I am a Camera (1955)

I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.  In the 1950s the writer Christopher Isherwood visits his London club and discovers that he has arrived in the middle of a book launch by a woman called Sally Bowles and regales his friends with stories of their life together just before the Nazis ascend to power in 1930s Berlin. Chris (Laurence Harvey), an aspiring novelist from England and ‘confirmed bachelor’ meets vivacious cabaret entertainer Sally Bowles (Julie Harris) at a nightclub where she’s performing her act and an unusual friendship is born. She moves into his boarding house and their lives become inextricably intertwined as he struggles to write and she tries to make her way with men, a ‘future would-be film star’ as she tells the landlady (Lea Seidl). As Sally feeds her extravagant tastes, Chris goes along for the ride and they are financed by American Clive Mortimer (Ron Randell) until their pal, Fritz (Anton Diffring), encounters trouble after ingratiating himself with Natalia Landauer (Shelley Winters) the daughter of a wealthy department store owner and confesses he himself has been concealing his Judaism. Meanwhile the Nazis bully people on the streets prior to a popular election result … Adapted from the play by John Van Druten, itself based on Goodbye to Berlin, part of the memoirs of writer Christopher Isherwood, this story also served as the inspiration for the later acclaimed musical Cabaret which Bob Fosse turned into a garish and extraordinary fascist-baiting extravaganza. This adaptation by John Collier of Van Druten’s play is of an altogether more modest variety but is entertaining for all that – the charming Harvey (I’m prejudiced, I love him) and the winsomely over the top Harris are wonderful together in their drab bedsits as they try to make their lives fit their pretensions. The treatment got a lot of criticism at the time and you might even be vaguely shocked by what Sally does in the aftermath of her abortion which is characterised as a false pregnancy here. It still ran into censorship problems because there are no moral lessons. Isherwood himself didn’t like it at all and believed Harris to have been ‘mis-directed’ (she had won the Tony for the role on Broadway) but it was his life of course so he could say what he liked. (Me no Leica.) Watch for Patrick McGoohan as a Swedish Water Therapist! Directed by Henry Cornelius.

The Academy Awards 2018

A note:  in the year in which quite conceivably the greatest number of politically correct, sensitive, inclusive, diverse and nice everyone’s-a-winner films have been nominated for an Academy Award, a Crash collective, if you will, I have found myself longing for something utterly vile, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, vicious, exploitative, violent and insensible just to shake me out of the socially-inflicted self-satisfied glow that currently infects the civilised globe. Is this just a phase or will the millennial project finally vindicate the enemies of Allan Bloom? Is it me? Who wins? Does it matter? Will the Oirish-American accountant return by stealth and create another envelope snafu? Popcorn, potato chips and poteen at the ready, I’ll be watching. All night long!

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)

Filigree, apogee, pedigree, perigee! During the Battle of Britain, Miss Eglantine Price (Angela Lansbury), a cunning apprentice witch, decides to use her supernatural powers to defeat the Nazi menace. She sets out to accomplish this task with the aid of three children (Roy Snart, Ian Weighill and Cindy O’Callaghan) who have been evacuated from the London Blitz and they go along to get along after a difficult introduction – they’re city kids stuck in the wilds of rural England and she’s forced to take them into her very big house where she serves healthy food which is utterly alien to them. Joined by the hapless Emelius Brown (David Tomlinson), the head of Miss Price’s witchcraft training correspondence school in London, the crew uses an enchanted bed to travel into a fantasy land and foil encroaching German troops as well as dealing with an unscrupulous conman … Well it’s a very snowy day here at Mondo Towers so there was nothing left but haul out Uncle Walt to toast up my chattering tootsies. This is a childhood favourite, a long and entertaining part-animated fantasy comic WW2 drama with not a little music thrown in to complete the Poppins-a-like formula perfected by the studio during the previous decade. Lansbury has the role purportedly rejected by Julie Andrews and David Tomlinson returns as the slightly bewildered adult male – albeit Mary Norton’s wartime books which provide the source material have no relation to the earlier film. The Magic Bedknob, Or How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons and Bonfires and Broomsticks provide the arc of the narrative which is enlivened by integrated cartoon and musical sequences. Let’s face it, it takes the House of Mouse to turn WW2 into a delightful musical fairytale with songs by the Sherman brothers, a fantasy football match on a desert island, a resourceful Territorial Army and a very cool cat making for totally bewitching family fun. Hurray! Screenplay by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, directed by Robert Stevenson.

Lewis Gilbert 6th March 1920 – 23rd February 2018

 

Veteran British director Lewis Gilbert has shuffled off this mortal coil at the grand old age of 97. His is a career marked not merely by longevity or versatility but by the power of making films that speak to generation after generation not least my own James Bond years because he directed the first of that series that I was allowed to go see at the cinema, Moonraker. It might not have been one of the best Bonds – or even one of his best Bonds – because he had already made The Spy Who Loved Me and You Only Live Twice – but for a kid it had tremendous value, hopping up the cartoon-like aspects and the ingenious potential of the effects. The impression you get is that he likes the characters whose stories he is shaping (even Alfie!) – and then you learn he was a child actor, born to music hall performers, which explains his generosity towards them. This goes some way toward why he was as much at ease doing war films with Kenneth More as he was female-centric dramas with Julie Walters. The realisation that he was responsible for so many of those war movies broadcast on Sunday afternoons in my childhood (and how I adored the Seventies iteration, Operation Daybreak) and other youth-oriented and equally affecting films is a testament to his own taste as much the material that might have been on the table – Susannah York in The Greengage Summer is an adolescent favourite and remains a wonderfully made drama;  later Free Love stories like Paul and Michelle offer more contemporary takes on the concept of youthful relationships and the negotiating required to attain maturity.  He would make films that found massive audiences in the Eighties with two projects adapted from Willy Russell’s plays about middle-aged lower class women getting their mojo back, Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine. He played a small role in The Divorce of Lady X opposite Laurence Olivier and made such an impression on mogul Alexander Korda he offered to sponsor him at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Gilbert instead opted to study directing and assisted Alfred Hitchcock on Jamaica Inn. He acquired technical knowledge during his wartime service with the American Air Corps film unit where he was seconded to the director William Keighley and after making a handful of short documentaries for Gaumont British put it to excellent use in those brilliantly crafted post-war British films that still tell us so much about the mindset that combated WW2 and dealt with the tricky (cinematic) aftermath. He married Hylda Tafler, sister of the actor Sydney, and it was she who found the property Alfie while visiting the hairdresser one day, seated beside an actress who was appearing in the Bill Naughton play. It was the standout of his career because it was the culmination of his studies of working class people who were finally being dramatised in complete narratives but it was also a theatrical style of filmmaking which broke the fourth wall. He often said his worst experience was working with Orson Welles on Ferry to Hong Kong and his biggest mistake was turning down Oliver! Lewis Gilbert, truly a professional man for all seasons and showman who was an excellent and amusing interviewee and recorded his memoirs in All My Flashbacks. Rest in peace.

The Shape of Water (2017)

I would say take care of your teeth and fuck a lot more. Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is a mute, isolated woman who works as a cleaning lady in a hidden, high-security top secret government research laboratory in 1962 Baltimore. Her life changes when she discovers the lab’s classified asset – a mysterious, scaled amphibian creature (Doug Jones) from South America that lives in a water tank. As Elisa develops a unique bond with her new friend, she soon learns that its fate and very survival lies in the hands of a hostile and violently sadistic government agent Strickland (Michael Shannon) and a marine biologist Dimitri (Michael Stuhlbarg) who is actually a Russian spy. With the help of her co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and her next door neighbour Giles (Richard Jenkins) a gay out of work commercial illustrator, she finds a way to save him and alter her own reality … It all seems so very unlikely – plagiarism suits notwithstanding – Guillermo Del Toro’s homage to his 50s childhood fave, Creature from the Black Lagoon. However this moves like the clappers with just enough time for the very mannered Hawkins to find an appropriate character to suit her mobile features. Tonally it sits somewhere amid the work of Jean-Pierre Jeunet with added masturbation and violence, and the creature – except for one appalling scene which as a cat-lover I can’t even bring myself to recall – is remarkably sympathetic. You might call it a politically correct fairytale about interracial sex (it’s a pretty crass allegory) for the snowflake generation – me, I liked it anywho because it portrays a yearning and an empathy that is very appealing and well played. Co-written with Vanessa Taylor.

Hell is a City (1960)

Do you know how long it is since you made love to me?  World-weary police inspector Harry Martineau (Stanley Baker) waits in Manchester for an escaped killer Don Starling (John Crawford) to return for his loot and when there’s a violent jailbreak followed by a street robbery which winds up with the murder of a young woman and her body is found dumped on the moors he thinks his man is on the loose…. This police procedural has a lot going for it, not least the location shooting in Manchester, Stanley Baker’s performance (did he ever give a bad one) and the obsession that drives him. Then there are the women – a louche bunch who don’t mind him at all but he’s got a nagging bored wife Judith (Maxine Audley) who’s basically frigid and wonders why he can’t call her every morning despite being up to his oxters in murder. As Martineau works through his contacts to find the gang and locate Starling he encounters the febrile women in Starling’s life –  randy barmaid Lucky Lusk (Vanda Godsell), unfaithful Chloe Hawkins (Billie Whitelaw) who’s married to Gus Hawkins (Donald Pleasence) who’s been robbed, and deaf and dumb Silver Steele (Sarah Branch) the granddaughter of antiques dealer Doug Savage (Joseph Tomelty) who may know more than he’s saying … This is an astonishingly powerful genre work, gaining traction from the toughness, the sadism and the brittle knowing dialogue which goes a long way to explaining the relations between thuggish men and dissatisfied women.  Martineau will say or do anything to stop the carnage. There’s a harrowing mano a mano fight to the near death on the rooftops of this drab city. Adapted from Maurice Procter’s novel by director Val Guest, who is responsible for so many great cult films of the era. There’s a great team here – Hammer producer Michael Carreras, composer Stanley Black and cinematographer Arthur Grant. You’ll shiver when the girl is left on the moors. Manchester. So much to answer for.

Elizabeth Taylor Birthday Blogathon

In the spirit of blogging solidarity, I’m joining in the Elizabeth Taylor blogathon which you can find here!

THE ELIZABETH TAYLOR BLOGATHON IS HERE

Happy Birthday George Harrison Born 25th February 1943

Today would be Beatle George Harrison’s 75th birthday. How poignant.

Christine (2016)

So, now, in keeping with WZRB policy, presenting the most immediate and complete reports of local “blood and guts”, TV 30 presents what is believed to be a television first. In living color, an exclusive coverage of an attempted suicide. In Sarasota, Florida, circa 1974, an ambitious, 29-year-old reporter Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall) is relentlessly motivated to succeed. She earwigs on a radio scanner in her teenage bedroom to get ahead on stories. She knows she has talent, but being a driven career woman comes with its own challenges, especially when competition for a promotion, a floor manager Jean (Maria Dizzia) scoops a story on a serial killer in Gainesville (“but that’s not local! I don’t know the rules!”) and a tumultuous home life lead her to succumb to a state of depression which we learn from her mother Peg (J. Smith Cameron) is a regular occurrence. She is also dealing with horrific abdominal pains which are the result of a dodgy ovary and surgery could leave her infertile depriving her of her dream to have a child. She’s an unmarried virgin with no man in the wings. With ratings on the floor, the station manager Michael (Tracy Letts) issues a mandate to deliver juicier and more exploitative stories at odds with her serious brand of issue-based journalism and she wants to get away from fender benders and strawberry festivals contrary to his urging her to make news sensational. When the show’s host George (Michael C. Hall) takes her on a date as a ruse to introduce her to group therapy before breaking the shocker that he’s going to the new outlet in Baltimore with the station owner (John Cullum) and she then discovers that he’s taking the blonde sports moppet with him because they’ve got presenting chemistry, she decides on a truly sensational course … The true-life story of a woman journalist struggling with mental illness and the pressures of local TV ratings is a sad portrait played with devastating accuracy by Hall. Her nasal harshness as a charisma-free broadcaster is coupled with her utterly infantile home life which she shares with an equally immature mother who has decided to shack up with a younger, unsympathetic man. Bad move! This narrative of what is presumably bipolar disorder will ring several bells and whistles for those of us who have had unpleasant dealings with such sufferers – manic, aggressively obnoxious highs and a long, slow descent into a trough of weird behaviour which is usually deflected onto carefully chosen targets in their orbit with a cunning worthy of secret agents (hello Carrie in Homeland! Thankfully Hall is never so inaccurately wild-eyed and ludicrous.) Unfortunately in this case the protagonist directs her violence towards herself in an instance of desperate attention-seeking which according to her lead-in is “an attempted suicide”.  A tad on the long side, it’s hard to know which is actually more depressing – the outcome, or the conditions of the workplace which drove her to it.  As sad as the yellow-tinged cinematography.  Screenplay by Craig Shilowich and directed by Antonio Campas.

Philomena (2013)

It’s  funny isn’t it? All the pieces of paper designed to help you find him have been destroyed, but guess what, the one piece of paper designed to stop you finding him has been lovingly preserved. God and his infinite wisdom decided to spare that from the flames. In 1952 Irish teenager Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) became pregnant out of wedlock and was sent to a convent. When her baby, Anthony, was a toddler, the nuns took Philomena’s child away from her and put him up for adoption in the US. For the next 50 years, she searched tirelessly for her son. When former BBC correspondent Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) – who’s been fired from the Labour Party in disgrace – learns of her story, he becomes her ally after initial reluctance to take on a human interest story. They travel together to America to find Anthony and become unexpectedly close in the process… Actor and writer Coogan who (with Jeff Pope) adapted Sixsmith’s book about the real life Philomena finds a real niche for emotive comedy in this tragic story of a mother’s search for the son she was forced to give up after an illicit episode of underage sex leading to years spent in the service of the Irish Catholic nuns who took her in.  Dench and Coogan prove a formidable double act, he the reasoned, caring journo, she the guilt-ridden sharp-tongued mother whose legitimate daughter coaxes her to look for her other offspring many years later, when they are put off by the obdurate misinformation emanating from the Christian sisterhood who blithely conceal a terrible secret. Moving, well played and deftly handled. Directed by Stephen Frears.