along with the baby but perhaps the silver lining (if one can find such a thing in so untimely a loss) is that her job was done. She made him a better teacher and a better man.

Devastated as he is (the entire school too), he throws himself into the only thing he has left. His work. And as the years pass and he becomes an eccentric but much loved fixture of the school, we see him enjoy a rapport with the boys that is quite unique. Indeed, he talks about teaching the sons and grandsons of many of his earlier pupils.

He reluctantly accepts retirement in 1914 but is such a part of the school that he remains on campus. However, with the war taking so many of the younger men off to fight he is called back to serve as headmaster – his lifelong dream and his wife’s prediction come true – albeit temporarily. Over the course of the next four years, he is saddened to read out the names of many former pupils and teachers who have died in battle, one of which was his friend and colleague Max Staefel, who had perished fighting on the German side.

He retires permanently in 1918 and dies fifteen years later, his last words summing up his sense of contentment.

The film had stiff competition at the Academy Awards that year from Gone With The Wind. Both films were nominated in the same seven categories (Outstanding Production, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Writing, Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Sound, Recording) but Donat beat Clark Gable to the Best Actor award. MGM’s southern epic would take five of the others while When Tomorrow Comes, a romantic drama starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer, took the award for Best Sound.

Donat was well deserving though. His performance is a perfectly judged progression of character and often quite moving. The fact that he ages 63 years over the course of the film is remarkable, not only in appearance but in manner.

The film is based on the 1934 novel of the same name by James Hilton and was directed by Sam Wood, whose credits include A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races and For Whom the Bell Tolls. It was shot on location in Repton, Derbyshire and at Denham Film Studios in Buckinghamshire. The man who captured those interior and exterior images so ably was one of Britain’s most successful cinematographers, Freddie Young whose expertise won him three Oscars for Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Ryan’s Daughter during a career that spanned more than fifty years.

In 1999, Goodbye, Mr. Chips was voted number 72 in the BFI’s Top 100 British Films poll.

It’s a beautiful film that if you haven’t yet caught is well worth a look.

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: 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.

 

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.