D. Thomas Logan
B&W
What would it be like to be at the centre of a nuclear blast?
Well, obviously you wouldn’t survive long enough to dwell on it. That atom bomb would have splattered your particular atoms evenly over a square mile. But that moment, that sensation of the blast, when maybe the thought shoots through your mind that you’ve never been near anything so freaking powerful (right before the more understandable “fuck! I’m about to die!” screams through your mind) must be one of fearful awe. But what would happen if you actually did survive. If you were able to stand right inside that power and walk away; more than that, if you were actually able to absorb all that power and take it with you. What would it do to you? What would happen to your mind and body afterwards?
Our two films this week approach that Doctor Manhattan idea and take it in weirdly different directions.
Firstly paranoia and tension are on order in this gas-lit noir thriller, as down-on-his-luck-hack Leo McKern hears rumours that not only is a Russian atomic man at loose in London, but his controllers want him to detonate himself at the State Opening of Parliament. However his investigation not so much ruffles feathers as plucks them furiously, so the authorities come down on him hard (with ‘The Official Secrets Act” waved in manic Neville Chamberlain style more than once), and McKern finds himself both pursued and pursuer as the clock ticks down to the moment London goes boom.
There’s a lot to admire here. Leo McKern as a journalist is like an embryonic version of his character in the excellent ‘The Day the Earth Caught Fire’; London exists in a kind of perpetual 1950s smog that must have required a man with a massive smoke-machine and the sets from every Jack the Ripper movie ever made, and there are fine character actors at every corner. Indeed in such a dour black & white film, there’s a surfeit of background colour – including Jack Warner as a shady Dixon of Dock Green, Kenneth Williams as the campest cockney snout who ever lived and Diana Dors as a foreign agent whose accent places her somewhere on the border between Minsk and Margate.
The problem, and it is a large – H-bomb sized – problem, is the villain. Because of scars from the blast, he hangs around London with a cloth perpetually masking his face. It’s tight to his features and makes him look something like an alien bank robber. Apparently he is supposed to be inconspicuous like this. He checks into the various hotels and guest houses and nobody winks an eyelid – as if they constantly give occupancy to people who won’t show their faces. He dresses like a faceless gangster, wanders about after dark, a bobby actually sees him near a dead body – but still he remains a mystery man on the run.
It’s a tense film, in many ways a clever film, but it’s difficult to take a film seriously where the hard-to-find bad guy is obviously saying: “Look at me! Look at me!”
Showing posts with label political. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political. Show all posts
Sunday, 9 November 2014
Sunday, 26 October 2014
G-Man! (1953)
D. Richard McCarthy
Brutal, torn from the headlines, B&W
Here's a film strangely neglected in Ronald Reagan's oeuvre, which is peculiar as it’s clearly and utterly so perfectly him. In fact it's so amazingly and absolutely him that this is probably what his wet dreams looked like.
Here he is as John ‘Duke’ Calhoun, a tough and uncompromising FBI agent running a hard-nosed operation against vicious gangsters in some unnamed American city. These gangsters are evil with a capital EVIL. You can tell from the way they sneer, or menace shopkeepers, or casually gun down one of their molls. Or you can tell by the way they run jazz clubs and sell reefer to further corrupt the wastrel patrons. Or you can tell by the way they have a comic book factory where soulless, conscience-less artists turn out violent and filthy comic strips to corrupt the young. Or you can tell by the truly damning fact that each night they salute the hammer and sickle and say thanks to their beloved Mother Russia.
Yes, Ronald Reagan is taking on communists, gangsters, jazz musicians (a couple of years later it would have been rock'n'roll) and comic books all wrapped up in one tight little bundle. Yes, he is on a crusade against everything a good right winger hates.
Part of that of course needs unpacking, as how could organised crime ever really be perceived as a communist activity? Surely the mafia is all about the profit margin, all about the bottom line, all about ruthlessness to keep their cash flow gushing. The cosa-nostra is really not interested in some higher principle or changing the world, they just want to be shady little capitalists and make lots of dough. If anything Ronald Reagan (government employee taking a paycheque from the state) is much more of a communist than they are. But it’s indicative of the muddy thinking of this film that everything bad has to be put into one pile, and everything good has to take one incredibly righteous Ronald Reagan shape. So even though these mobsters are clearly into gambling and prostitution, and obviously being creative with their revenue streams by publishing “disgusting and cruel” comic books (Reagan’s character’s description), they are still somehow men of the far left who despise the free market. They are working to destabilise all that’s good in America, i.e. capitalism, in the aid of communism, and they’re doing it by being the best capitalists they possibly can be. Please, don’t hurt your head by trying to get all this to make sense – it really, really doesn’t.
Ronald pushes the whole thing along – from every raid on a seedy nightclub, to the numerous interminable self-righteous speeches about the glory of America – in what is irrefutably one of his angriest and most committed performances. I can't say it’s a work of acting art, or even really that good, but evidently he believed furiously and wholeheartedly in it.
Brutal, torn from the headlines, B&W
Here's a film strangely neglected in Ronald Reagan's oeuvre, which is peculiar as it’s clearly and utterly so perfectly him. In fact it's so amazingly and absolutely him that this is probably what his wet dreams looked like.
Here he is as John ‘Duke’ Calhoun, a tough and uncompromising FBI agent running a hard-nosed operation against vicious gangsters in some unnamed American city. These gangsters are evil with a capital EVIL. You can tell from the way they sneer, or menace shopkeepers, or casually gun down one of their molls. Or you can tell by the way they run jazz clubs and sell reefer to further corrupt the wastrel patrons. Or you can tell by the way they have a comic book factory where soulless, conscience-less artists turn out violent and filthy comic strips to corrupt the young. Or you can tell by the truly damning fact that each night they salute the hammer and sickle and say thanks to their beloved Mother Russia.
Yes, Ronald Reagan is taking on communists, gangsters, jazz musicians (a couple of years later it would have been rock'n'roll) and comic books all wrapped up in one tight little bundle. Yes, he is on a crusade against everything a good right winger hates.
Part of that of course needs unpacking, as how could organised crime ever really be perceived as a communist activity? Surely the mafia is all about the profit margin, all about the bottom line, all about ruthlessness to keep their cash flow gushing. The cosa-nostra is really not interested in some higher principle or changing the world, they just want to be shady little capitalists and make lots of dough. If anything Ronald Reagan (government employee taking a paycheque from the state) is much more of a communist than they are. But it’s indicative of the muddy thinking of this film that everything bad has to be put into one pile, and everything good has to take one incredibly righteous Ronald Reagan shape. So even though these mobsters are clearly into gambling and prostitution, and obviously being creative with their revenue streams by publishing “disgusting and cruel” comic books (Reagan’s character’s description), they are still somehow men of the far left who despise the free market. They are working to destabilise all that’s good in America, i.e. capitalism, in the aid of communism, and they’re doing it by being the best capitalists they possibly can be. Please, don’t hurt your head by trying to get all this to make sense – it really, really doesn’t.
Ronald pushes the whole thing along – from every raid on a seedy nightclub, to the numerous interminable self-righteous speeches about the glory of America – in what is irrefutably one of his angriest and most committed performances. I can't say it’s a work of acting art, or even really that good, but evidently he believed furiously and wholeheartedly in it.
Sunday, 20 July 2014
Mr Hargreaves (1959)
D. John Guillermin
B&W
If ‘Mr Hargreaves’ was green-lit today, it would be as “’Lucky Jim’ meets ‘The Manchurian Candidate’”. Whether that’d work as a pitch today I don’t know, it does rather assume that your average film executive is not only savvy enough to have come across Kingsley Amis, but also capable of dismissing warnings that he isn’t a big draw with the 18-25 demographic. I’m glad though that in 1959 Kingsley was a big enough name to get it into production. ‘Lucky Jim’ is clearly hard-wired into its DNA, right there to the smudges on its fingers. To be fair, ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ was still a couple of years from reaching the box office (the book had been written however); but the fact that Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury were still waiting and playing solitaire doesn’t matter. Few places knew as much about cold war paranoia as Great Britain and it’s with sweaty, nervous and anxious palms that the Brits go to the well here.
In an unnamed provincial university a lecturer arrives, he is very polite and ingratiating, but there’s just something not right about him. Gradually fellow faculty members and students become suspicious and after some snooping evidence emerges suggesting that he is in fact a Soviet spy, there to assassinate the Prime Minister on an upcoming visit.
This is a cracklingly tense movie, all shot in the small poky rooms of a regional English town – but those box-like, cell-like spaces edited together to be edgy and claustrophobic. But what really makes this film great is the identity of the mysterious, suspicious professor, as we have here Peter Sellers at the height of his powers.
Still in his chubby phase and not quite as old as his character should be, Sellers excels at creating a great blankness. He later joked that he was all mask, that there had been a real him but he’d had it removed. This is the film which shows that aspect more than any other, presenting a character who is all façade, a moral nothingness hidden by good manners. Yes Mr Hargreaves is polite, yes he’s outwardly pleasant, yes he’s obsequious – but there’s always something absent behind his eyes. It’s a performance of great skill: creating a man who seems to be an inoffensive two dimensional human being, then slowly revealing a moral void underneath.
(Later on, when he was lost to broad comedies, did Sellers not look back and think how brilliant he once was and that he should try and make movies like this again?)
Richard Todd and Janette Scott (as fellow lecturer and student respectively) are the team which work together to expose him, and they’re both perfectly serviceable in their stock roles. But in the background we have Beryl Reid as a soused French professor who seems barely able to speak French; Bill Kerr as the sports mad, loutish, Aussie poetry professor; and William Hartnell looking old and smiling genially as the professor of a subject so ancient it’s been forgotten. It ensures that there’s some colour and comedy in the staffroom in what would otherwise be a very serious, taut and paranoid black & white film.
At the forefront though is Sellers, taking on the kind of role money, fame and madness would soon snatch him away from, and if you’ve ever seen ‘The Party’ or ‘After the Fox’ you’ll know what a damned, crying shame that was.
B&W
If ‘Mr Hargreaves’ was green-lit today, it would be as “’Lucky Jim’ meets ‘The Manchurian Candidate’”. Whether that’d work as a pitch today I don’t know, it does rather assume that your average film executive is not only savvy enough to have come across Kingsley Amis, but also capable of dismissing warnings that he isn’t a big draw with the 18-25 demographic. I’m glad though that in 1959 Kingsley was a big enough name to get it into production. ‘Lucky Jim’ is clearly hard-wired into its DNA, right there to the smudges on its fingers. To be fair, ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ was still a couple of years from reaching the box office (the book had been written however); but the fact that Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury were still waiting and playing solitaire doesn’t matter. Few places knew as much about cold war paranoia as Great Britain and it’s with sweaty, nervous and anxious palms that the Brits go to the well here.
In an unnamed provincial university a lecturer arrives, he is very polite and ingratiating, but there’s just something not right about him. Gradually fellow faculty members and students become suspicious and after some snooping evidence emerges suggesting that he is in fact a Soviet spy, there to assassinate the Prime Minister on an upcoming visit.
This is a cracklingly tense movie, all shot in the small poky rooms of a regional English town – but those box-like, cell-like spaces edited together to be edgy and claustrophobic. But what really makes this film great is the identity of the mysterious, suspicious professor, as we have here Peter Sellers at the height of his powers.
Still in his chubby phase and not quite as old as his character should be, Sellers excels at creating a great blankness. He later joked that he was all mask, that there had been a real him but he’d had it removed. This is the film which shows that aspect more than any other, presenting a character who is all façade, a moral nothingness hidden by good manners. Yes Mr Hargreaves is polite, yes he’s outwardly pleasant, yes he’s obsequious – but there’s always something absent behind his eyes. It’s a performance of great skill: creating a man who seems to be an inoffensive two dimensional human being, then slowly revealing a moral void underneath.
(Later on, when he was lost to broad comedies, did Sellers not look back and think how brilliant he once was and that he should try and make movies like this again?)
Richard Todd and Janette Scott (as fellow lecturer and student respectively) are the team which work together to expose him, and they’re both perfectly serviceable in their stock roles. But in the background we have Beryl Reid as a soused French professor who seems barely able to speak French; Bill Kerr as the sports mad, loutish, Aussie poetry professor; and William Hartnell looking old and smiling genially as the professor of a subject so ancient it’s been forgotten. It ensures that there’s some colour and comedy in the staffroom in what would otherwise be a very serious, taut and paranoid black & white film.
At the forefront though is Sellers, taking on the kind of role money, fame and madness would soon snatch him away from, and if you’ve ever seen ‘The Party’ or ‘After the Fox’ you’ll know what a damned, crying shame that was.
Wednesday, 16 July 2014
The Guest in Room 313 (1968)
D. Giles Malay
B&W
Here’s a genuine curio of a movie which intrigues me every time I see it. ‘The Guest in Room 313’ is a shadowy and obtuse film, one that aims for a narrow focus but also tries to be many things at once, and as a consequence so much remains wonderfully elusive within it. I don’t think there’s another movie quite like it.
The set up is thus: Laurence Harvey, putting that uniquely frigid style of his to good use (this is his best film outside of ‘The Manchurian Candidate’) is a burnt-out spy holed up in the room 313 of a Las Vegas hotel. (Hence the title, I guess.) Clearly something went awry on his last mission as Harvey has terror dreams even when awake; obviously he knows a lot of stuff he doesn’t want to know and it’s burning through his brain. But more than that, more than just being an ex-spy with a drink problem and mental health issues who has cut himself off from society, Harvey also believes that he’s a werewolf. And that belief takes hold even before young women start being murdered in Las Vegas at full moon.
This is a movie which drips with nervous sweat, which reeks of desperate paranoia. You almost suspect that the director and screenwriter and most of the crew made it while wearing little tinfoil hats to stop the government reading their minds. Harvey sits in the hotel room, he drinks whisky, he broods, he has panicked dreams that don’t seem to make any sense within the context of the film – but are undeniably compulsive and fit in totally with the feel of the film. Janet Leigh (another throwback to ‘The Manchurian Candidate’) is a hotel employee in a smart suit who officiously tries to deal with his needs, flirting with him and mothering him, and generally being far more attentive than any normal hotel employee. (Think of that description and then think of the usual impersonal personal service of hotel staff, your suspicions are immediately raised, aren’t they?) Jack Nicholson is another visitor, a fellow agent or perhaps Harvey’s handler, who speaks in bizarre, drawling riddles and makes each of his three scenes decidedly edgy in the way only Jack can. Then there’s Charlotte Rampling, sweet and affecting as a call girl Harvey calls in daylight and who might, just like everyone else, know a lot more than she seems. These are performances which seem to come full of secrets, and around the immobile centre of Harvey – who somehow lets his stiff stillness radiate insanity – they create a movie where you obviously can’t even trust the walls.
The atmosphere of paranoia builds and builds, and never lets up. The ending might be to some people a damp squib, but I find it gloriously and remorselessly unsettling. Yes, little is resolved, most is still left up in the air, but this is a film which wants you to walk away thinking that they really are out to get you.
B&W
Here’s a genuine curio of a movie which intrigues me every time I see it. ‘The Guest in Room 313’ is a shadowy and obtuse film, one that aims for a narrow focus but also tries to be many things at once, and as a consequence so much remains wonderfully elusive within it. I don’t think there’s another movie quite like it.
The set up is thus: Laurence Harvey, putting that uniquely frigid style of his to good use (this is his best film outside of ‘The Manchurian Candidate’) is a burnt-out spy holed up in the room 313 of a Las Vegas hotel. (Hence the title, I guess.) Clearly something went awry on his last mission as Harvey has terror dreams even when awake; obviously he knows a lot of stuff he doesn’t want to know and it’s burning through his brain. But more than that, more than just being an ex-spy with a drink problem and mental health issues who has cut himself off from society, Harvey also believes that he’s a werewolf. And that belief takes hold even before young women start being murdered in Las Vegas at full moon.
This is a movie which drips with nervous sweat, which reeks of desperate paranoia. You almost suspect that the director and screenwriter and most of the crew made it while wearing little tinfoil hats to stop the government reading their minds. Harvey sits in the hotel room, he drinks whisky, he broods, he has panicked dreams that don’t seem to make any sense within the context of the film – but are undeniably compulsive and fit in totally with the feel of the film. Janet Leigh (another throwback to ‘The Manchurian Candidate’) is a hotel employee in a smart suit who officiously tries to deal with his needs, flirting with him and mothering him, and generally being far more attentive than any normal hotel employee. (Think of that description and then think of the usual impersonal personal service of hotel staff, your suspicions are immediately raised, aren’t they?) Jack Nicholson is another visitor, a fellow agent or perhaps Harvey’s handler, who speaks in bizarre, drawling riddles and makes each of his three scenes decidedly edgy in the way only Jack can. Then there’s Charlotte Rampling, sweet and affecting as a call girl Harvey calls in daylight and who might, just like everyone else, know a lot more than she seems. These are performances which seem to come full of secrets, and around the immobile centre of Harvey – who somehow lets his stiff stillness radiate insanity – they create a movie where you obviously can’t even trust the walls.
The atmosphere of paranoia builds and builds, and never lets up. The ending might be to some people a damp squib, but I find it gloriously and remorselessly unsettling. Yes, little is resolved, most is still left up in the air, but this is a film which wants you to walk away thinking that they really are out to get you.
Wednesday, 9 July 2014
Marie Antoinette (1985)
D. David Spartan
Colour
Having started the week with Paul Muni inventing fire, we now come to another strange supposedly historical movie where actual history is totally unimportant. Those of you who’ve read deeply into the life of Marie Antoinette, or know something of the French revolution, avert your eyes now. As what we have is not strictly a portrayal of life in the court of Versailles, one that looks at the ins and outs of the bloody events of the 1790s, but instead Toyah Wilcox as ‘Marie Antoinette – Demon Bloodsucker’.
In the days of ‘Abraham Lincoln – Vampire Hunter’, this probably makes a lot more sense. Back in the 1980s, though, it must have been a shock to see a pop star as a French queen stalking through the streets of Paris to suck the necks of children. What makes it more surprising is that there’s zero context for this. We start with what looks to be a standard historical biopic (well as standard an historical biopic as you can get with Toyah Wilcox as the lead), all stately homes, bodices and BBC accents; but before long we’re nicking ideas from old Universal and Hammer movies and she’s out on the grimy Parisian backstreets as the arch nocturnal huntress. Other musical luminaries – Adam Ant, Richard O’Brien, Lulu – appear with their tongues firmly placed firmly in their cheeks to either aid her or try to stop her, as this Austrian-French Queen (she was actually Austrian, but Toyah insists on playing her with a wandering accent that’s just this side of Inspector Clouseau) goes all Countess Bathory while wearing tight, heaving corsets. Then the French revolution comes along; the masses, tired of being oppressed and no doubt livid at having their blood sucked, rise up. It initially seems that the chaos will aid this vampire Queen but her fall isn’t far away.
In the background of this bright and shiny pop video, which for some reason has been stretched to feature length and inexplicably had all the songs left out, is – of course – the evil of Margaret Thatcher. At one point Toyah even tells her lady in waiting, who is concerned about the Queen’s nightly expeditions that “this lady is not for turning”. (It’s a pity that Thatcher didn’t say “There’s no such thing as society” until later, as the filmmakers would have salivated right down their chins at a line like that.) Obviously this is a project its makers felt passionate about, but in their passion and over-whelming hatred for the British Prime-Minister, what they’ve lost is any sense of subtlety. It’s a film which doesn’t just want to dislike Thatcher, it wants to state loud and proud that she actually feasts on the blood of the poor and the blood of their children. This is a literal demonization and that makes it – even if you’re broadly sympathetic to where the film is coming from – easy to not take seriously. Often within the echo chamber of the left or right, people just lose all sense of the wider world and convince themselves that all that exists is their passion and beliefs. Toyah Wilcox as Marie Antoinette sounds very, very silly and – even with a shouted political agenda – it is very, very silly.
Colour
Having started the week with Paul Muni inventing fire, we now come to another strange supposedly historical movie where actual history is totally unimportant. Those of you who’ve read deeply into the life of Marie Antoinette, or know something of the French revolution, avert your eyes now. As what we have is not strictly a portrayal of life in the court of Versailles, one that looks at the ins and outs of the bloody events of the 1790s, but instead Toyah Wilcox as ‘Marie Antoinette – Demon Bloodsucker’.
In the days of ‘Abraham Lincoln – Vampire Hunter’, this probably makes a lot more sense. Back in the 1980s, though, it must have been a shock to see a pop star as a French queen stalking through the streets of Paris to suck the necks of children. What makes it more surprising is that there’s zero context for this. We start with what looks to be a standard historical biopic (well as standard an historical biopic as you can get with Toyah Wilcox as the lead), all stately homes, bodices and BBC accents; but before long we’re nicking ideas from old Universal and Hammer movies and she’s out on the grimy Parisian backstreets as the arch nocturnal huntress. Other musical luminaries – Adam Ant, Richard O’Brien, Lulu – appear with their tongues firmly placed firmly in their cheeks to either aid her or try to stop her, as this Austrian-French Queen (she was actually Austrian, but Toyah insists on playing her with a wandering accent that’s just this side of Inspector Clouseau) goes all Countess Bathory while wearing tight, heaving corsets. Then the French revolution comes along; the masses, tired of being oppressed and no doubt livid at having their blood sucked, rise up. It initially seems that the chaos will aid this vampire Queen but her fall isn’t far away.
In the background of this bright and shiny pop video, which for some reason has been stretched to feature length and inexplicably had all the songs left out, is – of course – the evil of Margaret Thatcher. At one point Toyah even tells her lady in waiting, who is concerned about the Queen’s nightly expeditions that “this lady is not for turning”. (It’s a pity that Thatcher didn’t say “There’s no such thing as society” until later, as the filmmakers would have salivated right down their chins at a line like that.) Obviously this is a project its makers felt passionate about, but in their passion and over-whelming hatred for the British Prime-Minister, what they’ve lost is any sense of subtlety. It’s a film which doesn’t just want to dislike Thatcher, it wants to state loud and proud that she actually feasts on the blood of the poor and the blood of their children. This is a literal demonization and that makes it – even if you’re broadly sympathetic to where the film is coming from – easy to not take seriously. Often within the echo chamber of the left or right, people just lose all sense of the wider world and convince themselves that all that exists is their passion and beliefs. Toyah Wilcox as Marie Antoinette sounds very, very silly and – even with a shouted political agenda – it is very, very silly.
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
Arranging My Affairs (1979)
D. Bob Spiers
Colour
Fans of ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin’ should seek out this rare starring role in cinema for Leonard Rossiter. Normally on the big screen he was limited to playing weary policemen in ‘Pink Panther’ sequels, or small roles in Stanley Kubrick movies, but here he is the star and centre of everything. Playing an unnamed Cabinet Minister in the British government, Rossiter is absolutely astounding. Speaking as quickly as Reggie Perrin, Rossiter presents his politician as that rare thing – an almost still whirling dervish. He doesn’t charge or race around, but clearly his mind is always whirring and spinning, with words spilling out of him so fast, constantly twisting one way or another. He obfuscates, he misleads, he tells half-truths, semi-truths and even resorts to just lying, all to get out of various jams of his own making. And it’s brilliant to watch, as Rossiter makes this man immensely likeable, even when ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ are clearly just half remembered words in the dictionary. This, without a doubt, is one of the most cynical films ever made about politics and politicians.
Suddenly finding himself at risk of exposure for his various misdeeds, our political hero has a day or so to get all his affairs into order so that he can present a squeaky clean image to the general public. This includes sorting out some dubious loans from his ultra-seedy cousin (Peter Sallis, in a role which seems like the dark twisted mirror to Norman Clegg; the antichrist to Wallace); getting hold of some compromising snaps from a brothel madam (Kate O’Mara, purring over line like creamy liquor); and ending affairs with a duo of glamorous mistresses, Joanna Lumley and Lynn-Holly Johnson (both actual Bond girls) and ridiculously handsome toy-boy, Anthony Andrews (who surely must have been considered for Bond). In addition he has the attention of a blackmailer (Michael Ripper), a problem which may need more drastic measures to resolve. All the way through Rossiter talks, carving and chipping away with words, as if they can alter reality itself. This is a man who is dangling by a thread, but who won’t admit that the thread is anything other than a sturdy rope and far from dangling he is floating above serenely taking in the panorama of the situation. He sweats, undoubtedly the panic rises, but no matter how dire the predicament he doesn’t give up. He just keeps on talking and talking and talking. It’s no wonder that when his wife, Sian Phillips, stares at him it’s with a smile of pride rather than a snarl of frustration.
If we’re honest it looks more like a TV movie than an actual film. It’s made by television professionals and never really escapes that. But in Rossiter’s magnificently shifty yet sincere performance, in the seediness of the tabloids which pursue him, in the way that the political establishment rallies around and supports him when the danger is not just hammering his door but trying to climb through the window, we have an extremely cynical and wonderfully funny film which is just as horribly applicable today.
Colour
Fans of ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin’ should seek out this rare starring role in cinema for Leonard Rossiter. Normally on the big screen he was limited to playing weary policemen in ‘Pink Panther’ sequels, or small roles in Stanley Kubrick movies, but here he is the star and centre of everything. Playing an unnamed Cabinet Minister in the British government, Rossiter is absolutely astounding. Speaking as quickly as Reggie Perrin, Rossiter presents his politician as that rare thing – an almost still whirling dervish. He doesn’t charge or race around, but clearly his mind is always whirring and spinning, with words spilling out of him so fast, constantly twisting one way or another. He obfuscates, he misleads, he tells half-truths, semi-truths and even resorts to just lying, all to get out of various jams of his own making. And it’s brilliant to watch, as Rossiter makes this man immensely likeable, even when ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ are clearly just half remembered words in the dictionary. This, without a doubt, is one of the most cynical films ever made about politics and politicians.
Suddenly finding himself at risk of exposure for his various misdeeds, our political hero has a day or so to get all his affairs into order so that he can present a squeaky clean image to the general public. This includes sorting out some dubious loans from his ultra-seedy cousin (Peter Sallis, in a role which seems like the dark twisted mirror to Norman Clegg; the antichrist to Wallace); getting hold of some compromising snaps from a brothel madam (Kate O’Mara, purring over line like creamy liquor); and ending affairs with a duo of glamorous mistresses, Joanna Lumley and Lynn-Holly Johnson (both actual Bond girls) and ridiculously handsome toy-boy, Anthony Andrews (who surely must have been considered for Bond). In addition he has the attention of a blackmailer (Michael Ripper), a problem which may need more drastic measures to resolve. All the way through Rossiter talks, carving and chipping away with words, as if they can alter reality itself. This is a man who is dangling by a thread, but who won’t admit that the thread is anything other than a sturdy rope and far from dangling he is floating above serenely taking in the panorama of the situation. He sweats, undoubtedly the panic rises, but no matter how dire the predicament he doesn’t give up. He just keeps on talking and talking and talking. It’s no wonder that when his wife, Sian Phillips, stares at him it’s with a smile of pride rather than a snarl of frustration.
If we’re honest it looks more like a TV movie than an actual film. It’s made by television professionals and never really escapes that. But in Rossiter’s magnificently shifty yet sincere performance, in the seediness of the tabloids which pursue him, in the way that the political establishment rallies around and supports him when the danger is not just hammering his door but trying to climb through the window, we have an extremely cynical and wonderfully funny film which is just as horribly applicable today.
Sunday, 30 March 2014
Pig Suckler (1994)
D. Olaf Signussen
Colour
I’ve been trying to work out how big a deal Tony Blair was in Scandinavia in 1994. As this film, made the year Blair became leader of the Labour Party, features an actor who looks like a taller, blonder version of the man himself. Anders Lindqvist seems to have spent the rest of his career in Swedish television or theatre, but for one brief moment in 1994 he was able to capture the future British Prime Minister in a way which is so physical and so precise it’d give Michael Sheen nightmares. But how deliberate is this? Surely Blair at this point was just one of many overseas politicians who wouldn’t be that a big noise in another country. He didn’t even become leader of his party until halfway through the year. So unless this film was put in rapid development, to try and capture a hitherto obscure overseas politician for a domestic audience (which I admit, seems a tad unlikely), then this is a case of fate and karma playing deliciously weird games. As the politician at the centre of this film not only looks like Blair, he could actually be Blair.
The politician we have here is smiling and obsequious to a fault. We follow him on the campaign trail as he meets supporters, debates with opponents, shakes hands and kisses babies. Throughout he is smiling the kind of big grin which would make you think twice about any used car salesman you encountered, let alone a bloody politician. He has a glint in his eye as he wheedles and obfuscates, telling people what a good man he is and how trustworthy; while at the time telling them exactly what they want to hear with lashings of snake oil. He is forever telling the world what a righteous man he is, what a committed churchgoer he is, but he is forever compromising and bending the truth backwards and forwards and even wiggling it side to side. Whatever his loyalists want to believe, he tells them; whatever the more unconvinced need him to do, he will do. Of course, he frequently tells one person X and another person Y, and the two things are mutually exclusive, but that doesn’t matter as he is one of life’s good guys and you can trust his word and he is someone you can rely on. As the campaign goes on, he demonstrates this incredible need to win, to get himself to a position of power.
Of course the title gives away where all this is going to end up, and that does mitigate against the shock somewhat. But it’s fascinating to watch the process whereby this Tony Blair figure glides by on his charm, states again and again how good a man he is and what a successful leader he will be, and in the face of cynicism performs this incredible demonstration of how far he’ll go to get the voters’ support. As this film ends with the lead character’s shirt undone and a piglet attached to his male nipple, but he still keeps grinning and talking and trying to tell the world what a good and trustworthy guy he is. He doesn’t actually say “pretty straight sort of guy”, but it’s close enough to send a shiver down the spine of anyone alive in Britain from 1997 onwards.
Tony apparently liked ‘The Queen’, I wonder if he ever saw this?
Colour
I’ve been trying to work out how big a deal Tony Blair was in Scandinavia in 1994. As this film, made the year Blair became leader of the Labour Party, features an actor who looks like a taller, blonder version of the man himself. Anders Lindqvist seems to have spent the rest of his career in Swedish television or theatre, but for one brief moment in 1994 he was able to capture the future British Prime Minister in a way which is so physical and so precise it’d give Michael Sheen nightmares. But how deliberate is this? Surely Blair at this point was just one of many overseas politicians who wouldn’t be that a big noise in another country. He didn’t even become leader of his party until halfway through the year. So unless this film was put in rapid development, to try and capture a hitherto obscure overseas politician for a domestic audience (which I admit, seems a tad unlikely), then this is a case of fate and karma playing deliciously weird games. As the politician at the centre of this film not only looks like Blair, he could actually be Blair.
The politician we have here is smiling and obsequious to a fault. We follow him on the campaign trail as he meets supporters, debates with opponents, shakes hands and kisses babies. Throughout he is smiling the kind of big grin which would make you think twice about any used car salesman you encountered, let alone a bloody politician. He has a glint in his eye as he wheedles and obfuscates, telling people what a good man he is and how trustworthy; while at the time telling them exactly what they want to hear with lashings of snake oil. He is forever telling the world what a righteous man he is, what a committed churchgoer he is, but he is forever compromising and bending the truth backwards and forwards and even wiggling it side to side. Whatever his loyalists want to believe, he tells them; whatever the more unconvinced need him to do, he will do. Of course, he frequently tells one person X and another person Y, and the two things are mutually exclusive, but that doesn’t matter as he is one of life’s good guys and you can trust his word and he is someone you can rely on. As the campaign goes on, he demonstrates this incredible need to win, to get himself to a position of power.
Of course the title gives away where all this is going to end up, and that does mitigate against the shock somewhat. But it’s fascinating to watch the process whereby this Tony Blair figure glides by on his charm, states again and again how good a man he is and what a successful leader he will be, and in the face of cynicism performs this incredible demonstration of how far he’ll go to get the voters’ support. As this film ends with the lead character’s shirt undone and a piglet attached to his male nipple, but he still keeps grinning and talking and trying to tell the world what a good and trustworthy guy he is. He doesn’t actually say “pretty straight sort of guy”, but it’s close enough to send a shiver down the spine of anyone alive in Britain from 1997 onwards.
Tony apparently liked ‘The Queen’, I wonder if he ever saw this?
Wednesday, 5 February 2014
French Leave (1967)
D. Blake Edwards
Colour
Ah, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. The great fun of men in spats pretending to be girls in flapper dresses; gaping at Marilyn Monroe as she wiggles her way down a train platform; “Nobody’s perfect!” Seriously, who doesn’t love ‘Some Like It Hot’? As close to perfect as any film made by humans is going to get! But it’s curious how some films live long in the memory while others just fade away (this blog of course exists for films that fade away). For instance, for all the high praise lavished upon the Paul Newman and Robert Redford pairing, it’s forgotten that Redford has actually made more movies with Jane Fonda (go on, I bet you can’t name more than one). Similarly the great chemistry of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon was actually spread across three films. There was the magnificent and utterly unimpeachable ‘Some Like It Hot’, there was the really underwhelming and disappointing ‘The Great Race’ and then there was ‘French Leave’ – which sits more at ‘The Great Race’ end of the spectrum, but – given current events - is really worth taking another peek at.
Here’s the set up. On a promotional trip to France, married Hollywood star Tony Curtis encounters Italian sex kitten Claudia Cardinale and begins to pursue her for an affair. At much the same time, married French President Jack Lemmon (with a truly shocking accent, making Inspector Clouseau sound like he’s authentic to every tortured syllable) is introduced to Cardinale at a party and also tries to seduce her. The two men become aware of each other’s attentions and attempt to thwart each other at every turn, the grandeur of the French presidency put into conflict with the largesse of Hollywood as each vies to make Cardinale his bit on the side.
That’s right, they don’t want the gorgeous, delightful, pouting Claudia Cardinale to be their girlfriend or their wife – each man want hers to be his illicit mistress. The first time I saw this film it made me feel a bit “Uck!” This loud and brash farce where married men try to capture a woman to serve their sexual needs away from their wives, just felt like part of the swinging sixties we were happy to discard. The gender politics could be politely described as antediluvian. But looking at Francois Holland’s travails in the last few weeks has made me revisit ‘French Leave’. It seems that even today – even if you’re the socialist new broom there to clean up the system – it’s the done thing for French Presidents to keep mistresses. Mitterrand of course had his, there were always rumours about Chirac and now Holland finds himself an international scandal. (Not necessarily a national one though, the French press and the French public seem really accepting of this kind of thing. They just give a Gallic shrug and go back to their coffee and baguettes. Imagine, as a comparison, if this was David Cameron with a mistress and Sam Cameron in hospital after an overdose of sleeping pills. The tabloids would sing loud and ebullient praises to the god of mammon from the rooftops, and even Nick Robinson would tear out his remaining hair in excitement). On the other side of the coin nobody thinks movie stars are unimpeachable. It’s downright naïve to believe that Hollywood types don’t have affairs. And so suddenly this film, which I initially dismissed as a sexist relic of a less enlightened time, feels like it could be a free-wheeling docu-drama of NOW where the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
And if I’m honest it’s not that bad. I like Jack Lemmon a lot, but find he mugs too much in broad comedy (and I hate his over the top accent here, but I also hate his equally over the top accent in ‘The Great Race’). I like Tony Curtis a lot, but the laziness in his performance evident here would soon kill his big screen career. And in common with all straight men, I like Claudia Cardinale a lot and will not hear a word against her. So two thirds of the performances could be better, but Blake Edwards does execute the farce quite well. The old money of Versailles against the nouveau riche of Bel Air has good comic potential and everything gets bigger and bigger (if not necessarily that much funnier). It’s a very 1960s movie, which does have a few genuine laughs and has more to say about the morals and peccadillos of certain people today that I initially – in my prudish British way – realised.
Colour
Ah, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. The great fun of men in spats pretending to be girls in flapper dresses; gaping at Marilyn Monroe as she wiggles her way down a train platform; “Nobody’s perfect!” Seriously, who doesn’t love ‘Some Like It Hot’? As close to perfect as any film made by humans is going to get! But it’s curious how some films live long in the memory while others just fade away (this blog of course exists for films that fade away). For instance, for all the high praise lavished upon the Paul Newman and Robert Redford pairing, it’s forgotten that Redford has actually made more movies with Jane Fonda (go on, I bet you can’t name more than one). Similarly the great chemistry of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon was actually spread across three films. There was the magnificent and utterly unimpeachable ‘Some Like It Hot’, there was the really underwhelming and disappointing ‘The Great Race’ and then there was ‘French Leave’ – which sits more at ‘The Great Race’ end of the spectrum, but – given current events - is really worth taking another peek at.
Here’s the set up. On a promotional trip to France, married Hollywood star Tony Curtis encounters Italian sex kitten Claudia Cardinale and begins to pursue her for an affair. At much the same time, married French President Jack Lemmon (with a truly shocking accent, making Inspector Clouseau sound like he’s authentic to every tortured syllable) is introduced to Cardinale at a party and also tries to seduce her. The two men become aware of each other’s attentions and attempt to thwart each other at every turn, the grandeur of the French presidency put into conflict with the largesse of Hollywood as each vies to make Cardinale his bit on the side.
That’s right, they don’t want the gorgeous, delightful, pouting Claudia Cardinale to be their girlfriend or their wife – each man want hers to be his illicit mistress. The first time I saw this film it made me feel a bit “Uck!” This loud and brash farce where married men try to capture a woman to serve their sexual needs away from their wives, just felt like part of the swinging sixties we were happy to discard. The gender politics could be politely described as antediluvian. But looking at Francois Holland’s travails in the last few weeks has made me revisit ‘French Leave’. It seems that even today – even if you’re the socialist new broom there to clean up the system – it’s the done thing for French Presidents to keep mistresses. Mitterrand of course had his, there were always rumours about Chirac and now Holland finds himself an international scandal. (Not necessarily a national one though, the French press and the French public seem really accepting of this kind of thing. They just give a Gallic shrug and go back to their coffee and baguettes. Imagine, as a comparison, if this was David Cameron with a mistress and Sam Cameron in hospital after an overdose of sleeping pills. The tabloids would sing loud and ebullient praises to the god of mammon from the rooftops, and even Nick Robinson would tear out his remaining hair in excitement). On the other side of the coin nobody thinks movie stars are unimpeachable. It’s downright naïve to believe that Hollywood types don’t have affairs. And so suddenly this film, which I initially dismissed as a sexist relic of a less enlightened time, feels like it could be a free-wheeling docu-drama of NOW where the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
And if I’m honest it’s not that bad. I like Jack Lemmon a lot, but find he mugs too much in broad comedy (and I hate his over the top accent here, but I also hate his equally over the top accent in ‘The Great Race’). I like Tony Curtis a lot, but the laziness in his performance evident here would soon kill his big screen career. And in common with all straight men, I like Claudia Cardinale a lot and will not hear a word against her. So two thirds of the performances could be better, but Blake Edwards does execute the farce quite well. The old money of Versailles against the nouveau riche of Bel Air has good comic potential and everything gets bigger and bigger (if not necessarily that much funnier). It’s a very 1960s movie, which does have a few genuine laughs and has more to say about the morals and peccadillos of certain people today that I initially – in my prudish British way – realised.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)