Tag: film reviews

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.

Film Review: The Importance of Being Earnest

At a dinner with friends the other evening the conversation meandered onto the diversity of the British accent and its plethora of dialects from various geographical points and social classes. Numerous attempts were made around the table to vocally replicate a variety of the nation’s populace, which for a while had the room in stitches. Overall, it seemed easier for those of us without an inherent talent to reproduce Ricky from Eastenders rather than Elyot from Private Lives. Which got me thinking because I’ve always quite liked “plummy”. It brought to mind the actress Joan Greenwood with her wonderfully precise elocution, which in turn led me to the film for which she is probably best known – The Importance of Being Earnest.

The play was written during the summer of 1894 and premiered the following year on 14 February at St James’s Theatre, London. The Importance of Being Earnest marked the pinnacle of Oscar Wilde’s career and remains undoubtedly his most popular play. However, it would also be his last.  A little over three months later, he would be in prison. But that’s another story.

This 1952 film was adapted and directed by Anthony Asquith, a stalwart of British cinema who gave us many notable movies such as Pygmalion (1938), The Winslow Boy (1948), Carrington V.C. (1955) and The V.I.P.s (1963) during his 40 year career.

Having been a student of drama many moons ago, I have a pretty good knowledge of this wittiest of farces and one thing I love about this film is its faithfulness to Wilde’s play. A couple of acts are broken into shorter scenes with different locations but generally what you hear is what you’d read. Indeed Asquith sets out to give us as near a theatrical experience as he can by opening the film in a theatre and introducing the action from a theatre audience’s perspective, opening curtain and all. With camera movement kept to a minimum, you could be forgiven for thinking it actually was a filmed theatrical performance you were watching which of course has a tendency to bring the acting into sharper focus. However, there’s no worry here. This cast does not disappoint. Michael Redgrave and Michael Denison are ideal (albeit perhaps just a tad too old) as the two young men-about-town who both pretend to be a man named Ernest in order to get the girl of their dreams. Joan Greenwood and Dorothy Tutin are equally up to the challenge of portraying young Victorian girls who men dream about (Greenwood’s elocution is just sublime). Margaret Rutherford (later of Miss Marple fame) is perfect as governess Miss Prism as is Miles Malleson who plays Dr. Chasuble, the rector. The three chaps who play the butlers are worth a mention too because they do great things with their small roles. But the show-stealer is without doubt Edith Evans who pretty much is and always will be Lady Bracknell. Her performance is so indelibly stamped on the character that it has since provided a challenge for anyone else taking on the role. The sets are small but lavishly detailed and wonderfully colourful and the period costumes are exquisite.

Dorothy Tutin received a BAFTA nomination as Most Promising Newcomer for her role and Asquith was nominated for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. If you’re familiar with the story and have perhaps seen the 2002 film version with Rupert Everett and Colin Firth playing the two gents, give this one a look too. It’s a simple unfussy production that absolutely highlights the extraordinary wit and sublime writing of Oscar Wilde as well as the extremely high standard of those in the cast. If you’re not familiar with the story at all, then lucky you. Today you’ve discovered a true gem.

Film Review: Strangers on a Train

It may have come about as a result of an exhausting train journey I endured a few days ago or possibly because it’s Wimbledon fortnight – tennis being a daily headline at the moment. Maybe it happened because of both of these things or perhaps neither. However yesterday, Hitchcock’s 1951 thriller popped into my mind, vied for my attention and consequently prompted me to put pen to paper, so to speak.

Actually I’m surprised after looking back at the titles I’ve reviewed for this website over the past sixteen months that I’ve only reviewed one other Hitchcock film – North by Northwest. After all, I am a great admirer of his work. Maybe I’ve restrained myself on account of his films having been so extensively written about already but then, when one thinks of his best known films, Strangers on a Train often gets overlooked. And yet for me, it’s one of his finest efforts.

The plot is a simple one and I shall refrain from giving too much away for those who might not yet have seen it. It begins with a chance encounter between two men on a train. Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is a semi-famous tennis player (ergo the Wimbledon connection) with designs on a political career, a slut of a wife, Miriam (Laura Elliott) whom he’s hoping to divorce and a real dish of a girlfriend, Anne Morton (Ruth Roman) who just happens to be the daughter of a senator (Leo G. Carroll). The other man, Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) is a smooth-talking weirdo with a worrying line in small talk. The two men chat over lunch in Bruno’s compartment and Bruno, who is aware of Guy’s private life via the gossip columns, explains his idea for the perfect murder. A simple criss-cross theory. Two complete strangers with nothing to connect them, swap the murders they would like to commit thereby absolving themselves of any motive and giving the police no clue as to the guilty parties. Bruno says that he’ll murder Guy’s unfaithful wife, leaving him free to marry Anne if Guy will murder Bruno’s overbearing father. Naturally enough, Guy makes a polite but hasty exit from the train compartment however, unfortunately for him, Bruno thinks a deal has been made.

Sometime later, Bruno follows Miriam and her two boyfriends to an amusement park and after a short boat ride, he strangles the life out of her in the darkness on the Isle of Love. Meanwhile Guy is on a train chatting to a drunk college professor who turns out to be an unreliable witness when, called by the police to corroborate Guy’s alibi claim, says he can’t remember their meeting. Guy is shocked and horrified that Bruno actually went ahead and murdered Miriam and is repeatedly harassed by Bruno and told that he now has no choice but to kill Bruno’s father. What ensues is a sublimely constructed thriller, perfectly paced, with just the right amount of humour (supplied in the main by Patricia Hitchcock who plays Anne’s younger sister Barbara) to make it still scary yet hugely entertaining.

Fade outs to black and swipes between scenes are replaced by a quick editing style and often cross-cutting between Guy and Bruno via their dialogue and movements, thereby seamlessly moving from scene to scene, the tempo never letting up. Strangers on a Train is a masterclass in how to build tension all the way to the finale and in true Hitchcock fashion, the climax takes place within a great visual location – this time aboard an out of control carousel spinning like a centrifuge. Implausible it may be with Guy’s legs flailing behind him like a sequence from The Simpsons but the skill behind the execution is evident in its greatness. With fighting and explosions and splintering wooden horses and screaming children it’s an incredible blend of close-ups, miniatures and background projections.

In my humble opinion, the film is worth watching for the Oscar nominated black and white cinematography alone. The gorgeous use of light and shadow is perhaps some of the finest of any Hitchcock film and it would see cinematographer Robert Burks begin a fourteen year run with the director and shooting every one of his remaining pictures with the exception of Psycho in 1960. The lighting is frequently dark and moody and choice camera angles and optical effects – so typical of Hitchcock’s style – add to the overall atmosphere of the film and keep the visuals interesting without ever going too far. There are several almost surreal shots from intriguing angles but perhaps the most famous shot of all (and one that is still studied in academic circles) is when Bruno strangles Miriam at the amusement park, the moment captured in the reflection of her glasses after they fall to the ground during her brief struggle. It’s simply cinematic perfection. Numerous other little blink-and-you’ll-miss-them gems are peppered throughout the film – Guy wiping lipstick off his face before meeting Anne’s father, Bruno’s shadow in the tunnel of love looming over his intended victim, Bruno again standing alone on the Jefferson Memorial, his dark figure an unwelcome stain on the white purity of the structure’s marble. It’s these subtleties, telling us the audience so much, that reveal the genius of the director.

The casting is spot on from the clean-cut figure of Guy Haines to Marion Lorne who plays Bruno’s befuddled mother (another character that adds a little comedy) but the performance of the movie and – one would argue – of his life, comes from Robert Walker. He’s just superb; charming, erudite, a bit of a dandy, but dark, deeply unbalanced, brooding. It was a role meant for him and I couldn’t imagine anyone else doing as good a job as he did. Sadly he died two months after the film’s release aged just 32 but his performance here will live on and be lauded for as long as people watch films.

Of course, all this visual brilliance starts with the written word and this came from a novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith. In the end there would be numerous differences between novel and screenplay and Hitchcock had a bit of a hard time getting the script he wanted. Originally, he had hopes for a proven writer to lend the project some clout and was looking at people like John Steinbeck and Dashiell Hammett but they showed little interest. Raymond Chandler wrote a draft but fell foul of Hitchcock when the two couldn’t get along and so after a suggestion from Ben Hecht – who had already written Spellbound and Notorious for Hitchcock but was unavailable – he hired Hecht’s assistant Czenzi Ormonde. She was a fair haired beauty who had no formal screen credit but had recently published a collection of short stories which was well received by critics. At their first meeting, Hitchcock encouraged her to forget all about Highsmith’s book and proceeded to tell her the entire story himself. It clearly worked because the film has a crisp linearity from beginning to end and a leanness to every scene. There’s no wasted dialogue and not a single unnecessary frame.

Bottom line – a true classic.

 

Film Review: Heimat

A friend recently asked me if I’d seen the classic German TV series Heimat. After replying with a somewhat dimwitted – “Huh? What?”, I had to admit to not even having heard of it. But when he added that it’s regarded very highly by film fans and critics alike and often reaches high places in numerous lists of The Greatest….etc etc, I was intrigued enough to seek it out.

Heimat (a German word that means Homeland) is actually a series of 32 films or rather episodes written and directed by Edgar Reitz. They depict life in Germany between the years of 1919 and 2000 as seen through the eyes of the Simon family from the Hunsrück region of the Rhineland and although the overall length of the 32 films is 53 and a half hours, making it one of the longest series of feature-length films in cinema history, for this review, I’m dealing with the first season only, which spans the years 1919 to 1982.

The first season of Heimat was originally broadcast in 1984 and consists of 11 episodes, centring on the character of Maria Simon (Marita Breuer), and her life in the small fictional village of Schabbach. We follow her from being a carefree teenager to a wizened, mentally scarred old matriarch and all the ups and downs that life throws at her along the way. At the beginning, it depicts a simple peasant life within a close-knit community where two and three generations often live under one roof and where everyone knows everyone else’s business. The village is filled with colourful characters, some loveable, some not, and we get to join them on their journey through the years as they deal with everything from domestic and personal issues to wider social and political events.

English subtitles notwithstanding, I found it very easy to immerse myself in the affairs of these people as they deal with love, loss, illness, gossip as well as the national matters that were occurring in Germany at the time. The scope of the filming never really strays far from the village and surrounding towns so the effects that these national upheavals have on the members of the community are depicted in very personal ways. I found it quite extraordinary to see the village itself slowly transform over the years as horses and carts give way to motorcycles and automobiles and as the coming of the telephone and the building of a highway change the local landscape. The costume department did a great job too, no mean feat when you’re talking about seven decades and numerous fashion styles.

The plot is far too comprehensive to go into here but as part kitchen-sink drama and part social/political commentary, it shows in wonderful detail how times changed for the people of this tiny rural community and as positive as progress is, one can’t help but feel a little rueful at the passing of certain things. “Once, we all lived under the same roof. Now we are spread around the world,” says a family member, aptly summing up the changes. Of course, spanning so many years, characters come and go, some die through old age, sickness or war and new characters are born who become fascinating to us a little further down the line. For the most part, the make-up to age the actors is terrific as is the acting. The look of the film is beautiful too with sweeping panoramas of the countryside and nicely lit interiors and the frequent switching between colour and black and white to heighten emotional conveyance adds to the overall ambience of the time.

A filmmaker from his early twenties, the director, Edgar Reitz was born in Morbach, Hunsrück in 1932 and so he knew the region and the people well. This is likely why there’s such a feeling of honesty about Heimat. If this wonderful piece of art is unknown to you as it was me, do yourself a favour and take the time to give it a look. It’s richly rewarding and definitely worth it.