Tag: Deborah Kerr

Film Review: Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison

Take two of Hollywood’s biggest stars and one of its finest directors, plonk them on a lush tropical island surrounded by rocky outcrops and rolling waves and arm them with an interesting script. What is the likely outcome? A damn fine movie, that’s what. Certainly in this case, it is.

I’m always fascinated by a film with a minimal cast. The actors involved have an even greater weight of responsibility than usual in that there’s no one else for the audience to focus on. On the other hand, there are no other performers to point the finger at if the thing tanks. For the actors, it must be both terrifying and supremely massaging to their egos. “You mean I’m in virtually every shot? Yes! That’s just what my fans will want. Of course I’ve got the talent and the screen presence to pull it off. How dare you suggest otherwise!”

Fortunately, the talent in this 1957 John Huston classic is without question. Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr – two gifted actors who apparently clicked immediately and went on to enjoy a lifelong friendship.

Mitchum plays US Marine, Corporal Allison who, after several days adrift in a rubber raft following a skirmish with the Japanese, finds himself washed up on an island in the South Pacific during the Second World War. A quick scout around reveals the island to be abandoned save for Sister Angela, a young nun played by Kerr, who has been there just a few days following a failed attempt to evacuate the priest already there. At first, Allison is relieved to be on the island where there is plenty of fish and fruit to eat and shelter from the tropical weather. He admits its not a bad place to wait out the war. But it isn’t long before a detachment of Japanese return to the island to set up a meteorological camp thereby forcing the Marine and the nun to hide out in a cave up in the surrounding hills.

There’s a wonderfully tense scene some time later when, sympathetic towards Sister Angela’s inability to eat the raw fish that he catches, Allison sneaks into the Japanese camp one night to steal something more palatable for her. It’s a beautifully shot and paced sequence by a master of cinematic storytelling – nothing fancy, nothing over the top, just measured excitement.

Meanwhile, the nights remind them that the war continues as flashes of naval gunfire light up the horizon. Then one day, the Japanese leave the island as quickly as they had come and the two celebrate their unexpected liberty.  Allison gets drunk on a bottle of sake left behind by a Japanese officer and foolishly declares his love for Sister Angela as well as denouncing her holy devotion as a waste of time. His natural urges rising to the surface, he can’t see why their “Garden of Paradise” situation doesn’t become fully instinctive – if you know what I mean. Sister Angela runs away from him and spends the night outside in a storm, becoming sick as a result. The following morning, Allison, full of repentance and shame, finds her with a fever at the same time the Japanese return to the island. Once again they are forced to seek refuge in the cave. Allison, feeling completely responsible for Sister Angela’s condition,  sneaks into the Japanese camp again to get blankets for her but he has to knife a solider to death when he is discovered. This alerts the detachment to an enemy presence and consequently, they begin a thorough search of the island.

To find out what happens next, I’ll encourage – nay recommend – you to watch the film yourself.

The two leads (and for ninety-five percent of the film you’ll see nobody else) are just perfectly cast and they own their time on screen. Between them, they’ve made many great movies and would go on to make two more together (The Sundowners and The Grass Is Greener – both in 1960). They’ve both given numerous wonderful performances as well over their careers and I don’t think either ever gave a better performance than they did here. Mitchum’s Marine is big and bruising, capable of dishing out death and yet kind and tender too; a simple man but a decent one; a product of a childhood he’d rather forget. Kerr’s nun is slightly naive but more uncertain, devout to her vows – of which the final one she has still to take – and yet teetering on the edge of uncertainty that she’s got what it takes to go all the way. Is she ready to forsake her womanhood for the greater calling? Both characters have chosen their paths and both have sworn oaths to tread them but will the time together on the island make a difference?

As if Mitchum or Kerr weren’t strong enough reasons to give this film a viewing, the director must surely tip the scales. From the moment John Huston sat behind the camera and gave us The Maltese Falcon in 1941, he revealed a certain brilliance and while Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison might not be his finest hour, it’s likely a film that many of his contemporaries would have wanted to helm.  It was adapted from Charles Shaw’s novel of the same name by Huston and John Lee Mahin, a prolific screenwriter who penned numerous classics between the 30s and the 60s, among them, Captains Courageous (1937) and Showboat (1951). The island of Trinidad and Tobago where the film was shot was photographed by Oswald Morris, a cinematographer who’s career would span six decades and include a long list of gems like Moby Dick (1956) and The Man Who Would Be King (1975). Naturally, the setting is stunning and one can only imagine the times had by all on location. Deborah Kerr and the writing team of Huston and Mahin were nominated for Academy Awards and there were a handful of other nominations throughout that season but the only win it garnered was for Kerr at the ’57 New York Film Critics Circle Awards. Shame that, because while Mitchum earned a BAFTA nomination, his performance generally seemed to have been overlooked. But then being the kind of guy he was, he probably didn’t give a damn anyway.

 

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: Black Narcissus

Throughout the 1940s and ’50s, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger produced numerous films of note, many of them rivalling anything that came out of Hollywood. Their collaborations began in 1939 with the First World War thriller The Spy in Black, which Powell directed and Pressburger wrote the screenplay for. A couple of years later they co-founded their production company The Archers and made One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942). The two would go on to share a writer-director-producer credit until the partnership ended in 1957 and along the way they gave us such classics as A Matter of Life and Death (1946), The Red Shoes (1948) and The Battle of the River Plate (1956).

Arguably their most memorable offering was Black Narcissus (1947), a wonderful psychological drama set within a convent in an isolated Himalayan valley. The stunning Technicolor photography alone is enough to imprint this movie forever on your mind and if you’ve never seen, I urge you to do so at your nearest convenience. The use of matte paintings and scale models has rarely been used with such skill and majesty and despite the fact that the landscape is clearly fake, it is lit and coloured so magnificently, that it’s all the more awesome for being so. Costumes too, seem to take on a symbolic relevance and whether it’s the godliness of white robes, the devilishness of a red dress or the honesty and frankness of being semi-naked, there’s a depth to be found in every detail we see.

The plot revolves around a group of nuns – lead by the Sister Superior Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) – who are sent to the abandoned Palace of Mopu, near Darjeeling in the Himalayas to establish a school and hospital in order to help civilise the local community. Their mountainside convent is a former harem complete with sensual mosaics and images on its walls, and making it habitable is the nuns’ first hurdle to overcome. Sister Clodagh is forced to accept the help of local British agent Dean (David Farrar) to achieve this and Dean immediately makes a hurdle of himself but in a different way. His deep-voice and hairy-chested masculinity affects the nuns to varying degrees and seems to remind several of them that they are, after all, women and as if that wasn’t enough, Jean Simmons, in a very early role, has a memorable part as a mischievous local dancing girl, who with her flowing silks and flirtatious demeanour, presents a stark contrast to the nuns’ chaste way of life.

Dean warns Clodagh from the outset that the palace is no place for a convent and later credits the high altitude as capable of playing havoc with one’s senses. It’s not long before the isolation and the atmosphere unsettles the nuns while Dean’s bullish machismo begins to affect Sister Clodagh and Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron). Clodagh finds herself dwelling on the failed romance that drove her into the Sisterhood several years prior while Ruth becomes pathologically jealous of Clodagh’s growing friendship with Dean. The climate, the mystique of the local culture and the nuns’ own fallibility all play a part in this story and each of these adds to the tension as it rises like the mountainous peaks that surround them.

If this might sound less than exciting, do not be fooled. This film is a masterpiece. Full of psychological suspense and sexual desire Black Narcissus is, in Michael Powell’s own view, the most erotic film he ever made. “It is all done by suggestion,” he said, “but eroticism is in every frame and image from beginning to end. It is a film full of wonderful performances and passion just below the surface, which finally, at the end of the film, erupts.”

The climax is a riveting pastiche of music and image on a truly epic scale with no dialogue, just a mesmerising operatic symphony of sound that will turn your knuckles white. An interesting note here is that the music for this scene was scored before the scene was shot which meant the actors’ motivations and movements were choreographed to the music just as they would be on a stage. Truly, truly wonderful stuff.

The film collected two Academy Awards at the 1958 Oscar’s ceremony for Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction. Deborah Kerr won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for her portrayal of Sister Clodagh.  It holds number 44 in the British Film Institute’s greatest British films of the 20th century and number 16 in Time Out’s 100 best British films list.

The 65 years that have passed since the film’s release hasn’t diminished its impact. The haunting beauty of the painted landscapes and backdrops and the film’s vivid colour simply adds to its lasting appeal. To see it once, is to never forget it.