Captain Boycott (1947)

I simply can’t understand a man like that. In 1880s Ireland Charles Stewart Parnell (Robert Donat) makes a rousing speech against the villainous property thefts by the British in Ireland but urges passive resistance, shunning rather than killing landlords. In a Mayo village, British landowner Captain Charles Boycott (Cecil Parker) dispossesses the townspeople who are being charged extortionate rents as his tenants and uses police and army to evict them, leaving them without hope. But when a passionate farmer Hugh Davin (Stewart Granger) creates an organised and nonviolent rebellion against the oppressor and falls in love with a beautiful newcomer Ann Killain (Kathleen Ryan) he proves that the Irish people are willing to fight for their rights ... You can’t make British soldiers fight for what any fool can see is an unjust cause.  Wolfgang Wilhelm’s screenplay makes light work of the systematic property rout and starving of Irish citizens described in Philip Rooney’s source novel, weaving a skein of complicity, action and politics that rings true. Co-written by director Frank Launder, with additional dialogue by Paul Vincent Carroll and Patrick Campbell,  the location shooting (with Westmeath standing in for Mayo) adding immeasurably to this history lesson about the infamous land agent who entered the lexicon because of the campaign of ostracising that brought him recognition. The cast is a Who’s Who of the British and Irish acting contingent of the era including the genial Noel Purcell playing Daniel McGinty a teacher who is also a crafty agitator, Mervyn Johns as a sneaky property dealer, Alastair Sim as a Catholic priest, Father McKeogh, and Maurice Denham as Lieutenant Colonel Strickland who is inclined to attribute Boycott’s conduct to a kind of personal pig-headed eccentricity rather than Anglo rule. Granger has a good role and is up to the witty and lively construction of this typical Launder and Gilliat production. William Alwyn’s spirited score captures the mood of the rebellion very well. Can you count pain – suffering – hunger – wretchedness?

Sirocco (1951)

We want Syria for ourselves.  Damascus, 1925. American Harry Smith (Humphrey Bogart) is selling guns to Emir Hassan (Onslow Stevens), whose Syrian rebels are battling the occupying French troops. Hoping to stem the fighting, French Colonel Feroud (Lee J. Cobb) asks Harry to introduce him to Hassan. Meanwhile, Feroud’s girlfriend, Violette (Märta Torén), is increasingly drawn to Harry. While she wants Harry to ferry her out of the dangerous country on one of his regular trips to Cairo, he stays and tries to make a profit from his dealings with both Hassan and Feroud... Who cares whose guns are firing as long as they’re not shooting at you?  This promisingly Hemingwayesque riff on the premise of Casablanca lacks its diamond-sharp characters and dialogue but boasts a few good performances, particularly from Cobb, even if Toren is no Ingrid Bergman. One of the best scenes is between them when he responds horribly violently to her question,  What kind of man are you? It also supplies the tragic ending but in a very different manner as you might imagine from the war-torn streets of Syria, the Twenties or not because Bogie’s gun-running character (the name is a nod to his role in To Have and Have Not) has a change of heart and he makes a calculated decision in which only he can be the loser when he persists in playing both ends against the middle. Screenplay by A.I. Bezzerides (whose novel The Long Haul was the basis for Bogart’s film They Drive By Night) and Hans Jacoby from Joseph Kessel’s 1936 novel Coup de Grace and directed by Curtis Bernhardt. You’re a man entirely without moral scruples

The Wild Bunch (1969)

If they move… kill ’em! In 1913, ageing outlaw Pike Bishop (William Holden) prepares to retire after one final botched robbery on the Mexican border. Joined by his gang, including Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine) and brothers Lyle (Warren Oates) and Tector Gorch (Ben Johnson), Bishop discovers the heist is a setup orchestrated in part by his old partner, Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan) now a ruthless mercenary. They’ve wound up with washers, not silver. As the remaining gang cross the Rio Grande and take refuge in Mexican territory, Thornton trails them, resulting in their taking on a suicide mission if ever there were one – as they are engaged by double-crossing Mexican General Mapache (Emilio Fernandez) to hijack a stash of guns from a train while he fights Pancho Villa under the military guidance of a German Commander (Fernando Wagner) on the eve of WW1 … This was going to be my last.  Sublime filmmaking from one of the iconoclasts of American cinema, Sam Peckinpah, who wrote the screenplay with Walon Green, the writer of the original story with Roy N. Sickner.  The titles sequence with scorpions tells us that this will be so much more than your regular western:  it’s a meditation on masculinity, ageing, violence, warfare and revenge.  Like all of Peckinpah’s genre work its focus is on the male in a hostile environment and it abounds in visual style with Peckinpah and cinematographer Lucien Ballard using multiple camera setups and different film speeds to accentuate the conflict between the old and the new, mythology and modernity. They demonstrate that there can be honour among thieves, if it is of a singularly macho variety. There is also friendship, pragmatism, humour and resignation.  The final shootout is glorious. This is one of the crowning achievements in cinema. Walk softly, boys

Ryan’s Daughter (1970)

It’s not a hangin’ matter to be young… but it maybe should be a hangin’ matter for a – man of middle age – to – try and steal the youth from a young girl. Especially, a man like me and a – girl like you. You were meant for the wide world, Rose. Not this place, not this. Rosy Ryan (Sarah Miles) is the daughter of publican Tom (Leo McKern) in a small seaside Irish village during World War One where the nationalist locals taunt the British soldiers stationed nearby in the wake of the failed Easter Rising of 1916. Rosy falls for Master Shaughnessy (Robert Mitchum) the local widowed schoolteacher and imagines they will have an exciting life but he has no interest in sex. Major Randolph Doryan (Christopher Jones) arrives from the Front crippled and suffering from shellshock. Rosy assists him when he collapses in her father’s pub and they commence a passionate relationship as Charles becomes suspicious and the local halfwit Michael (John Mills) finds Doryan’s medal and wears it around the village. The Irish Republican Brotherhood want to retrieve arms from a wrecked German ship offshore but while the villagers assist, Ryan tips off the British and Doryan and his men are waiting for them.  When the villagers put two and two together they conclude that Rosy is the culprit and wreak revenge …  In a week’s time it’s the 110th anniversary of the great British director David Lean’s birth and this was released 47 years ago this weekend. It’s almost St Patrick’s Day and in honour of our favourite national holiday it’s time to watch this again, the hugely controversial film which caused his career immense difficulties. The British critics reserved a rare kind of contempt for the directors who mastered the visual – as though it were inimical to the cinematic form:  look what they did to Michael Powell. But this elicited ire from the other side of the Atlantic too – Roger Ebert believed the scale of the production was antithetical to the size of the story (as though one’s feelings are supposed to be as controlled as those in Brief Encounter. Someone should have told Shakespeare.) It’s hard to understand why this should be from this vantage point – it’s a women’s picture, as so many of his films were – it looks wonderful, the acting is attractive even if Jones’ chops don’t match up to his good looks and the scenario of a problematic marriage between a young woman and a much older stick in the mud is hardly unusual. In fact it originated in Robert Bolt’s desire to make a version of Madame Bovary to star his wife, Miles. It was Lean who suggested transposing the idea to a different setting using the same kinds of characters and construction. Perhaps it’s the issue of the gloriously melodramatic backdrop – the impact of the First World War and the British Government on a remote Irish seaside village. Perhaps it was the timing. Or perhaps reports from the set alienated the budget-conscious journos – Lean waited a full year to get the right kind of storm and took the unit to South Africa to film it because it never materialised while on location in Kerry and Clare. However this was big at the box office and there are moments and scenes to savour even if you feel that John Mills’ performance as the cretin can make you wince betimes. Surrender to the tragic romance and the feeling of a love worth fighting for in an epic drama scored by Maurice Jarre. It’s David Lean, dammit!

Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi (2017)

This is not going to go the way you think. The showdown between the rebels and the First Order led by Snoke (Andy Serkis) is underway. Rey (Daisy Ridley) goes to Ahch-To to find out from Luke (Mark Hamill) what happened between him and Kylo Ren/Ben Solo (Adam Driver) and recruit him. Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) is injured in combat so someone has to take over the bridge and it’s not going to be Poe (Oscar Isaac) because he just ordered a bombing that will cost them too much. Finn (John Boyega) and a new character Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) figure out they need to get a code to break into the Order’s ability to track the fleet. Luke teaches Rey to tap into her powers but it’s Kylo Ren who gets into her head …How did anyone get the idea to hire Rian Johnson to both write and direct this difficult second album? The guy who made Brick (not as good as Veronica Mars) and Looper (entirely predictable from the tricksy go)? Whoever they are, they deserve a raise. This takes all the series’ tropes, turns them around, gives them a shake and never quits from the get-go which commences at a gallop. Maybe you’ll quibble about the turn to the dark side (and particularly the changes to Luke’s character) but there’s a traditional inevitability about this Freudian epic which Johnson plays on in order to clear the path for new people. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll cheer – especially when one ogre dies and an old-timer reappears. Time to let old things go. Wildly exciting. Oh my goodness! When’s the next show?! RIP Princess Carrie.

The Master of Ballantrae (1953)

A delightful sanctuary, monsieur. A safe haven for buccaneers! 1745 Scotland. At the Durrisdeer estate Jamie Durie (Errol Flynn), his younger brother Henry (Anthony Steel) and their father Lord Durrisdeer (Felix Aylmer) hear about the Jacobite rising. Their advisor MacKellar (Mervyn Johns) recommends that one son side with the rebels, the other with King George II, thus preserving the estate no matter who wins. Jamie wins to fight in the uprising in a coin toss above the objections of his fiancee Lady Alison (Beatrice Campbell). The rebels are crushed at Culloden and Jamie teams up with Colonel Francis Burke (Roger Livesey) a characterful Irish adventuring type and they manage to get back to Durrisdeer where they intend securing money and passage to France. Jamie’s mistress Jessie (Yvonne Furneaux) betrays him to the British out of jealousy over his relationship with Alison:  he is shot by Major Clarendon (Ralph Truman) and falls into the sea. Henry becomes the heir because Jamie is presumed dead – but instead he’s wounded and takes off with Burke on a ship bound for the West Indies. There they are betrayed by Captain McCauley (Moultrie Kelsall) and captured by pirates led by Captain Arnaud (Jacques Berthier) a man for whom execution is a spectator sport. Jamie goes into partnership with him and when they arrive at Tortugas Bay, they see a rich Spanish galleon captured by fellow buccaneer Captain Mendoza (Charles Goldner). Arnaud agrees to Jamie’s idea that they steal the ship. But then he turns on Jamie who kills him in a duel and takes command. They sail for Scotland and Jamie returns to the family estate with pirate treasure, only to arrive in a middle of a party celebrating Henry’s engagement – to Alison! He confronts his brother, despite the presence of British officers. A fight breaks out, in which Henry tries to aid Jamie. The unequal fight ends with Jamie and Burke condemned to death. Jessie helps them escape, at the cost of her own life. Henry also assists them. Jamie tells his brother of the location of some treasure which Henry can then use to pay off Jamie’s gambling debts. Alison decides to go with Jamie to an uncertain future and she, Burke and Jamie all ride off together. This Robert Louis Stevenson adaptation isn’t a major pirate film or actioner but it has lots of good things about it – even if the wonderfully charismatic and handsome Flynn was clearly showing signs of premature ageing despite Jack Cardiff’s lovely photography. Livesey (of all people!) has the lion’s share of the fun dialogue as the rambunctious Irishman in a movie that has pretty much everything – dancing, swashbuckling, pirates, Indians, politics, romance and betrayal. What more do you want?! Oh, it’s got a tragic sacrifice by a beautiful woman and a wonderfully jaunty score by William Alwyn. And just relish those fabulous pirate scenes shot in Palermo, standing in for the West Indies. Adapted by Herb Meadow and Harold Medford and directed by William Keighley, whose fourth and final film with Flynn this was and in fact it marked his retirement from the movies.

Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)

Everybody’s got a right to be a sucker once. When Budd Boetticher wrote this story he thought it would be a perfect return to Hollywood after his near-decade long Mexican odyssey when the subject of his bullfighting documentary died and he nearly bought the farm himself. But his career was effectively over and this was rewritten by Albert Maltz, another (blacklisted) resident of Mexico and instead of his hoped-for Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr starring, it was supposed to have Elizabeth Taylor in the lead. She gave the script to Clint Eastwood on the set of Where Eagles Dare (in which he co-starred with Richard Burton) and the whole game changed when it wasn’t going to be shot in Spain. In fact it became a Mexican co-production.  Eastwood is Hogan, a mercenary en route to assist Mexican revolutionaries against the French who were then engaged in an invasion of the country, with the promise of enough gold to set up a bar in California. He rescues nun Sara (MacLaine) who has had her clothes ripped off her by a bunch of marauding cowboys and he shoots them dead. She proves to be much more resourceful than he expects and enjoys drinking, smoking and helps him stop an ammunition train in its tracks as they make their way to a French fort on behalf of the Juaristas.  It turns out that the nun’s garb is just a costume that covers up her real vocation, that of prostitute … Gorgeously shot by Gabriel Figueroa (assisted by Bruce Surtees) this is a sensational comedy western with two gripping star performances. Don Siegel didn’t like MacLaine whom he declared unfeminine because she had too many balls. It was the last time Eastwood got second billing and also the last time that he would agree to an actress of stature as his co-star until Meryl Streep acted opposite him in The Bridges of Madison County. Siegel takes a spaghetti-style story and gives it some nicely sardonic twists with some terrific scenes – when MacLaine is giving a former client the last rites; and playing for time with General LeClaire (Albert Morin) while children dump a dynamite-filled pinata at the fort, to name but two. Boetticher was appalled at the alterations to his original story and when Siegel said he woke up every day to a paycheque, Boetticher responded he woke up every day and could look at himself in the mirror. Nonetheless this is engaging, smart and funny and a really great acting masterclass. Ennio Morricone’s insistent, brutally repetitive score is a plus.

The Birth of a Nation (2016)

William Kienzle once wrote that nothing beats religion, sex and murder. This almost-true (ish) story of Nat Turner (Nate Parker) a literate slave and preacher in antebellum Virginia has all of the above plus a sense of righteousness that along with Twelve Years a Slave risks a new era of blaxploitation with rather different text than in the Seventies.  We are dealing with archetypes rather than real characters despite its biographical origins. Year in year out, another brutal beating, unwatchable torture and horrible violence. From his childhood to his inevitable death by hanging after taking revenge on the supposedly kindly owner Samuel Turner (Armie Hammer) who betrays him after persuading him to suppress rebellion through religion we are not remotely surprised by any of the narrative turns. Worthy but not really memorable, from the quadruple threat Parker – who directs and produces as well as co-writing with Jean McGianni Celestin.

Blade Runner (1982)

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Los Angeles 2019. A rebellion amongst replicants in the off-colonies has to be put down and blade runner (or detective/android killer) Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is recruited to assassinate the leaders – Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), Pris (Daryl Hannah) and Zhora (Joanna Cassidy). The replicants are returning to Earth in order to extend their four-year lifespan. His employer, the boss of the Tyrell Corporation introduces him to Rachael (Sean Young) his most cherished creation …  Hampton Fancher and David Peoples loosely adapted Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and with Ridley Scott at the helm created an utterly beguiling brand of future shock which is beautiful and dazzling, grand and depressing. It’s a rain-slicked Metropolis where life is cheap and detectives prowl the streets like Chandler was scripting with robots:  human nature never really changes.  The mise-en-scène falls into both the sci-fi and film noir genres (echoing the identity crisis at the heart of the story). A proliferation of signs from both cinematic traditions, coupled with overwhelming production design (by Lawrence G. Paull and David Snyder based on sketches by Scott and Syd Mead) calls to mind modern-day Hong Kong, music videos and the fog and teeming rain associated with America in a World War II era familiar from hundreds of noir movies, this is a virtual essay in postmodernism (which supplants the concept of genre with that of textuality). This is such a complex quasi-generic film, awash with implications for representation in the age of modern technology which are obvious:  ‘authenticity’, ‘realism’ are artificial constructs.  A play on our familiarity with other cultural products is central to postmodernism’s perceived jokiness, while the traditional relationships between time and space are condensed (a condition of postmodernity) and undermined to create virtual reality so that a ‘real, knowable world’ is just that – a world in quotation marks, as real or unreal as you choose to make it.  The film represents a summary of this problem with a jumble of signs referring to other signs – its pastiche of styles telescoping the ancient world, 1940s, 1980s and 2019, its electronic soundtrack (by Eighties maestro Vangelis) and a raft of references to other movies, other characters, ideas and themes.  It’s about dystopia and imperialism, dehumanisation by a Tyrannical Corporation, totalitarianist tech companies and class revolution, the nature and function of memory, what it is to be free, what it is to have power and to have none, the fragmentary nature of identity in a dying culture, what it means to be human. No matter what version you watch – and there are nine (variously with and without voiceovers and certain revelations/clarifications) if you include The Director’s Cut and The Final Cut – you will never be able to stop its imagery searing your cortex. Philip K. Dick saw some footage before his untimely death from a stroke – and loved it. It is visionary cinema and it is astonishing. This is my 1,400th post on Mondo Movies. Thank you for watching. MM#1400

Bad Neighbours 2 (2016)

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Aka Neighbours 2:  Sorority Rising.  They’re back! Well, everyone’s gone and grown up. Sort of. Opening on a horribly vomitous sex scene, Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne realise they’re having another baby. They’re trying to sell their house and it’s in escrow now which they do not understand even when the realtor tries to explain. All they know is their toddler daughter keeps playing with a pink dildo in front of people. Meanwhile, Zac Efron’s bestie Dave Franco is getting married. To a guy. So he has to move out of their place and has nowhere to go – except back to the old frat house, where some bolshie girls led by Chloe Grace Moretz want to set up an alt-sorority so they can party righteously. He mentors them until they dump him while he’s lecturing them (they do it on their phones). So he teams up with Seth and Rose to get rid of the girls in order that their house sale goes through. There ensues … total mayhem! Screamingly funny, flat out gross out, hilarious, physical, bad taste comedy. Five buckets of money, that’s all you need. For anything! Party on, rad dudettes! Written by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Andrew Jay Cohen, Brendan O’Brien and director Nicholas Stoller.