D. Randall Smyth
Dusty B&W
In British cinema there have always been films which look back at the Second World War with something approaching fondness. Ah, the memories – all those kids playing on the bomb sites, the camaraderie, the sheltering in the tubes, the interminable sing alongs. As long as one ignores the doodlebugs, husbands and fathers fighting overseas, the victims of the blitz, then clearly it was a bloody great time. This is one of those movies with a halcyon glow, made just as the war was ending and so managing to combine a war time story with a pleasure and relief of a job well done.
It’s an optimistic film, a film about promise from the rubble of the past, a film about youth. That’s what I particularly like about it, the fact that the cast is so goddamn young. The principals are all fifteen and younger, and they look it. This is the British youth of 1945: gawky, all elbows and knees and terrible, terrible teeth. If anything is going to reinforce our American cousin’s impression of our dental work, it would be this movie and its pre NHS gnashers. (It’s a shame that barely any of the cast stayed in acting, as Hammer Horror could have used their faces ten years later.) On one hand it’s a sweet film and an innocent film, but it’s also a film about still lingering threats and that adds a jab of cold steel to the centre of it.
‘The New Cross Eleven’ is a boy’s brigade football team, who might look rag-tag but are apparently the best side in their division. The scenes on the football pitch are lovely, even with the bomb sites in the background – they have a charming fluidity that feels fresh and real. It’s as if they’ve just filmed these lads actually playing and captured all the exuberance and fearlessness of youth. It’s particularly stunning – with this soulless, corporate football spectacular going on at the other side of the world – just how divorced what we have today is from this film. The looseness of the football, the length of the shorts, the sense of mischievous community, even the Knobbly knees – all this has gone now. These are not pampered and preening popinjays. They would take one look at Ronaldo and decide he needs to be made less pretty; although spud-faced nipper Wayne Rooney has very much the right appearance. What we have here are good, down to Earth lads. They may be a little scampish at times, but they’re definitely warm and happy presences. Probably I could have just watched them play football in their bombed-out South London suburb for the entire film, but before long the plot kicks in when they start to suspect that the new referee in their league may be a German spy.
Our boys start to investigate.
There’s probably more broad humour in the investigation than I would ideally have liked (certainly most of the toilet jokes fail to flush satisfactorily), but the charm remains and the story takes some fun twists and turns. No doubt the executives behind the much maligned Children’s Film Foundation saw this and thought they saw the future: fun and undemanding films about children solving mysteries and being heroes. However unlike a lot of that body’s output, this film actually works. This isn’t spoon in the mouth drama school kids pretending to be working class, but the real thing; and this isn’t a shaggy dog story where the stakes are only high when looked at from a very middle class nursery in Hampstead, but something that matters. This is a kids’ film but it isn’t a soft film. Indeed anyone who has ever been to New Cross would know that I’d be impossible to make a soft film there. Even at the end of the war, a war that people were already starting to be fond of, there are dangers still apparent and this film isn’t shy of them.
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Sunday, 29 June 2014
Sunday, 1 June 2014
Those who Enter the Skaneateles Hotel (1939)
D. George Waggner
B&W
Whereas other film trilogies ebb and flow, with some entries clearly not matching the quality of others, the original Skaneateles Hotel trilogy manages to hold a fantastically consistent line of quality all the way through. The first two entries are variations on a theme, showing what an innovative studio can do with a fantasy setting in a hotel, while this third does what fantasy does best and aims for epic. Picking up on one of the themes of the second film, the refugees from some unknown conflict, here we have the hotel in wartime. Except of course that the Skaneateles Hotel is too big to ever really be affected by some far off conflagration and so here we have a war between two distinct and implacable tribes taking place in the hotel itself. Now I’m well aware that a war between two different parties in a hotel sounds like a Marx Brothers movie that never was (and certainly would have been preferable to ‘Room Service’), but such is the scope and vast vistas already created within the Skaneateles Hotel that the whole thing seems utterly believable and incredibly tense.
Once again we’re greeted by the smiling and menacing form of Boris Karloff, but here there are four separate and very different guests – there’s English aristocrat, Basil Rathbone; the brilliant Peter Lorre in his stock role as mysterious European; reporter, Ginger Rogers (on loan from RKO and definitely not dancing); and loudmouth, Jack Carson. Although the four arrive at different times of day and night, they soon find themselves thrown together by the ever changing corridors of the Skaneateles Hotel. Wary at first, the four are forced to get over initial reservations, to learn to trust to each other, so they can survive in this world of rogue spies, murderers and distant gun battles.
This is the film where Karloff seems at his most vulnerable. Unlike in previous entries, the omnipotentcy deserts him when he’s suddenly dropped into the action with the others, and he flails as much as they do. It’s an unusual and distressing sight. Fans of these films have gotten used to his unflappability, his almost imperious façade, to have that taken away from him feels like the crushing of something. The five of them flee, hole up, make alliances and try to leave the hotel, as they know that outside its cavernous walls – and this becomes increasingly hard to imagine as the film progresses – there is peace. At first glance much more of an isolationist tract than the last film, this is a film about how much more preferable peace is than war, and how you shouldn’t stick your nose into the conflicts of other peoples. Except is it? As the film progresses it seems more and more the case that Karloff is just misdirecting, that he knows exactly what he’s doing, knows precisely what is needed. As the film progresses it becomes clear that he is in no danger, that he is still directing matters, and that it is his war. And at that point the message seems to be there are some conflicts in this world of ours, be they within the Skaneateles Hotel or without, that are impossible to avoid.
One of my favourite scenes of this whole series is at the end. After all the chaos, fear, bloodshed and danger, Karloff calmly returns to the front desk, wipes his hands and gets on with his day. Anything is possible in the Skaneateles Hotel.
The establishment would go dark for a little while now, but the doors would reopen….
B&W
Whereas other film trilogies ebb and flow, with some entries clearly not matching the quality of others, the original Skaneateles Hotel trilogy manages to hold a fantastically consistent line of quality all the way through. The first two entries are variations on a theme, showing what an innovative studio can do with a fantasy setting in a hotel, while this third does what fantasy does best and aims for epic. Picking up on one of the themes of the second film, the refugees from some unknown conflict, here we have the hotel in wartime. Except of course that the Skaneateles Hotel is too big to ever really be affected by some far off conflagration and so here we have a war between two distinct and implacable tribes taking place in the hotel itself. Now I’m well aware that a war between two different parties in a hotel sounds like a Marx Brothers movie that never was (and certainly would have been preferable to ‘Room Service’), but such is the scope and vast vistas already created within the Skaneateles Hotel that the whole thing seems utterly believable and incredibly tense.
Once again we’re greeted by the smiling and menacing form of Boris Karloff, but here there are four separate and very different guests – there’s English aristocrat, Basil Rathbone; the brilliant Peter Lorre in his stock role as mysterious European; reporter, Ginger Rogers (on loan from RKO and definitely not dancing); and loudmouth, Jack Carson. Although the four arrive at different times of day and night, they soon find themselves thrown together by the ever changing corridors of the Skaneateles Hotel. Wary at first, the four are forced to get over initial reservations, to learn to trust to each other, so they can survive in this world of rogue spies, murderers and distant gun battles.
This is the film where Karloff seems at his most vulnerable. Unlike in previous entries, the omnipotentcy deserts him when he’s suddenly dropped into the action with the others, and he flails as much as they do. It’s an unusual and distressing sight. Fans of these films have gotten used to his unflappability, his almost imperious façade, to have that taken away from him feels like the crushing of something. The five of them flee, hole up, make alliances and try to leave the hotel, as they know that outside its cavernous walls – and this becomes increasingly hard to imagine as the film progresses – there is peace. At first glance much more of an isolationist tract than the last film, this is a film about how much more preferable peace is than war, and how you shouldn’t stick your nose into the conflicts of other peoples. Except is it? As the film progresses it seems more and more the case that Karloff is just misdirecting, that he knows exactly what he’s doing, knows precisely what is needed. As the film progresses it becomes clear that he is in no danger, that he is still directing matters, and that it is his war. And at that point the message seems to be there are some conflicts in this world of ours, be they within the Skaneateles Hotel or without, that are impossible to avoid.
One of my favourite scenes of this whole series is at the end. After all the chaos, fear, bloodshed and danger, Karloff calmly returns to the front desk, wipes his hands and gets on with his day. Anything is possible in the Skaneateles Hotel.
The establishment would go dark for a little while now, but the doors would reopen….
Wednesday, 28 May 2014
Return to the Skaneateles Hotel (1938)
D. George Waggner
B&W
We’re back!
Much more than Frankenstein’s monster, the unnamed concierge/manager/overlord of the deeply mysterious Skaneateles Hotel is the role we should best remember Boris Karloff for. It has everything, not only allowing him a glowering physical presence – capable of turning from contempt to sweetness in a heartbeat – but also line after wonderful line of dialogue to be intoned in his glorious graveyard voice. It’s the voice of doom, but also soft as treacle and inviting despite its spookiness. Here we are welcomed with narration, wherein Karloff explains to us that while the world and the universe may change, nothing alters in the sanctuary of the Skaneateles Hotel. This we know is a joke, as we’ve already seen that the ambience, décor and the layout itself is constantly shifting at the Skaneateles Hotel.
In what we would now call a cold opening, the young David Niven is the first to check in, playing a caddish young Englishman with a string of broken hearts behind him. Outside his room he meets the kind of pneumatic, suggestive blonde that the Hays Code was surely supposed to have stamped out, she leads him like a siren back to her room, where the door slams ominously behind them. It might be that they’re having a night of pleasure together, but his scream suggests otherwise.
The meat of the story though is the arrival of another couple, this time the younger and far less charismatic pairing of Allan Jones and Melody Hazel. Obviously these are a duo we’re not going to care about anywhere near as much as Claude Rains and Marian Marsh, but that doesn’t matter – as the film knows its true star is the hotel itself and the ever brooding and ominous presence of Boris Karloff. Going for a stroll before dinner, our young lovebirds become horribly lost and disorientated, marching down seemingly the same corridor again and again. When they try a different turning, they’re first threatened by Bela Lugosi (playing second fiddle to Karloff once again and clearly hating every second of it), before having an elaborate con-trick played on them by Lon Chaney Jr, where they’re nearly separated and have to run for their lives. They end up in a strange and huge ballroom, one which rolls and lilts like a ship and is crammed full of refugees from some far off war (problems in Europe no doubt playing on the filmmakers’ minds). Joining with the refugees, the two have to hope that when Karloff does show up he’ll save them rather than damn them.
The worlds of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Game of Thrones’ obviously have whole continents to play with and explore. Vast vistas the likes of which we have never seen before. The true genius of the Skaneateles Hotel is that they manage to give us the same sense of scale and size all while filming in a studio and basing the action in one location. Our focus is the hotel, which is at turns a scary, mischievous, deadly, benign and benevolent pile of ever shifting and changing bricks. It, along with its most prominent employee, are the true stars. And what this first sequel proves is that it doesn’t matter if your nominal leads are Zeppo Marx’s replacement and a pretty flapper girl who never made another film, as long as Karloff and the hotel are in place, you can still make a fantastically scary, amazing and edge of the seat film.
B&W
We’re back!
Much more than Frankenstein’s monster, the unnamed concierge/manager/overlord of the deeply mysterious Skaneateles Hotel is the role we should best remember Boris Karloff for. It has everything, not only allowing him a glowering physical presence – capable of turning from contempt to sweetness in a heartbeat – but also line after wonderful line of dialogue to be intoned in his glorious graveyard voice. It’s the voice of doom, but also soft as treacle and inviting despite its spookiness. Here we are welcomed with narration, wherein Karloff explains to us that while the world and the universe may change, nothing alters in the sanctuary of the Skaneateles Hotel. This we know is a joke, as we’ve already seen that the ambience, décor and the layout itself is constantly shifting at the Skaneateles Hotel.
In what we would now call a cold opening, the young David Niven is the first to check in, playing a caddish young Englishman with a string of broken hearts behind him. Outside his room he meets the kind of pneumatic, suggestive blonde that the Hays Code was surely supposed to have stamped out, she leads him like a siren back to her room, where the door slams ominously behind them. It might be that they’re having a night of pleasure together, but his scream suggests otherwise.
The meat of the story though is the arrival of another couple, this time the younger and far less charismatic pairing of Allan Jones and Melody Hazel. Obviously these are a duo we’re not going to care about anywhere near as much as Claude Rains and Marian Marsh, but that doesn’t matter – as the film knows its true star is the hotel itself and the ever brooding and ominous presence of Boris Karloff. Going for a stroll before dinner, our young lovebirds become horribly lost and disorientated, marching down seemingly the same corridor again and again. When they try a different turning, they’re first threatened by Bela Lugosi (playing second fiddle to Karloff once again and clearly hating every second of it), before having an elaborate con-trick played on them by Lon Chaney Jr, where they’re nearly separated and have to run for their lives. They end up in a strange and huge ballroom, one which rolls and lilts like a ship and is crammed full of refugees from some far off war (problems in Europe no doubt playing on the filmmakers’ minds). Joining with the refugees, the two have to hope that when Karloff does show up he’ll save them rather than damn them.
The worlds of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Game of Thrones’ obviously have whole continents to play with and explore. Vast vistas the likes of which we have never seen before. The true genius of the Skaneateles Hotel is that they manage to give us the same sense of scale and size all while filming in a studio and basing the action in one location. Our focus is the hotel, which is at turns a scary, mischievous, deadly, benign and benevolent pile of ever shifting and changing bricks. It, along with its most prominent employee, are the true stars. And what this first sequel proves is that it doesn’t matter if your nominal leads are Zeppo Marx’s replacement and a pretty flapper girl who never made another film, as long as Karloff and the hotel are in place, you can still make a fantastically scary, amazing and edge of the seat film.
Sunday, 27 April 2014
The Dalek War (1970)
D. Philip Strafer
Colour
This is what Terry Nation was striving for. From the first murmurings of dalekmania, his piggy eyes rang with pound signs and he was desperate to take his creations out into the world by themselves. Sod ‘Doctor Who’! He didn’t have the rights to ‘Doctor Who’ and so didn’t care about it. Indeed, arguably, the daleks were much bigger than the programme which beget them. They were the ones who made it the much watch show. What’s more, there had been five films at this point with the word ‘Dalek’ in the title and all of them had made money. There was clearly a market there for exterminators extreme and this movie was going to capitalise on it.
So whereas on TV The Doctor temporarily bid adieu to the daleks, in film the daleks waved a full goodbye to The Doctor. (That’s not as bizarre an image as it sounds: if a dalek holds its sucker at the right angle and weaves a little, it can do a pretty good wave.) So here we have a film which isn’t about The Doctor meeting and defeating the daleks, it’s about the daleks being the daleks and the audience revelling in their awesome metal coolness. This is the daleks being the best creatures in existence, shiny pepper-pots who will eventually control the universe.
Of course you couldn’t just have a film about daleks (even for Terry Nation a searing drama with a dalek only cast would have been a push) so there has to be some human characters as well. This comes in the form of a bunch of space soldiers – led by a young Gareth Hunt, with a shifty second in command played by Hywel Bennett – who crash land on Skaro, the daleks’s home planet. From being a hard-arsed incursion force, they suddenly find themselves having to survive long enough for the rescue ship to reach them. ‘The Dalek War’ is aiming to be a taut and claustrophobic movie, with lots of shiny corridors made dark by failing lights and humans being picked off one by one by the impressively relentless daleks.
To modern eyes the film it most resembles is ‘Aliens’, both are about military operations against an unremitting foe who can’t be beaten. Except in many ways it’s not at all like ‘Aliens’, as instead of being scary it finds new ways to be ridiculously cheesy at every turn. Imagine there were whole scenes in ‘Aliens’ given over to various xenomorphs chatting to each other about what strategy they were going to take. Imagine that the xenomorphs spoke in shrill, grating voices and actually had passionate arguments about what to do next. James Cameron’s vision suddenly becomes a lot less menacing, doesn’t it? But that is actually what we have here, sequences where daleks have ridiculous dalek conversations that just make them look far more comical than scary. But then part of the problem is that we’re clearly supposed to see the daleks as scary monsters, but also really like them as well. For all we’re supposed to care about the humans’ plight, there is part of the film that just desperately wants the daleks to win. And that gives it a real problem in tone, as with the charisma free Gareth Hunt, snivelling Hywel Bennett and nothing but anonymous meat bags surrounding them, it just feels like we shouldn’t want these idiots to escape even when two of them manage it. Instead we’re supposed to root for the daleks: to be scared of these pepper-pots, as well as finding them immensely cool, even when the film goes way out of its way to make them utterly bloody stupid.
It’s a confused movie which raises lots of conflicted emotions. It’s also the first dalek film not to make money, a crucial element would be back next time though.
Colour
This is what Terry Nation was striving for. From the first murmurings of dalekmania, his piggy eyes rang with pound signs and he was desperate to take his creations out into the world by themselves. Sod ‘Doctor Who’! He didn’t have the rights to ‘Doctor Who’ and so didn’t care about it. Indeed, arguably, the daleks were much bigger than the programme which beget them. They were the ones who made it the much watch show. What’s more, there had been five films at this point with the word ‘Dalek’ in the title and all of them had made money. There was clearly a market there for exterminators extreme and this movie was going to capitalise on it.
So whereas on TV The Doctor temporarily bid adieu to the daleks, in film the daleks waved a full goodbye to The Doctor. (That’s not as bizarre an image as it sounds: if a dalek holds its sucker at the right angle and weaves a little, it can do a pretty good wave.) So here we have a film which isn’t about The Doctor meeting and defeating the daleks, it’s about the daleks being the daleks and the audience revelling in their awesome metal coolness. This is the daleks being the best creatures in existence, shiny pepper-pots who will eventually control the universe.
Of course you couldn’t just have a film about daleks (even for Terry Nation a searing drama with a dalek only cast would have been a push) so there has to be some human characters as well. This comes in the form of a bunch of space soldiers – led by a young Gareth Hunt, with a shifty second in command played by Hywel Bennett – who crash land on Skaro, the daleks’s home planet. From being a hard-arsed incursion force, they suddenly find themselves having to survive long enough for the rescue ship to reach them. ‘The Dalek War’ is aiming to be a taut and claustrophobic movie, with lots of shiny corridors made dark by failing lights and humans being picked off one by one by the impressively relentless daleks.
To modern eyes the film it most resembles is ‘Aliens’, both are about military operations against an unremitting foe who can’t be beaten. Except in many ways it’s not at all like ‘Aliens’, as instead of being scary it finds new ways to be ridiculously cheesy at every turn. Imagine there were whole scenes in ‘Aliens’ given over to various xenomorphs chatting to each other about what strategy they were going to take. Imagine that the xenomorphs spoke in shrill, grating voices and actually had passionate arguments about what to do next. James Cameron’s vision suddenly becomes a lot less menacing, doesn’t it? But that is actually what we have here, sequences where daleks have ridiculous dalek conversations that just make them look far more comical than scary. But then part of the problem is that we’re clearly supposed to see the daleks as scary monsters, but also really like them as well. For all we’re supposed to care about the humans’ plight, there is part of the film that just desperately wants the daleks to win. And that gives it a real problem in tone, as with the charisma free Gareth Hunt, snivelling Hywel Bennett and nothing but anonymous meat bags surrounding them, it just feels like we shouldn’t want these idiots to escape even when two of them manage it. Instead we’re supposed to root for the daleks: to be scared of these pepper-pots, as well as finding them immensely cool, even when the film goes way out of its way to make them utterly bloody stupid.
It’s a confused movie which raises lots of conflicted emotions. It’s also the first dalek film not to make money, a crucial element would be back next time though.
Sunday, 5 January 2014
The Hero Hour (1961)
D. Henry Hathaway
Colour
Ignore ‘The Expendables’, feel free to discard Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’ – ‘The Hero Hour’ stands up there as perhaps the most macho and bloody film ever made.
Have a look at the cast list - or mug shots, which might be the best term in this instance. There’s John Wayne at the captain who breaks the rules; Robert Mitchum as his lieutenant, with whom he once had a falling out over a woman; Lee Marvin as the hard-case troublemaker; and Charles Bronson as the tough guy with a secret. Sterling Hayden (prefiguring his ‘Doctor Strangelove’ outing as a possibly barking mad senior officer) orders them behind enemy lines to rescue school teacher Elizabeth Montgomery and her charges. Montgomery has information which could aid the allies and it’s crucial she’s brought out within seventy-two hours.
(Elsewhere, if you’re interested, there are speaking cameos for Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra and John Huston. And one of the little boys in Montgomery’s class did indeed grow up to be Kurt Russell. No wonder he became an action star, all he’d have to do was breathe near this cast for the essence of manliness to just flood into him).
What follows are dead Nazis piled on top of dead Nazis piled on top of dead Nazis. Essentially the same plot as ‘Saving Private Ryan’, but whereas the modern war film comes with lashings of angst as to how terrible war is, this one revels in how damned great it is to kill Germans. The firm it most reminds me of is Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton machine gunning with aplomb in ‘Where Eagles Dare’, but this one undoubtedly has an even higher death toll. Here we have Germans machine-gunned, blown up, garrotted, knifed, strangled, shot in cold blood in the head, hanged, suffocated and even drowned in a bathtub of soapy water. The levels of actual blood aren’t that high (as befits its vintage), but if it was made now this would be a gruesome 18 certificate with an oddly starry cast.
Wayne and Mitchum look to have the better roles and each of them serves up fried machismo with a side order of boiled brutishness and a customary sprinkling of charm, but it’s Marvin and Bronson who have the most fun. At one point Marvin is seen juggling grenades with a big smile on his face and a match jammed between his teeth; while later on Bronson throws himself on top of dynamite to protect Elizabeth Montgomery, and still manages to survive and get the hell out of France. That’s the kind of man he is!
Of course it’s rubbish. Obviously it’s insensitive to death and war and the pain it causes. Evidently it’s macho bullshit crap of the worst American excesses. But in its brio and enthusiasm and belief in itself – in the fact that even it knows it’s a big macho cartoon that’s beyond ridiculousness – you can’t help but be swept along in a wave of bloody enjoyment.
Colour
Ignore ‘The Expendables’, feel free to discard Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’ – ‘The Hero Hour’ stands up there as perhaps the most macho and bloody film ever made.
Have a look at the cast list - or mug shots, which might be the best term in this instance. There’s John Wayne at the captain who breaks the rules; Robert Mitchum as his lieutenant, with whom he once had a falling out over a woman; Lee Marvin as the hard-case troublemaker; and Charles Bronson as the tough guy with a secret. Sterling Hayden (prefiguring his ‘Doctor Strangelove’ outing as a possibly barking mad senior officer) orders them behind enemy lines to rescue school teacher Elizabeth Montgomery and her charges. Montgomery has information which could aid the allies and it’s crucial she’s brought out within seventy-two hours.
(Elsewhere, if you’re interested, there are speaking cameos for Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra and John Huston. And one of the little boys in Montgomery’s class did indeed grow up to be Kurt Russell. No wonder he became an action star, all he’d have to do was breathe near this cast for the essence of manliness to just flood into him).
What follows are dead Nazis piled on top of dead Nazis piled on top of dead Nazis. Essentially the same plot as ‘Saving Private Ryan’, but whereas the modern war film comes with lashings of angst as to how terrible war is, this one revels in how damned great it is to kill Germans. The firm it most reminds me of is Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton machine gunning with aplomb in ‘Where Eagles Dare’, but this one undoubtedly has an even higher death toll. Here we have Germans machine-gunned, blown up, garrotted, knifed, strangled, shot in cold blood in the head, hanged, suffocated and even drowned in a bathtub of soapy water. The levels of actual blood aren’t that high (as befits its vintage), but if it was made now this would be a gruesome 18 certificate with an oddly starry cast.
Wayne and Mitchum look to have the better roles and each of them serves up fried machismo with a side order of boiled brutishness and a customary sprinkling of charm, but it’s Marvin and Bronson who have the most fun. At one point Marvin is seen juggling grenades with a big smile on his face and a match jammed between his teeth; while later on Bronson throws himself on top of dynamite to protect Elizabeth Montgomery, and still manages to survive and get the hell out of France. That’s the kind of man he is!
Of course it’s rubbish. Obviously it’s insensitive to death and war and the pain it causes. Evidently it’s macho bullshit crap of the worst American excesses. But in its brio and enthusiasm and belief in itself – in the fact that even it knows it’s a big macho cartoon that’s beyond ridiculousness – you can’t help but be swept along in a wave of bloody enjoyment.
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