Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

Won’t some of you people get him up off the ground and into it? 1909. Las Cruces, New Mexico. Pat Garrett (James Coburn) is riding with men working for the Santa Fe Ring, when he is ambushed and coldly killed by his associates, including one John W. Poe (John Beck). In 1881 in Old Fort Sumner, New Mexico, William H. Bonne aka Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) is passing the time with friends shooting chickens for fun. Garrett, an old friend of Billy’s, rides into town with Deputy Sheriff J. W. Bell (Matt Clark) and joins the diversion. Later, over drinks, Garrett informs Billy that the electorate want him out of the country and in five days when he becomes Sheriff of Lincoln County he will make Billy leave. Six days later, Garrett and his deputies surround the small farmhouse where Billy and his gang are holed up. In the ensuing gun battle, Charlie Bowdre (Charles Martin Smith) and several other men on both sides are killed and Billy surrenders and is taken prisoner. While Billy awaits his execution in the Lincoln County Jail for the killing of Buckshot Roberts a year earlier, he is taunted and beaten by self-righteous Deputy Sheriff Bob Olinger (R.G. Armstrong) while the hangman’s gallows are being built nearby. Garrett warns Olinger not to taunt Billy again or he will be fired and sent back to Texas; then, Garrett leaves town to collect taxes leaving his two deputies to guard Billy. Olinger again argues with Billy but after J. W. Bell intervenes, Olinger leaves to get a drink. Billy finds a gun hidden for him in the outhouse and shoots Bell in the back. He then retrieves Olinger’s shotgun loaded with sixteen thin dimes and shoots Olinger dead in the street, saying, Keep the change, Bob. Billy leaves town. After Garrett returns to Lincoln and recruits a new deputy sheriff Alamosa Bill Kermit (Jack Elam), he rides to Santa Fe to meet with Governor Lew Wallace (Jason Robards), who introduces him to a pair of powerful men from the Santa Fe Ring. They offer him $1,000 for the capture of Billy the Kid, with five hundred dollars upfront. Garrett rejects the money and says they can pay him in full when Billy is brought in. He warns them that he will be successful as long as another cattle war is not started. Meanwhile, Billy returns to his gang at Old Fort Sumner, where he decides to hide back for a few days. He is confronted by three strangers looking to kill him; all three are killed in the subsequent shootout, helped by another stranger called Alias (Bob Dylan), who kills one of the men with a knife through the neck. Alias had witnessed Billy’s escape from the Lincoln County Jail. Garrett meets up with Sheriff Colin Baker (Slim Pickens), hoping he can provide information on Billy’s whereabouts. Baker and his wife go with Garrett to arrest some of Billy’s old gang. In a gunfight, the gang members including Black Harris (L.Q. Jones) are killed and Baker is mortally wounded. Baker’s wife (Katy Jurado) comforts the dying lawman as he waits to die by a river. Later that evening, Garrett watches a barge floating down a river with a man shooting bottles in the water. The two face off briefly from a distance before lowering their rifles. Garrett is joined by a glory-seeking John W. Poe, who works for the Santa Fe Ring. The two ride southwest to meet John Chisum (Barry Sullivan) a powerful cattle baron, who informs them that Billy has been rustling his cattle again and killed some of his men; Billy once worked for him and claimed that Chisum owes him $500 of back salary … I sure wish you’d try, son. I got my shotgun full of 16 thin dimes. Enough to spread you out like a crazy woman’s quilt. With its sweeping photography by John Coquillon, a lineup of genre performers that calls up legions of older films and a legendary soundtrack by Bob Dylan with the song Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door seared into cultural memory, this would appear to have been an instant classic. The reality was quite different. Rudy Wurlitzer’s screenplay was rewritten in collaboration with director Sam Peckinpah, who took over from Monte Hellman when Coburn indicated he wanted to play Garrett. Peckinpah had already made two films that significantly revised perceptions of the western genre with Ride the High Country and The Wild Bunch and this was going to conclude his thoughts on the subject. Wurlitzer’s feelings about the changes were revealed in a book about the making of the film and they were not kind to the director. Surrounding Kristofferson with western acting legends bolstered the cast which now boasted Dylan, included at Kristofferson’s request. Peckinpah had apparently never heard of him. You’re in poor company, Pat. Following a very troubled shoot in Mexico where MGM insisted local equipment and crew be used led to expensive reshoots with decent cameras and the soaring production costs and issues arising caused a serious blip in Peckinpah’s career and reputation. A chaotic edit using six different editors with Peckinpah’s 165 minute cut deemed unreleasable led to a second cut that was forty minutes shorter but wasn’t approved by the studio whose eventual 106 minute release version pleased nobody including most of the critics. Ten years or so later Peckinpah’s preview edition got a release on Laserdisc and eventually DVD which includes bits of every cut in yet another iteration and happily along with Peckinpah’s version is what we’ve watched again. I can assure you, Mr. Garrett, that Chisum and the others have been advised to recognize their position. And in this particular game, there are only a few plays left. I’d advise you to grab on to a winning hand while you have a chance. The texture of the film improves in the longer cut if only to enhance the leads’ characterisation – we literally see more of them as they develop through the framing story. It also lends a kind of poignancy that is otherwise elided in a more violent sequences of shoot-em-ups in the shorter version. I used to know when to leave. The question remains about the use of the Dylan song whether for aesthetic or narrative significance but its inclusion makes this stand out from the crowd. Kristofferson told Spencer Leigh in a 2004 interview, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door was in that scene where Slim Pickens was dying and it was the strongest use of music that I had ever seen in a film. Unfortunately Sam didn’t include it in his Director’s Cut. Sam had a blind spot there. He thought that the producer had forced Bob on him to make the film commercial and I don’t think he appreciated who Bob was. I thought Dylan was great in the film, he looked great and you couldn’t take your eyes off him, and his music was fantastic. There are showstopping images – to name but two, the opening shooting of the chicken which of course brings to mind Cockfighter (the next film that Hellman would make after he was supposed to make this) and when the kids play with the hangman’s noose which is shocking yet oddly pleasing only because it seems like something kids would do when they’ve nothing else to hand. The beating administered to Billy by religion-crazed Deputy Sheriff Olinger is properly shocking with the screams of Repent lingering in the air. This stops just short of great art but it is still a truly iconic western with moments of almost bucolic expressivity. When are you going to learn that you can’t trust anybody, not even yourself?

Richard III (1955)

Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York. King Edward IV (Cedric Hardwicke) has been placed on the throne with the help of his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Laurence Olivier) having wrested power militarily from Henry VI of the House of Lancaster. After Edward’s coronation in the Great Hall, with his brothers George, Duke of Clarence (John Gielgud) and Richard watching, he leaves with his wife Queen Elizabeth (Mary Kerridge) and sons. Richard contemplates the throne, before advancing towards the audience and then addressing them, delivering a monologue outlining his physical deformities which include a hunched back and withered arm. He describes his jealousy over his brother’s rise to power in contrast to his own more lowly position. He dedicates himself to task and plans to frame his brother, George for conspiring to kill the King, and to have George sent to the Tower of London, by claiming George will murder Edward’s heirs. He then tells his brother he will help him get out. Having confused and deceived the King, Richard proceeds with his plans after getting a warrant and enlists two ruffians Dighton (Michael Gough) and Forest (Michael Ripper) to do the dreadful deed. George is murdered, drowned in a butt of wine. Though Edward had sent a pardon to Richard, Richard stopped it passing. Richard goes on to woo and seduce The Lady Anne (Claire Bloom). While she hates him for killing her husband and father she cannot resist and marries him. Richard then orchestrates disorder in the court, fuelling rivalries and setting the court against the Queen consort, Elizabeth (Mary Kerridge). The King, weakened and exhausted, appoints Richard as Lord Protector and dies after hearing of the death of George. Edward’s son the Prince of Wales (Paul Huson), soon to become Edward V, is met by Richard while en route to London. Richard has the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Hastings (Alec Clunes) arrested and executed and forces the young King, along with his younger brother the Duke of York (Andy Shine), to have an extended stay at the Tower of London. All obstacles now removed from his path to the throne, Richard enlists the help of his cousin the corrupt Duke of Buckingham (Ralph Richardson) to change his public image in order to become popular with the people. Richard then becomes the people’s first choice to become the new King. Buckingham helps Richard on terms of being given the title of Earl of Hereford with its income, but baulks at the prospect of murdering the two princes. Richard asks a minor knight Sir James Tyrrel (Patrick Troughton), whom he knows to be ambitious, to have young Edward and the Duke of York killed in the Tower of London. Buckingham, having requested his earldom at Richard’s coronation, fears for his life when Richard (angry at Buckingham for not killing the princes) shouts I am not in the giving vein today! Buckingham joins up with the opposition against Richard’s rule. Now fearful of dwindling popularity, Richard raises an army to defend his throne and the House of York against the House of Lancaster led by Henry Tudor (Stanley Baker), the Earl of Richmond and later Henry VII of England at Bosworth Field. However before the battle Buckingham is captured and executed. On the eve of the battle, Richard is haunted by the ghosts of all those he has killed in his bloody ascent to the throne. He wakes up screaming … You should bear me on your shoulder! On 11th March 1956 this became the most watched film broadcast on TV in the US (simultaneously released in cinemas) and 11 years later when it was re-released in theatres it made records again – it’s probably the most popular historical Shakespeare screen adaptation and contributes to the (mis)understandings about its caricatured protagonist which have lately been corrected by the quietly powerful recent English film The Lost King. It was Laurence Olivier’s third time to direct and star in a Shakespeare production and if not as initially outwardly acclaimed as its predecessors latterly it is viewed as his best film, a stark and lucid narrative whose Technicolor visual influence could even be seen in Disney’s feature animation Sleeping Beauty, among others. Olivier of course makes for a classic, charismatic even campy villain and the contours of his rise and fall make for an utterly compelling watch. Sometimes criticised for a staid staging, this is a vividly played drama led by an incredible ensemble of British acting talent provided by producer Alexander Korda’s London Films contracted players, with its occasional flourishes all the more surprising when Otto Heller’s camera (shooting in VistaVision) underscores an incident, moving or tracking to heighten the impact. Murder her brothers, and then marry her. This study of power and undiluted, wicked ambition is quite thrilling with the occasional emotional note struck by Bloom as the seduced widow Lady Anne or those unfortunate children, guilt tripping the audience who cannot wait to see what Richard will do next. Conscience is a word that cowards use. Those soliloquies delivered to camera insinuate themselves into the viewer’s brain and sympathies. A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse! Olivier had been working on this since he first portrayed Richard at the Old Vic in 1944 and after the successes of Henry V and Hamlet on the big screen this commemorated what might be his greatest performance as actor and director. Why, thus it is when men are ruled by women. Ably assisted by Gerry O’Hara, who took charge when Olivier was in front of the camera, this is literally masterpiece theatre, skillfully adapted (and heavily cut) by an uncredited Olivier from the 18th century stage presentations by Colley Gibber and David Garrick with a thrilling score from William Walton. I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks nor made to court an amorous looking glass, I that am rudely stamped and want love’s majesty to strut before a wanton ambling nymph, I that am curtailed of fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into breathing world scarce half made up and so lamely and unfashionable that dogs do bark at me as I halt by them

#650straightdaysofmondomovies

The 1966 re-release poster

The Hurt Locker (2008)

Pretty much the bottom line is if you are in Iraq you are dead. The second year of the Iraq War. A U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team with Bravo Company led by Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) identifies and attempts to destroy an IED (improvised explosive device) with a robot but the wagon carrying the trigger charge breaks. Team leader Staff Sergeant Matthew Thompson (Guy Pearce) places the charge by hand, but is killed when an Iraqi insurgent in a nearby shop uses a mobile phone to detonate the charge. Squad mate Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) feels guilty for failing to kill the man with the phone. Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) replaces Staff Sergeant Thompson. He is often at odds with Sergeant J. T. Sanborn because he prefers to defuse devices by hand and does not communicate his plans, removing his headset to prevent communications. He blocks Sanborn’s view with smoke grenades as he approaches an IED and defuses it only moments before an Iraqi insurgent attempts to detonate it with a 9-volt battery. In another incident, James insists on disarming a complex car bomb despite Sanborn’s protests that it is taking too long; James responds by taking off his uniform headset and ‘flipping off’ Sanborn, saying if he’s going to die he might as well be comfortable. Sanborn is so worried by his conduct that he openly suggests killing James to Eldridge while they are exploding unused ordnance outside of base. On their return to base, they encounter five armed men in Iraqi garb by an SUV which has a flat tyre. After a tense encounter, James learns they are friendly British mercenaries (aka ‘private military contractors’) led by a handsome supposed crack shot (Ralph Fiennes). While fixing the tyre, they come under sniper fire. Three of the contractors are killed before James and Sanborn take over counter-sniping, killing three insurgents. Eldridge kills the fourth who attempts to flank their position. During a raid on a warehouse, James discovers a ‘body bomb’ he believes is Beckham (Christopher Sayegh), the Iraqi boy who sells him porn DVDs and plays soccer outside of base. During the evacuation, Lt. Colonel John Cambridge (Christian Camargo), the camp’s psychiatrist and Eldridge’s counsellor, is killed in an explosion; Eldridge is more deeply traumatised. James sneaks off base with Beckham’s apparent DVD sales associate at gunpoint in his truck, telling him to take him to Beckham’s home. He is left at the home of an unrelated Iraqi professor who tells him in English he is pleased to meet someone in the CIA and when his wife attacks James he flees. Called to a petrol tanker detonation, James decides to hunt for the insurgents responsible nearby. Sanborn protests but when James begins a pursuit, he and Eldridge follow. After they split up, insurgents capture Eldridge. James and Sanborn rescue him, although Eldridge gets shot in the leg … You are now in the kill zone. Independently directed and produced by Kathryn Bigelow with a screenplay by freelance writer Mark Boal who had been embedded in the war zone in 2004, this is a relentless, fully immersive trawl through a parched, sunblasted bombscape with three men whose differing takes on their shocking reality lend this an unparalleled realism. The management of the narrative is supreme. Episodic by nature, with six roughly fifteen-minute scene-sequences demarcated by alternating forms of action and different kinds of explosive and disposal style, the contrast between the characters and their various predilections or weaknesses exhibited in their dealings with each other and situations are heightened by the escalating violence, repetition and juxtaposition. Killing off a major star is an appropriately Hitchcockian start in a story that is structurally suspenseful. In comes Renner as James, a wild man who earns the admiration of a vicious commander Colonel Reed (David Morse in one of a number of notable cameos) who sees a guy after his own take-no-injured-prisoners (literally) heart. Sanborn’s ire is juxtaposed with Eldridge’s increasing fear, handled maladroitly by a Yalie shrink whom he inadvertently invites to finally see some action – and boy does he get his after engaging in a dumb talkshow with the local terrorists. This is what we think of psychology/psychiatry – we are in a film where the right wrench is more useful than trying to rationalise the unspeakable violence of modern warfare. When the scene changes and the guys encounter the mercenaries led by Fiennes out in the desert they form a tight trio – right after Sanborn has been conspiring with Eldridge to kill James, who invariably calms things and they are rewarded with a sunset after an exhausting thirsty day of picking off the Iraqis. That happens at 65 minutes and they finally let rip back at base where Eldridge finds James’s memory box of bomb parts that didn’t kill him under his bed. It’s a bonding experience which culminates in a bout of roughhousing between James and Sanborn in which the latter comes off much worse. They discover that James has a wife and son (he’s not sure if he’s divorced) and Sanborn wants that for himself. The scene shifts and another element is finally introduced – water: on the floor of a building where they find a dead boy rigged up with a body bomb and James exhibits emotion believing him to be Beckham, the teen chancer who sells him porn outside the base. A really good bad guy hides out in the dark. Then there’s a massive explosion which results in a cauldron of fire with James believing that it was done remotely and the bomber is likely just beyond the kill zone. So he and Sanborn and Eldridge set off into the nighttime streets in uniform – a difference to the preceding evening when he went out looking for Beckham’s home as a civilian and getting beaten up by that Iraqi woman for his trouble. He shoots Eldridge – accidentally? He’s the one who’s been keeping him sane, now Eldridge has a reason to go home, falling apart physically with a busted femur just as he’s been falling apart mentally with a broken mind. Sanborn stands in a shower and does it in his uniform, collapsing in grief, adrenaline rushing out of him. Then there’s a different kind of bomb – and another variety of conflagration. Back home, shopping in the supermarket, playing with his baby, cleaning the gutters, James tells his wife Connie (Evangeline Lilly) the military needs more bomb techs. And there’s a circular conclusion, like a hero’s journey tale. Bigelow says it’s about the psychology behind the type of soldier who volunteers for this particular conflict and then, because of [their] aptitude, is chosen and given the opportunity to go into bomb disarmament and goes toward what everybody else is running from. Unfailingly tense and suspenseful, this is never less than subjective. And there goes Renner, like an astronaut in his dirtbound bombsuit, walking alone, into a moral void. This was shot by Barry Ackroyd using four 16mm cameras at a time, in Jordan and Kuwait. Two hundred hours of material were edited by Chris Innis and Bob Murawski with a score by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders. Simply stunning filmmaking, rivetting storytelling, anxiety-inducing, utterly compelling. Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director while the film got Picture, Original Screenplay, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Film Editing. A modern masterpiece. Going to war is a once in a lifetime experience. It could be fun!

The Death of Alexei Navalny 4th June 1976 – 16th February 2024

תנוח על משכבך בשלום

The world is changing. Truth is vanishing. War is coming – Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Geopolitics are coming to get us, like it or not. Putin has presumably murdered Alexei Navalny (allegedly), the lawyer and anti-corruption blogger who held him to account and whose sudden death has been announced. It’s shocking and upsetting but hardly surprising given the regime’s actions in the North of Africa, the Middle East, the United Kingdom (more fools there) and of course the brutal encroaching upon Ukraine which commenced two years ago today. The ‘globalising’ EU has been the useful idiot for the Russian regime in all of this, opening borders so that Russians could install themselves everywhere, helping turn every country into identikit kips – in Ireland the true numbers will never be known due to the doctored Census figures. The only people allowed through the ports here without ID are foreigners (Irish people get arrested stet particularly at Dublin Airport, manned, curiously, by the Department of Defence) and there are Eastern Europeans (ie Russians) established in their thousands in even the smallest towns. The Russians were wargaming off Donegal a month before the invasion of Ukraine, they’ve been trying to dig up the transatlantic cables off Kerry for half a dozen years or more and the new iteration of the KGB has an enormous operation at the Embassy in Dublin’s Rathgar. Talk about the enemy within. The Irish Navy is retiring three ships and buying another – not to defend the coastline, which is extensive, but to dump more Moslems into Europe on the Libya-Italy route. The RAF is the country’s only air protection. The island only recently got radar. It is essentially defenceless. Then there are the few Russian spies we’re informed about – for instance the woman lifted in Australia who’d worked for an Irish Member of Parliament and then in the Space Observatory in Cork which is of course connected with the EU’s programme. Two leftwing Irish MEPs have recently been named as targets by a known Russian operative posing as an Estonian MEP. In this game of zero sums, Ireland is the EU’s useful idiot with a half-Indian Prime Minister and his similarly inclined Minister for Integration begging foreigners to repopulate it, advertising the country in Urdu in the anticipation presumably of eventually inviting that non-violent immensely tolerant Jew-friendly population of Gaza to move in en masse (the same Minister refused to confirm or deny Wednesday night when interviewed) – there are mosques everywhere and hospitals are taken over by Moslems with the removal of any signs of Christianity a common consequence of their increasing ubiquity not to mention their brazen unconcealed contempt for Irish women. Try visiting A&E and finding yourself the only Irish person among a sea of foreigners who don’t speak English. Did we mention that 26 years ago before the Good Friday Agreement which triggered the invasion, occupying and colonising of Ireland, nothing worked? And now there are even fewer houses, hospitals and schools for Irish people, with fewer Irish here as the natives are outnumbered yet mysteriously more housing is needed – just not for the locals. Vulture funds have snapped up property and hotels collude with the housing and dumping of so-called asylum seekers which even the most robustly generous non-racists now realise is a total scam. Just 3% of agricultural land is ‘permitted’ to be used to grow food (the EU, dontcha know) and another c15% of the country’s fisheries (the nation’s only remaining asset and purportedly worth 2,000 times more than has ever been given it by the EU) were handed to the EU a month ago with not a word about it in the Irish media, who are working hand in glove with the Government to propagandise the new normal (admittedly they’ve had 26 years of practice and as we can see they are all bought and paid for, sadly). There have been mysterious revelations – that in 2006 the Irish Government ordered mortgage lenders to give 100% loans to non-resident Poles, that the pro-EU airline Ryanair’s flights (from somewhere Warsaw/Krakow-adjacent…) to Dublin were responsible for the 90% decrease in criminality in Poland (one-way tickets handed out to individuals exiting prison?) not to mention the Good Friday Agreement’s weird coda which this author learned was allegedly the result of a secret 1990 agreement to turn Ireland into the refugee tip of the EU (mission accomplished, clearly with the Government in receipt of 10,000 Euros a head, apparently). A huge Nigerian population despite there being no direct flights until recently. 300 arrivals daily alone from Afghanistan and South Africa (just 2 of the 200+ nationalities in the country) at the height of COVID lockdown in one week during January 2021, according to the Dublin Airport Authority. And, by the way, Irish schoolchildren are being instructed to disavow the word ‘Irish’ from their heritage and to identify as ‘European,’ whatever that means. The Islamising of Europe facilitated by Angela Merkel and her cohort of Nazis (who were inspired to do that endlessly generative performative murder-art project The Holocaust by Yasser Arafat’s cousin, fact fans) makes it all a lot easier for the ongoing destruction of a people held in ideological capture. It took only 15,000 Russians to have the Crimea declared occupied yet Irish people are outnumbered in every single village, town and city by a polyglot multi-racial grouping of probably in excess of 5 million if anecdotal evidence, overcrowding and obvious lies are unpicked (in one town of our acquaintance the ratio is conservatively estimated at 9:1). Dublin had turned into a combination of Southall and Bradford within weeks of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and became impossible to live in – overnight the tension on the streets was palpable. Now it’s a no-go area. The westernmost island off Europe has been flooded with foreigners with no historical, racial, ethnic, religious, cultural or linguistic connection with the natives – who just got rid of the supposed shackles of the English to allow the Germans to take over in 1973 and then opened the floodgates in 1998 to finally rid ourselves of our independence, our borders and our language (BTW, Thank you, England, for that wonderful gift) not to mention our dignity and identity. Is this news to anyone? Very likely. Ireland is now a parallel universe for sentient individuals. A butterfly’s wings are broken in a Russian penal colony and the world falls apart. How this has affected recent Irish rural cinema is investigated in my latest book. In the meantime, be afraid. Be very afraid. Lock your doors. Shalom.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Location-Nation-Irish-Rural-Cinema-ebook/dp/B0CNNYD5X3/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2WRZ639F7A68Y&keywords=elaine+lennon+location+nation&qid=1708099347&s=books&sprefix=elaine+%2Cstripbooks%2C1816&sr=1-1

We live and die in the shadows, for those we hold close – and those we never meet. – Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One 

RIP Alexei Navalny

Escape From Alcatraz (1979)

Alcatraz is not like any other prison in the United States. 1960. Frank Morris (Clint Eastwood) a criminal who has absconded from other facilities, arrives at the maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island near San Francisco, California. It’s unique within the US prison system for its high level of security and no inmate has ever escaped. The day of his arrival, Morris steals a nail clipper from the Warden’s (Patrick McGoohan) desk after the man gives him an introduction to the regime and notes on his file about Morris that the prisoner has a superior IQ.Over the next days, Morris makes acquaintances with some inmates: the eccentric Litmus (Frank Ronzio) an older man who is fond of desserts and keeps a mouse beside him at all times; English (Paul Benjamin) a black inmate serving two life sentences for killing two white men in self-defence who runs the library; and the elderly Chester ‘Doc’ Dalton (Roberts Blossom), who paints portraits and once grew chrysanthemums at Alcatraz. Doc’s portraits contain chrysanthemums as a symbol of human spirit and freedom. He makes a gift of one of the blossom heads to Morris. Morris also makes an enemy of Wolf (Bruce ‘Bear’ Fischer), a lewd rapist who harasses him in the showers and later attacks him in the prison yard with a knife. Both men are imprisoned in isolation in the hole. Morris is released while Wolf stays for 6 months. The Warden discovers that Doc has painted a portrait of him, as well as other guards. The guards’ paintings are flattering, recognising their humanity but the Warden’s painting, which has been kept out of view, seems to capture the ugliness of his cruelty. Enraged, the Warden removes Doc’s painting privileges. Doc is depressed and in the prison workshop hacks off several fingers of his right hand with a hatchet before being led away. Later, Morris encounters two bank robbers and brothers John (Fred Ward) and Clarence Anglin (Jack Thibeau) his old friends from another prison and he links up with prisoner Charley Butts (Larry Hankin) who’s in the next cell to his. Morris notices that the concrete around the grille in his cell is weak and can be chipped away, which evolves into an escape plan. Over the next months, Morris, the Anglins, and Butts dig through the walls of their cells with spoons soldered into makeshift shovel,, make papier-mache dummies to act as decoys and construct a raft out of raincoats that John squirrels away from his job doing inventory. During mealtime Morris places a chrysanthemum at the table in honour of Doc but the Warden stops by and crushes it, causing an outraged Litmus to suffer a heart attack. The Warden orders an inspection of Morris’ cell but finds nothing unusual. Despite this he issues orders for Morris to be relocated to a different cell as soon as possible. Wolf is released from solitary confinement and prepares to attack Morris again but English manages to intercept him and takes his knife while implying that his gang will beat up Wolf. That night, Morris and his fellow escapers decide they are now ready to leave … We don’t make good citizens but we make good prisoners. Adapted by Richard Tuggle from the 1963 fact-based account written by J. Campbell Bruce, this takes its inspiration from a real 1962 escape and marks the fifth and final collaboration between star Eastwood and director Don Siegel. Renowned for his economical aesthetic, Siegel’s customary approach yields pleasing dividends in the most austere setting imaginable. Lit up by a spare and shrewd performance by the star with capable satellites in the ensemble, this is ultimately structured around the major event, with some scenes reminiscent of The Great Escape (dumping the scooped-out cement dust in the yard) and intermittent scene-sequences of intimidation, violence and boredom. I always wanted to see San Francisco. I never thought it would be like this. McGoohan as the sadistic warden gets the lion’s share of the sharp dialogue but his position as the emblematic Man is confined to four scenes and although this takes place over two years, there is no clear passing of time, indicative of the experience of imprisonment in which no markers can be expressed and one day dissolves into the next. Some men are destined never to leave Alcatraz – alive. The sheer banality of life within these walls where only those sporadic acts of violence offer a change of pace to the psychological tedium is paradoxically thrillingly evoked with the execution of the plan proving an excellent procedural narrative scheme. The fact that this is more or less true and the final outcome remains a mystery just adds to the enjoyment. A great minimalist film. No one has ever escaped from Alcatraz and no one ever will

Victoria the Great (1937)

I wish never to discuss with you anything so dull as politics. England, June 1837. 18-year-old Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent (Anna Neagle) ascends the throne as Queen Victoria following the death of her uncle King William IV. She soon shows her independence from the influence of her German mother, the Duchess of Kent (Mary Morris) and her Belgian advisor Baron Stockmar (Paul Leyssac), her trusted Prime Minister Lord Melbourne (H.B. Warner) tells her he is growing old and she needs an advisor. He suggests she marry her German cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (Anton Walbrook). Victoria considers Albert too straitlaced and serious, while he thinks she is frivolous, self-willed, overly talkative and much too fond of dancing. Victoria decides to postpone inviting Albert (Anton Walbrook) and his older brother Ernest (Walter Rilla) to visit however when Melbourne informs her that Albert does not want to come, she immediately changes her mind and insists he come. Britain does not make a favourable first impression on Albert and Ernest; their passage across the English Channel is rough and rain-drenched. When they are first presented to the Queen, Albert is not very friendly. At a ball Albert informs Ernest that they are to return home the following day. But after dancing a waltz with Victoria (with the orchestra conducted by Johann Strauss), he cancels that plan. In the meantime, Victoria has decided to marry Albert, but he cannot propose to a sovereign, so she must do it herself. After their marriage, Victoria devotes herself to government, leaving Albert with nothing to do. She tells him he can take charge of domestic affairs at the Palace. He is bored by his idle status. When Sir Robert Peel (Charles Carson) talks to Victoria about the merits of introducing an income tax during a party, Albert tries to join the discussion but is rebuffed by his wife. He goes to Westminster to hear himself being disparaged and vows never to return. When he finally rebels, Victoria is unsympathetic at first but eventually gives in and lets him take part in governing. She comes to rely on him. During the social unrest and depression of the Hungry Forties, Albert spots a would-be assassin and shields his wife during an open-carriage ride. The man only manages to shoot Albert’s hat before being overpowered. In November 1841, Victoria and Albert’s first son Prince Albert Edward is born. After an angry mob gathers outside the palace demanding bread, Victoria and Albert support Peel in repealing the Corn Laws … Sentiment is a plant that will not grow in England, broods the fabulous Walbrook as Prince Albert, the consort whose wife steadfastly occupies her role with uncommon duty and focus until she realises her best asset is indeed her betrothed. Their squabbling, understanding and joint enterprise energise this sprightly trawl through the second half of the nineteenth century. Developed by Herbert Wilcox for his paramour Neagle after an approach by the (short-lived) King Edward VIII in advance of Victoria’s centennial, this was a somewhat revolutionary project given the rule that the British Royal Family could not be dramatised until three generations after their demise. It was adapted by (actor and writer) Miles Malleson and Charles de Grandcourt from Victoria Regina, a successful play by Laurence Housman staged on Broadway and is canny enough to focus on the marriage while wars, famines and Prime Ministers come and go. Surely such degradation and starvation cannot exist, says Victoria when the poor literally mob Buckingham Palace and her eyes are finally opened to the living conditions her subjects are forced to endure. She demonstrates her humanity by actively intervening in politics. Neagle plays her beautifully – the surprise of her ascent, her bristling intelligence, her sense of fun, getting rid of her interfering dread of a mother, agreeing to a surprising marriage and the growing knowledge of her great love for her husband and Albert’s effective judgment. Walbrook is however the one you look at – you simply can’t take your eyes off him with his sly charm and assertive charisma. Both of them age completely persuasively – a compliment to the hair and makeup team and of course their performances. It’s a hugely charming portrait of personality, politics and power that bursts into Technicolor for a closing sequence shot by William V. Skall. Don’t leave me. They’re waiting for me at the Tower