The Great Escape (1963)

The famous (blacklisted) screenwriter Walter Bernstein once said that the success or failure of a film could be determined by its premise. Paul Brickhill’s true account of hundreds of Commonwealth POWs doing their darnedest to escape from Stalag Luft III by a tunnel made for a sentimental classic that still thrills and excites no matter how many times you watch it. Almost twenty years after hostilities had ceased there was no let-up in war films and everyone knew what side they were on. James Clavell and WR Burnett adapted the book. Burnett had adapted Gunga Din which was shot as Sergeants 3 by director John Sturges a couple of years earlier.  He was good at handling action and The Magnificent Seven also demonstrated his capacity to bring an ensemble together in a balanced way albeit in a fashion that flattered the egos of the stars. A surprising cast was assembled and boy did they deliver the goods – even James Coburn, utterly miscast as an Aussie, entertains. Amongst their number James Garner does a William Holden as the Scrounger, whose friendship with the Forger (Donald Pleasance) gives them both a taste of freedom, Richard Attenborough is terrific as steadfast Roger Bushell (a variant on Alec Guinness’ turn in Bridge on the River Kwai),  Gordon Jackson has the unfortunate task of replying to the Nazis at the station, and David McCallum is Ashley-Pitt or Dispersal, the man with the blond pageboy cut who falls at the last hurdle.  It falls to James Donald to pass on the bad news.  It is however Steve McQueen as Virgil Hilts, the Cooler King, who cemented his place in film history bouncing off the barbed wire fence on that motorbike. Cool is the word. To quote Susie Hinton, The Motorcycle Boy Reigns! Simply a classic.

T-Men (1947)

The semi-documentary approach was in vogue in the immediate post-World War 2 era. Partly due to the war itself, the economics and the fashion for Italian neo-realist approaches. Director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton revelled in this pacy story about treasury agents going after a counterfeiting ring. What is lacking in star power and what irritates about the ‘official’ voiceover narration is made up for in action and tension. It’s also good to see Los Angeles in full flow in 1947. Alton’s work was truly extraordinary here and his book Painting With Light appeared two years later, explaining his aesthetic.  He and Mann made the beautiful The Black Book/Reign of Terror in 1949, a political allegory set around the French Revolution: that’s a film you simply have to see. They also collaborated on Raw Deal (again with Dennis O’Keeffe) in 1948 and Mann also worked uncredited that year with Alton on He Walked By Night, with some of the best cinematography you will ever see:  truly these men achieved great visuals together. Alton would move onto colour with An American In Paris; Mann would of course go on to direct some of the best westerns of the 1950s and he spent most of the 1960s working on epics like El Cid before dying aged just 60 in 1967.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

Everything about this is smooth, from the opening graphic, creating the autumnal palette that drives the film’s design, to the reinterpretation by writers Leslie Dixon & Kurt Wimmer of Alan R. Trustman’s story, through the pacing, score (one of Bill Conti’s best), production design, direction (John McTiernan) and the wonderful, sassy performances by Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, who has one of the best women’s roles in the past 40 years. There’s nothing about this I don’t like – and I prefer it to the original, sacrilege though that may be in some quarters. Gorgeous, sophisticated and delicious, in every way.