The Evil Dead (1981) - Sam Raimi

Five ‘kids’ spend a weekend at some manky old cabin in the middle of nowhere. After finding a book bound in human flesh and listening to a tape recording of some old fossil going on about bygone civilizations, evil and chanting in some ancient made up language, everything goes tits up. The woods come alive and so does the film. From that point on we get a healthy dose of low budget gore, more rubber puppets than your average episode of Spitting Image and best of all Sam Raimi’s amazing eye for camera set ups.

I was around 14 years old the first time I ever watched The Evil Dead. It had long been deemed far too nasty for the great British public to watch. So like pretty much everyone else my age, my introduction came via a fairly decent VHS pirate copy. I remember being really excited to finally be getting to see one of the school playground’s most talked about films. Me and John Jackson (who had procured said VHS from God alone knows where), had bunked off school for the day and holed ourselves up in my front room. The curtains were pulled tight, not just keep he sun off of the TV screen, but also just in case a passing neighbour should happen to witness the naughtiness and buckets of gore that were about to explode off the screen.

Eighty minutes later and it was all over. It wasn’t quite as great as I’d hoped it would be. We made some toast and watched it again. It was alright, but not really all that scary. Not like American Werewolf in London or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, both of which still made the dash from the light switch to my bed the most frightening five seconds of my day. We watched it a third time that day knowing that we might never get to see it again. We laughed quite a lot third time around, but there wasn’t really anything that made me want to check under my bed before turning in for the night.

Over twenty years later I can’t say how many times I’ve seen The Evil Dead. It’s been quite a few though. Yet I would never claim to be a huge fan of the film, maybe that’s because I have friends that have Book of the Dead tattoos and all that sort of thing. Still every few years it ends up being thrown into the DVD player. And every few years I end up feeling the same way I did all that time ago when I first watched it.

The big problems for me stem mainly from the fact that it doesn’t scare me at all. Not in the slightest. Then there’s the fact that it looks cheap, really cheap, which of course it was. Haircuts change, continuity doesn’t appear to exist and the acting is pretty ropey. There’s no real attempt at any character development or backstory either. It’s a simple set up, and you get what you get. Raimi never let the lack of budget get in the way of his vision though and I feel torn between applauding him for managing to do so much with so little, and also wishing that maybe he could have dialed it back a little. Maybe have creatures lurking in the shadows instead of totally visible all the time, since when you see a rubber head being bashed with an axe, it just looks like a rubber head being bashed with an axe. The claymation sequence at the end of the film is on the one hand Raimi pushing himself further than any first time director ever should. On the other hand though it looks woeful, goes on way too long and should probably not be in the film. Still it’s these sort of things that give the film it’s charm and have earned it a hugely loyal following.

Where the film works best is when the awful dialogue disappears and Ash (Bruce Campbell) takes center stage. Campbell has a screen presence that the rest of the cast lack. The scenes of him just reacting to what’s going on are fantastic, as are a number of the things Raimi does with his camera during these sequences. The last shot of the film for instance is one of those ‘once seen, never forgotten’ moments.

For me this is a film that’s easy to admire but difficult to love. Nowhere is that better shown than the infamous tree rape scene, which is technically well executed, but is quite grim to watch and feels out of place with the rest of the horror in the film. I prefer the Evil Dead II far more than The Evil Dead, which is probably sacrilegious to some, but what the heck it's the truth. It’s still not scary but it's at least looks like a professionally made film. It's funnier too.

Woodstock (1970) - Michael Wadleigh

3 Days of Peace & Music ran the tagline on the poster for the ‘Woodstock Music & Art Fair’ which took place over four days in August 1969. If they’d just worked the words ‘mind altering drugs’ and ‘biblical weather’ into their slogan they wouldn’t have been too far from the truth. Of course Woodstock is now one of that eras most defining moments, at the time though it was just another festival. Today just hearing or reading the word Woodstock conjures up images of stoned greasy haired kids dancing about and sliding through mud, but back before the festival it was a country retreat for a small crowd of artistic types (most famously Bob Dylan) who wanted out of the city life. The fact that the Woodstock Festival didn’t actually take place at Woodstock, but actually some 45 miles down the road is just typical of the zonked out nature of this iconic gathering of tribes.

Thank heavens for Michael Wadleigh then and his idea to gather up a film crew and head out to document the event. He hit on the brainwave that the audience were just as interesting as the performers and shot hours of film of hippie kids rolling in mud, talking rubbish, sucking on tiny yellow spliffs, getting naked, waffling on at length about drugs, war and The Man and a whole host of other things. Wadleigh arrived early enough to be able to capture the transformation of Max Yasgur’s farm, filming the construction of the stage and capturing the locals bemusement (and later anger) about what was descending upon their little hamlet.

The footage itself is great, mainly handheld, it all feels very unrestricted and very free, totally sixties. Wadleigh’s team seemed to be in the right place at the right time. Which is quite a feat in itself. However the editing is where it all really comes together, we get lots of split screen and overlapping effects, which really do a lot to bring to life what could have otherwise been a static shot of someone singing a song. The fact that a young Martin Scorsese and his future editor - Thelma Schoonmaker were on the editing team probably didn’t hurt too much.

But of course the visuals are only half the story, music and sound obviously play a huge role too. For every great act in the film there’s another that played the event but didn’t make the final cut for whatever reason. Some omissions were rectified with the extra forty minutes bolted on for the Director’s Cut, hello Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane, but even now there’s still no Tim Hardin, The Band, Grateful Dead or Ravi Shankar. But what we do get is a good mixed bag of performances, Joe Cocker gurning like a born again 90s raver through With A Little Help From My Friends, likewise Santana and Ten Years After manage to show that with epic guitar solos comes epic face pulling. We get The Who at their live peak, but unfortunately so far no footage of Townsend booting Abbie Hoffman off stage has ever turned up. Other musical highlights include Sly Stone putting the rest of the line up to shame and showing that he was James Brown’s natural heir, Crosby, Stills & Nash doing their acoustic thing, the electric set that included Neil Young wasn’t filmed thanks to Young nixing the idea. Doh! Then off course there’s Richie Havens kicking the whole shebang off, decked out in a kaftan and dripping sweat all over the place. He’s amazing to watch and even better to listen to.

By the time Hendrix hit the stage a staggering four days after Havens the majority of the 500,000 that had trooped along had departed. Almost no one attending had brought any sort of provisions to survive their time at Woodstock, have a look next time you watch it and see how many tents you can spot. The real victory of Woodstock was the fact that it happened and it passed off relatively peacefully, it was organised by the people for the people too. Half a million American youths were able to sleep next to each other in some strange field in atrocious weather without any violence, that’s a wonderful thing. Especially when juxtaposed with the same amount of Americans 8,500 miles away in Vietnam doing the same thing to the same soundtrack but with very different results.

For me Woodstock is something that I watch every five years or so. It’s not my favourite music festival documentary, but it’s damn close. The previous year’s Monterey Pop Festival is far better music wise, but doesn’t spend much time with the audience. In fact with a few exceptions I really don’t enjoy the music in Woodstock as much as the stuff that happened while all that was going on. The thunderstorm, the stage announcements - ‘If you think really hard, maybe we can stop this rain’, the warnings about the brown acid, the interview with the guy who uses a portaloo and describes it as ‘far out’, the locals who rally round to provide food for the festival goers, the atrocious mess call trumpet player - the list is almost endless. It’s easily one of the high points of popular culture in the 60s. The good vibe of Woodstock didn’t last long though, just a few months after on December 6th The Rolling Stones staged their own mini festival in California at the Altamont Speedway and brought the 60s to a bloody violent close.

Dead of Night (1945) - Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden & Robert Hamer

Much like Hammer, Ealing Studios have become pigeonholed for a certain type of film. With Hammer it's obviously horror, despite the fact that they knocked out a whole range of other films back in their heyday - everything from Sci-Fi to comedy and crime films. The same goes for Ealing who are well remembered for their excellent run of comedies, but less so for the hundreds of other films they produced between the early thirties and late fifties.

Dead of Night is one such film, it's a portmanteau horror effort and although it's a little creaky in places is basically a wonderful little British horror film. Directed by a motley crew of Ealing stalwarts, Basil Dearden, Charles Crichton, Alberto Cavalcanti, and Robert Hamer it cracks along at a fair old pace. As well as the linking story there are a whopping four others crammed into the 97 minute running time. Dearden directs the main story in which architect Walter Craig (an excellent nervously edgy performance by Mervyn Johns) arrives at a country cottage, only to quickly realise that the inhabitants are the people from a recurring nightmare he's been having. This revelation then encourages the assembled characters to each tell a ghostly story.

Dearden directs the first of these about a racing driver who foresees a bus crash. It's a slight but effective slice of spookiness well directed and well acted, but as is often the case with these anthology films it's almost over before it's begun. The same can be said of the first of the two segments by Cavalcanti, about a ghostly boy at a Christmas party. Far better is the last story (also directed by Cavalcanti) about a ventriloquist and his relationship with his creepy dummy. It's the best section in the whole film, largely down to the fact that it gets a decent amount of time to evolve on screen and the always great Michael Redgrave is the ventriloquist. If you've ever seen Magic then you'll know just how scary a ventriloquist's dummy can be. Not only is it the best segment, but for a modern audience it's the one that will make it hard to sleep after seeing.

The other two stories are a very short but effective effort from Robert Hamer about a freaky mirror staring the excellent Googie Withers, and a misjudged comedic effort from Charles Crichton about a couple of golfers. As a separate film this last one would have worked just fine especially since the two golfers in question are our old friends - Charters and Caldicott. Except here they are renamed (for legal reasons I imagine) Parratt and Potter. They are just as good here as they were when we first met them seven years before in The Lady Vanishes. As I say there's nothing really wrong with their story it just doesn't really fit in here due to it being first and foremost a comedy.

Overall this is a wonderful film, the sort of thing that you should return too again and again (especially during the Halloween season). It also has one of the best endings you'll find in a horror film. All the directors involved in this would go on to make great landmark films for Ealing and others. It'd be nice to see Ealing receive a little more attention for it's output outside of the 'classic comedy', and I think as long as films like this find their way back into shops they will.

The Four Feathers (1939) - Zoltan Korda

This fourth film adaptation of A.E.W. Mason's boys own style adventure novel is widely regarded as the best of the seven out there. Who am I to argue? I've never read the book, or for that matter seen any of the other versions, including yet another by Zoltan Korda (who directed this). From what I understand this version is one of the least faithful to the source material. Still I've said it before and it bears repeating, books and films operate in very different ways. A film with a book style narrative needn't work very well and vice versa.

Set back in the Victorian age when Johnny Foreigner was nothing more than someone to be killed while we picked his pocket, this is very much a tale of stiff upper lips and doing the right thing. Harry Faversham (John Clements) comes from a long line of military men, despite not having any desire to enlist, he buckles under the weight of his ancestry and his overpowering father and joins the army. On the eve of being shipped overseas to fight Fight FIGHT, and with his father now firmly six feet underground, he decides to resign from the army and start to live his own life. Three of his best friends (also military officers) send him a feather with their names attached to it (the fourth comes from his fiance). Apparently this is what was done if you felt someone was a coward back then, it's a notch up from flapping your arms about and making bad chicken noises I guess.

Anyway Harry decides that he needs to redeem himself and prove that he's a brave little soldier after all, so that he can win the dame and the film can end on a high note. So off he sets under his own steam to do just that.

At just five minutes under two hours this chugs along at a fair old pace, the screenplay is by none other than R.C. Sherriff and it's faultless. In fact the whole shebang has so much talent both behind and in front of the camera that it would be more surprising if this was trash rather than the classic that it so clearly is. As well as Zoltan, you have both his brothers;- Alexander (no mean director himself) and Vincent working as producer and designer respectively. Then there's the great Georges Périnal as the Director of Photography, and even both Jack Cardiff and Geoffrey Unsworth as uncredited camera operators.

In front of the huge Technicolor camera are such old favourites as John Laurie, C. Aubrey Smith and best of all Ralph Richardson. Richardson really steals the film especially after he goes blind half way through. He plays the whole thing with just the right shade of hopeless bravery, and will have you digging out The Fallen Idol for certain once the film has ended.

This version of The Four Feathers looks absolutely gorgeous too. Now I'm not the worlds biggest Technicolor film fan but sometimes when used on the right subject matter I think it works a treat. This is one of those occasions. The location footage is great, be it the greenery of England or the huge dry expanses of Egypt, it looks lush. It's hard to imagine just how this must have looked to those people living in black and white, when they saw this at the time down the local Roxy. It wouldn't shock me to read that David Lean had had a peek at this before setting off to film Lawrence of Arabia for instance.

In fact it's Lawrence that springs most readily to mind when watching this. After all both are well scripted epic productions that rattle by and look as good as any film could look, add to that the desert setting, camels galore and that aforementioned stiff upper lip mentality and it's not all that surprising to find out that Alexander Korda had been trying to get Lawrence of Arabia made since the mid 30's.

So all in all a great British film, but not only that but a great epic film too, one of those cast of thousands type affairs that feel as old fashioned as a VCR player does nowadays. Pretty much since Gladiator we've been duped into thinking that CGI crowds are something to look at with open mouthed joy, when in fact films like this put them to shame and show them up for what they are. I like it when you can see what a struggle it must have been to get a crane shot, some slight camera wobble or some such, whereas I hate the obligatory zooming and floating all over the shop modern style. Since the camera is in the computer so we can put it anywhere we want, right? Well would it be so bad to at least try and make it look like it was being held by a person?

Alright rant over, seriously this is a cracking film and well worthy of all the praise heaped upon it. Does make me wonder just why Zoltan Korda would reshoot it using the same script 16 years later though. Strange bloke.

The Maggie (1954) - Alexander Mackendrick

 

Some films are best viewed at certain times of the day/week/year. Michael Bay flicks for instance aren't ever going to play as well on a Sunday morning as they do on a Saturday night. The same can be said for the films that emerged from Ealing Studios back in the middle of the last century. Whenever a rainy Saturday or Sunday afternoon comes along and I find myself at home alone, it's those warm unquestionably British films that I reach for first. Especially those directed by Alexander Mackendrick such as The Maggie. Which sadly seems to be overlooked in favour of Mackendrick's big hitters for the studio - The Ladykillers, The Man in the White Suit and Whiskey Galore! Which is a shame since this is just as perfect as any of those classics.

The Maggie is an old puffer (coal fueled boat) who like it's captain Mactaggart (Alex Mackenzie), has seen better days and should probably be put out to pasture now. Brash American businessman Calvin B. Marshall (Paul Douglas) meets his match when by a typical Ealing twist of fate, The Maggie is contracted to carry his valuable load. Once the mix up is discovered Marshall is determined to have his cargo removed from The Maggie and shipped by someone more reputable. After his bowler hat wearing lacky Pusey (Hubert Gregg), tries and fails (ending up in jail for poaching in one of the films most memorable sections) to reverse the problem he has set in motion, Marshall takes matters into his own hands. This is where the real meat of the film is, since from here on in the film becomes a battle of wits between the gentle Scottishness of Mactaggart and the throw money at problems, time is money attitude of Marshall.

It's a truly perfect post war British film, and contains just about everything I love about this period in British film making. Mackendrick's eye for framing is every bit as good as Carole Reed's or Hitchcock's, his compositions are both beautiful and practical. Just look at the way Pusey is framed when the cell door is slammed shut. The locations that The Maggie and her crew bob past are those jawdroppingly epic Scottish coastal ones that I love, and Mackendrick being a Scot himself obviously feels the same way. Although he never lingers on them, they are just there in the background drifting by looking sublime. There are no David Lean style setting the scene by showing the landscape shots. The script is tight with the film itself coming in at just under 90 minutes, the comedy is gentle and easygoing. Best of all though is the cast, who are just wonderful, from the smallest rolls up to that of the two leads, everyone turns in a great performance. The Wee Boy (Tommy Kearins) has quite a bit of business, loads of lines and is an essential part of the script, and yet despite the fact that this was his first and only film, Kearins proves to be a real find, believable yet still childlike.

There is almost a sub-genre of films set in rural Scotland pitting the wiley locals against some suit from the big smoke. I'm thinking about another favourite film here Local Hero, which is the closest film to The Maggie that I can think of in both feel and subject. Both films feature the fish out of water character changing and learning that life doesn't have to travel at such a fast pace. In fact in both films that character even ends up wearing the costume of the locals. So much so that Pusey doesn't even recognise Marshall when he eventually catches up with him at the films conclusion.

Apparently Mackendrick always saw The Maggie as flawed, I only wish he could have seen it through my eyes since for me it's nothing short of a masterpiece. So if you haven't seen this, and the weather forecast is bad for the coming weekend, then you know what to do. Believe me you'll be hard pressed to spend a better 90 minutes in front of your TV.

The Lady Vanishes (1938) - Alfred Hitchcock

It's easy to see why this film over almost all others from Alfred the great's British years, still manages to enrapture generation after generation. It has a certain charm to it that is lacking in a lot of the fat mans other work from this era. In fact I wouldn't be sticking my neck out too far, if I said that it's by far and away the best film he made before upping sticks and moving across the Atlantic.

Set in the fictional European country of Bandrika on the eve of WWII, a rag tag bunch of Europeans are homeward bound on a train. Amongst the various types making the journey are Michael Redgrave as Gilbert, who despite looking like a typical boys own type is actually quite an odd character, a sort of proto-beatnik if you will. Then there's Margaret Lockwood as Iris, who's also nicely unique being quite firey and independent. After all she's all the way out in the heart of Europe by herself, that sort of thing never normally happens in British films from this time, young women are almost always chaperoned by someone or other. Of course these two are bound to end up together by the end of the film, it's Hitchcock after all. As per usual in films of this ilk they don't hit it off immediately, and only really start to get it on once Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) goes missing.

The film actually kicks off with the whole cast being stranded in a hotel overnight due to heavy snow. It's an odd way to get the film rolling, and feels like an excuse for the ace writing team of Sidney Gilliat & Frank Launder, to fill some screen time with a succession of gags mainly centered around their most successful creations Charters and Caldicott. Who themselves would go on to appear in numerous films and even their own TV series, after the success of this film. However like so much else in this film, all is not what it seems. So the whimsical opening scene is actually pretty essential, since not only does it introduce us to the principal characters, but it contains information vital to understanding what transpires later in the film.

The pace of the film really picks up once the train journey begins and doesn't let up until the final beautifully framed shot. It's here that it really feels like a Hitchcock film, especially once Miss Froy goes missing. It's also at this point of the film that it becomes obvious that The Lady Vanishes isn't so much about bumbling Englishmen trying to find out the cricket result, or even old ladies disappearing, but is rather an allegory of the imminent war. People that once seemed perfectly normal and friendly, suddenly seem less so, and of course the Italian's are in league with the German's.

My favourite section of the The Lady Vanishes is towards the end of the film. One of the train cars has been uncoupled in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by the enemy. There's a shoot out, but it's not that that endears the scene to me. It's also where we find out just what the film is about, but it's not that either. It's more to do with the fact that the carriage represents Britain, which itself is of course cut off from mainland Europe. Britain would stand it's own ground against the threat from across the Channel, in much the same way that the Brits in the carriage pull together for the first time in the film (except Eric Todhunter, but I'll get to him in a minute), and stand up for what's right. As a piece of propaganda it's second to none, but the thing that makes this so good is that it's also great film making. You don't feel like you are being force fed a message like in so many other films made during the war years. Charters and Caldicott step up to the mark, as does almost everyone, except as I said Mr Todhunter (Cecil Parker), who strangely for someone who doesn't believe in violence carries a gun. Hmm.

Anyway I've rambled on plenty about this film, it's definitely essential viewing for anyone who loves Hitch, or for that matter films. Plus there is so much more to it than what I've written, a nun in heels, a wrapped up body, a wonderful scene using magicians props, lashings of romance and derring-do all filtered through the genius eye of Alfred Hitchcock. As I say essential stuff.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955) - Robert Aldrich

It's noir, but not as we know it. Mickey Spillane's mega selling novel is given a complete overhaul by A.I. Bezzerides (the scribe behind Sirocco & Thieves Highway), to become a bonkers cross between the pulp noir of prime Sam Fuller, and a particularly bizarre Twilight Zone episode. Right from the off it's obvious that things aren't going to be straightforward. For a start there are those opening credits that roll up the screen instead of down.

The film opens with Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) picking up Christina (Cloris Leachman), a female hitch hiker on the run from the police. As it turns out she's seen or heard something she shouldn't have, and has a bunch of local heavies on her tail too, who quickly nab our pair and in a memorably nasty scene, torture Christina to death. Then they bundle our ill fated couple back into Hammer's car and roll them off a cliff. It's this that sets the plot in motion, as Hammer tries to figure out just what the heck is going on, who killed Christina and more importantly why?

Luckily Hammer is a private detective, so he knows how to grub around the seedier side of L.A. for info. Meeker is a fantastic Hammer, playing him in a deliciously nasty way, flying off the handle and dishing out backhanders as soon as anyone crosses him. He's one of cinema's great anti heroes, just look at the half smile that appears after he slings one guy down a set of steps, or the way he slams a mortician's fingers in a desk drawer. It's vicious powerful stuff, and must have been shocking at the time. I can imagine '55's other great bundle of anger Jim Stark loving Kiss Me Deadly at the cinema, maybe even seeing some of himself in Hammer.

The film rattles along at a healthy pace and keeps the viewer in the dark about what is going on, we only find things out as Hammer does. The dialogue is rugged hard boiled stuff, as are most of the characters. Aldrich makes great use of L.A.'s fleapit underbelly, shooting plenty of the exteriors in daytime. That's not to say that there isn't an abundance of long dark shadows, rest easy there's plenty of that, it's just not your typical back lot shoot. I love that shot where Hammer drives under this strange elevated tramway. Weirdsville. By the time the ending rolls up you'll have forgotten just how Hammer ended up in a beach house with an atomic mcguffin. That doesn't matter though since this is one of those 'it's not so much the story, as the journey' type affairs. A Maltese Falcon for the atomic age if you want.

Kiss Me Deadly has had a huge impact on cinema, you can see shards of Meeker's Hammer in Connery's Bond for instance, then there are the far more obvious references in Pulp Fiction (the contents of that case) and of course Repo Man which not only aped the Pandora's Box schtick but also half inched the reverse credits. The style of Kiss Me Deadly seems to have influenced greater directors too, it's there in Seijun Suzuki's & Jean-Pierre Melville's gangster flicks for example. What higher praise could one ask for than that, eh?

Five Easy Pieces (1970) - Bob Rafelson

One of that crop of late sixties/early seventies films that gave Hollywood a hard slap around the face, told it to go and sit out by the pool and enjoy it's retirement because everything had changed, The Kids are in charge now. Of course like everything that is ever considered underground, the mainstream managed to absorb these upstarts and carry on as if nothing had happened. The main thing for us though is that we were bequeathed a handful of great era defining films.

This is the film that gave Jack Nicholson the chance to be the star attraction after a career playing second fiddle for so long. Nicholson grabs the chance with both hands and turns in one of his best performances. Sure he's a little OTT in places, but that's what we want from Jack isn't it? He plays Robert Dupea as complex a character as any on Nicholson's CV. He's a dropout, but not the typical Haight-Ashbury acid guru that you'd expect from this time. Dupea comes from a family not unlike that in The Royal Tenenbaums in a way, since his siblings are all musical prodigies in awe of their father. Dupea himself is a pianist, not that you'd know that from the first half of the film.

When we first meet him he's working in the oil fields, his girlfriend - Rayette (a top form Karen Black) is a waitress in a diner, he drinks beer after work, they go bowling, his best mate lives in a trailer. Quite quickly though it becomes obvious that Robert isn't cut from the same cloth as the people he surrounds himself with. The other thing that becomes clear is that he's a moody bugger, angry at something, full of suppressed emotions which sometimes boil over, in that typically electric Nicholson style that we've come to know so well. In fact Nicholson has his bag of tics all down to pat here, the sticky out tongue, the tasmanian devil style outbursts, the faraway hundred yard stare, they're all present as is the balding long hair look that he rocked throughout the seventies.

The second half of the film has Dupea returning to the homestead with Rayette in tow. She neatly balances out the 'I'm a stranger here' of Nicholson's character in the first half. There's all sorts of little sub plots that dove tail neatly together by the end of the film. You know it can never end well, since independent films from this era never did. Vietnam was eating up America's young, Nixon was helping to maintain the generation gap and even The Beatles were at each others throats. How can you have a big happy day-glo ending with all that in mind?

Like Jack this was Rafelson's chance to prove himself too. This was his second film after the 'wacky' Monkees vehicle Head. Which turned out to be a bit 'tune in, turn on, nod off', probably cool for that year, but not the sort of thing great films are made of. Rafelson manages to frame Dupea alone against troubled skies at every opportunity. In general though his directing style is to fit in around what the actors are doing. There are some memorable scenes that once seen are burnt into the brain forever. The diner scene and the piano on the truck are the two most famous ones, but there's also a wonderfully hammy moment between Dupea and his dad too. There are some great roles for the womenfolk also. I love the two hitch hikers heading to Alaska, but best of all is Lois Smith as Dupea's sister. She's reason enough to return to this film again and again for me. Just wonderful.

Key Largo (1948) - John Huston

Edward G. Robinson going head to head with Bogart and Bacall in a noir directed and co written by John Huston. What's not to like? It's a real corker of a film that easily lives up to what you'd expect from it. Robinson is deliciously nasty as Johnny Rocco a gangster very much in the mold of those he spent his early years perfecting. Major Frank McCloud (Bogart) is at a loose end after WWII, and Nora (Bacall) is the widow of one of the men that died under him in Italy. So when Bogie turns up at the Key Largo hotel run by Bacall and her dead husbands Pa, to find it over run with Chicago's nastiest you know things aren't going to be smooth. Throw into that a subplot about some on the run native Americans and the police snooping around trying to find them, and just to up the ante there is the imminent arrival of the Miami mob. What more could you want for a tension filled hour and a half? Did someone say hurricane? Well there's one of them too.

This was the the third time round for Huston and Bogart, and the fourth and last film together for Bogie and Bacall. Edward G. gives Bogart's leading man status a run for it's money, the scene where he destroys Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor) is my favourite moment of the film. Just horrendous to watch. Despite having two huge actors like Bogart and Robinson, Huston manages to keep the film on an even keel. Robinson is kept out of sight for the first twenty minutes or so, when he does turn up he tears through the film in much the same way as the hurricane. The tension between him and Bogart builds slowly but surely throughout the film. The banter between them is as good as it gets in these type of affairs. Of course you know good will triumph, Bogie will get the girl and rid the world of Johnny Rocco, just as sure as you know James Bond won't die no matter what predicament he finds himself in.

The whole film is studio based, with just a smidgen of location second unit photography at the beginning just to set the scene. Everyone gets their close up, but as I said earlier it's the battle between the world weary Bogart and the O.G. of Robinson that's the real meat of the film. Key Largo builds and builds to the eventual show down between the two of them. It's one of those films that you never tire of watching, Huston was a man on fire during these years, knocking out classic after classic. This one (just like his others from this time) looks beautiful, just witness that last shot of Bacall opening the shutters and being engulfed in retina burning sunlight. Gorgeous.

Play Time (1967) - Jacques Tati

Tati's masterpiece. If you only ever get the chance to see one Tati film in your lifetime, then make it this one. If you get the chance to see two, then watch this twice. Play Time demands to be seen multiple times, not because of any labyrinthine plot or anything like that, but more because of the sheer volume of information up on the screen. Tati films the whole film using master shots, which he sometimes cuts into (although rarely), and avoids the use of close ups almost entirely. This means that the viewers eye is free to wander around the frame, sometimes a sound, or splash of colour will guide the audiences gaze towards a particular point. More often than not though your eyes are free to follow whatever you choose. On first viewing Play Time can appear cold or even empty, but the more time you spend with it the more it reveals it's delights. Quite often there are things happening in the background of scenes that are easily missed first or even second time round. Like the cardboard cut out figures peppered throughout the film, or characters that pop up again and again.

There's no real plot to Play Time, it all begins in an airport, we follow a group of American tourists as they weave their way out and into Paris. Not the old romantic city that usually springs to mind whenever Paris is mentioned, but rather the Paris of the then yet to be built La Défense, all glass and steel, impersonal and cold, straight lines dominating over curves. We also follow Monsieur Hulot (Tati) who crosses paths with everyone in the film, acting as a link to various set ups. First he has some kind of meeting, then he ends up at a trade fair, then a friends home and lastly at the Royal Garden restaurant. The whole film takes place over the course of one 24 hour period, and at the end we follow our coachload of tourists back to the airport.

Play Time follows on from Tati's previous film Mon Oncle both thematically (more of which later) and literally, beginning as it does where Mon Oncle ended, in an airport. Although like many things in Play Time all is not what it appears at first. Tati uses misdirection to fool the viewer into suspecting that this opening scene could in fact be taking place in a hospital. After all that's a nurse carrying a baby, isn't it? Except of course it isn't, the nurse turns out to be carrying paper towels, and with a change of camera angle the hospital becomes an airport. This happens throughout the film, initial perceptions are continually turned on their head. The trade fair section of the film features objects that look like one thing but are in fact something entirely different. Likewise the first appearance of Hulot is preceded by a series of Hulot doppelgangers. Even more so than Tati's previous films this should be considered a silent film, what little dialogue there is, is of little or no importance. With one exception, at the start of the film Hulot is told 'You don't belong here'. I think that is the key line in the whole film.

One of the things Tati does best is the running gag. Nowhere is that better displayed than in Play Time, each character is given some business or other to propel them through the film. So someone that we might see in the background of a scene at the start of the film, could have their story conclude in the restaurant scene towards the end of the film. It's almost like they are clockwork toys that Tati winds up, then releases with wonderful results. There is a theme of both reflections and glass running throughout the film, from the reflections of beautiful old Paris (Arc de Triomphe, La Tour Eiffel and Basilique du Sacré-Cœur) in various glass doors, to the endless jokes based around the opacity of glass, with numerous people walking into doors that were thought to be already open. One of my favourite moments is the scene where the shattered glass door of the Royal Garden restaurant is still opened and closed by the doorman, despite the fact that it doesn't exist. Glorious.

The real tour de force of Play Time is the Royal Garden restaurant sequence, which takes up almost half the running time of the film. A new trendy modern restaurant/discotheque has it's opening night and of course everything goes tits up. It's a film within a film really which builds steadily to it's chaotic end with the increasingly frantic music. It's also in this section of the film that Tati's main bugbear comes to the fore, that of the modern world increasingly forcing itself into people's lives, and the alienation of the people that this newness creates. It's something that has been there right from the start with Tati, and was developed in each successive film he wrote/directed. It's interesting to note that it is Hulot that pulls down the trellis in the restaurant, creating a restaurant within the restaurant, echoing the film within a film set up. It's Hulot that forces people to make their stamp on their environment. It's this human intervention that is a constant in Tati's work. How do people fit into architects plans, and should they?

Now most successful directors get the opportunity to realise their dream project at some point in their career. As is often the case the heart rules the budget, and things start to get out of control. Think of Scorsese with New York, New York, Coppola with Apocalypse Now or worse than either of those Cimino's Heaven's Gate which managed to sink United Artists. Play Time was to be Tati's downfall, both financially and artistically. Massive sets were built which were subsequently destroyed in a freak storm, of course it turned out Tati was uninsured, and from there on things only got worse. Filming stretched out over years instead of months, when the money ran out Tati took out loans, when that money dried up he begged his mother to invest Tati's inheritance so that he could finish the film. The film tanked at the box office in France, which made American distributors give it a miss (it would eventually receive a limited release in 1972). Tati lost everything including the rights to his own films, his home and his and his sisters inheritance. He made one more feature after this, the rather lackluster Trafic in 1971.

Time has been kind to Play Time however, and it is now rightly viewed as one of the greatest films ever made. Somewhere along the line half an hour of footage has gone missing, most likely it'll turn up long after I'm dead and buried. Until then I have this to watch over and over, each time seeing something new. If you haven't seen Play Time, you really should be asking yourself why not and when can that be rectified.

The African Queen (1951) - John Huston

Of course this is one of those films that everyone has seen time and time again, a timeless classic that no true film fan would get to almost forty without seeing, right? Um, well everyone it would seem except me. This is just one of the many so called classics that I've never seen. Not that I haven't wanted to, it just happened that our paths haven't crossed until now. The same goes for Gone With the Wind, Grease, Top Gun and a whole host of others. Although truth be told I've gone out of my way to avoid those three. Still the important thing is that I've seen it now, and better than that I can totally see why generation after generation have kept this films flame flickering. For me the genius of the film wasn't John Huston's direction, James Agee's screenplay or even Jack Cardiff's glorious Technicolor cinematography, no it's the on screen chemistry between Hepburn and Bogart. Together they really spark off one another, and make their fate something that you really care about.

For the few that aren't already acquainted with the story of The African Queen, I'll briefly run through it. It's September 1914, Rose (Hepburn) and her missionary brother are doing Gods work in deepest darkest Africa. Charlie (Bogart) is a the polar opposite of Rose, a swarthy sweaty uncouth tramp steamer operator. The first world war breaks out, the Germans raid the village where Rose is based, her brother dies and Charlie offers to sail her out of danger. You can see where all this is heading can't you? Like all good road movies (and make no mistake that's exactly what this is, a road movie without the road), there are adventures aplenty, each bringing our couple closer together. They're heading for a huge lake to destroy a German gunship, supposedly they are going to Macgyver up a couple of torpedoes out of the bits and bobs on Bogart's boat. This leads to one of the best lines in the film when Bogart claims 'There ain't nothing so complicated as the inside of a torpedo', except we all know that he is about to embark on a journey with the one thing in life that is infinitely more complex - Rose. Oh how will it end?

To be honest there isn't much suspense in the film since it's fairly obvious that neither star will be making the journey upstairs. That doesn't stop it being a joy to watch though since the pleasure comes from the two leads battling their way down stream, which I guess in it's own way is just a metaphor for the way relationships work. Or am I reading too much into it? I like the fact that neither of them were spring chickens anymore, Hepburn isn't covered in lippy and has a birds nest haircut that Robert Smith would have envied for the majority of the film. Bogart as I mentioned earlier looks like a hobo, you can practically smell him through the speakers.

This was shot on location in the Belgian Congo which adds to the sweaty feel of the film, although Huston isn't so good at marrying the studio footage with that shot on location. So while the studio bound scenes look just that, the African location scenes look as lush as one would expect. Funnily enough Jean Renoir was also taking those huge cumbersome Technicolor cameras out on location too that year, although he was in India making (for me at least) the superior The River. Funny old world. So to sum up, this is a perfect Sunday afternoon film, I can't see it ever becoming greater than any of those other Bogart/Huston films for me, but then when you're up against Key Largo, The Maltese Falcon or best of all The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, it's not all that surprising is it?

Deep Red (1975) - Dario Argento

David Hemmings plays Marcus Daly, an expat flared white suit/black shirt combo wearing music teacher, living it up in some unnamed Italian city. One night he witnesses a murder, and from then on is plunged head on into Argentoland. There's twists aplenty, the strangest set of characters since Dickens hung up his quill, the odd red herring, comedy that is embarrassingly unfunny and more than enough to make you think afterwards that none of it makes any sense. That's pretty much the long and short of Deep Red, it contains all those things we love about Argento at his best, bizarre intensely beautiful architecture, Daria Nicolodi, a Goblin soundtrack, gore and of course black leather gloves hacking away at victims. All of this is shot through with Dario's distinctive sense of style, beautiful steady dolly shots, frames within frames, gorgeous rich colour schemes and of course that almost dreamlike style in which his stories unfold. Even if by the time the film finishes and the killer is unmasked it makes about as much sense as an episode of Midsomer Murders.

After the success of his animal trilogy Dario decided the time was right to have a stab (I do like a good pun me) at a different genre. Choosing comedy he made Le cinque giornate, which promptly tanked at the cinema. That was the last time he would direct anything outside of the genre that had made his name. He returned to horror with what most consider to be his best two films, this and its follow up Suspiria. Although confusingly in Japan after Suspiria's success, Deep Red was released as Suspiria 2, even though both films have absolutely bugger all to do with each other. Those crazy Japanese eh?
 
Anyway what you really want to know is how good are the killings, right? Er, I was just joking, but without coming across as Henry Portrait the different ways Dario comes up with to off his creations are always a huge part of the enjoyment of his films. This film utilizes the idea of killing folk via means that the viewer can identify with. So apart from the obvious stabbings, after all everyone has cut themselves with a knife even if they haven't quite had a cleaver rammed in their back, causing them to fall forward through a window and impale themselves on the broken shards of glass. There are a few more elaborate means that Dario employs, so we get death by boiling water, death by repeatedly hitting your mouth against a hard object (in this case a mantelpiece and a table) and so on. We're even treated to the sight of a clockwork dummy running out from the shadows, very odd bit of the film that.

Of course the weird thing about Argento is that while his visuals are gory they aren't particularly scary. You'll be watching it through your fingers, but only in the same way you would with Jackass. Dario isn't all that good at making the viewer jump either (the exception in this film being that bastard aforementioned dummy), so drink hot drinks safe in the knowledge they won't end up in your lap. The other thing Dario likes to do is crank up the prog rock Goblin soundtrack anytime there is any hint of something naughty happening. This is one of the better Goblin soundtracks too, even if one of the main themes does crib liberally from Tubular Bells. So to sum up this is a great film to watch if you are new to the world of Argento, and if you're not then you've already seen this, multiple times. One quick word of warning it's worth seeing the longer version of this film, although portions of it don't have an English soundtrack so it reverts to Italian in these spots. Well worth the effort.

Metropolis (1927) - Fritz Lang

I'd been itching to see this almost complete version of Metropolis ever since the announcement that a copy had turned up in Buenos Aires back in 2008. This Argentinian footage was heavily scratched and in an awful state, and proved impossible to clean up since it was transferred from the original negative complete with all of it's imperfections. Doh! So by stitching lost footage from the new found print into the gorgeous looking restored version, we've ended up with a Frankenstein's monster type of affair. It's easy to spot just what is new footage and what isn't, since the newer scenes have not only what appears to be a barcode running through them (well lots of black lines at any rate), but are also in a smaller aspect ratio. This newer footage is kind of like scars on a body, or wrinkles on a face inasmuch as each scratchy frame reminds the viewer of the ongoing saga of this silent masterpiece. There are still portions of the film that are missing, although hopefully they'll turn up in some box in someones garage at some point before I snuff it.

So what is added to this version of Metropolis then? Well there are a fair few small trims (reaction shots and the like, some just a few seconds long), they don't add much but of course it's always good to have things back to how they were supposed to be. The real find are the scenes that show what the Thin Man gets up to, and quite a bit of extra footage from the end of the film. This adds so much to the film, The Thin Man section is a whole subplot that was chopped out, the extra stuff at the end makes the ending so much more expansive, it's just more of everything, from the riots to the floods and the eventual saving of the children. It's all there in it's scratchy slightly smaller aspect ratio glory.

Metropolis is the most expensive silent film ever made in Germany, costing 5,000,000 Reichsmarks. Lang as was his wont was meticulous with everything to do with the film, taking forever to get it into the cinema. Unfortunately upon release it was a massive flop, taking a mere 75,000 Reichsmarks in Germany. This is why the film was hacked apart in the first place, it was shortened and fucked about with right the way up to the first version I ever saw, the 1984 Giorgio Moroder version. Now when it comes to proto house disco anthems Giorgio is your man. However when it came to rejigging a silent epic he proved to be a bit of a fuckwit. Colourising it and bolting on a jarring eighties soundtrack became the last nail in Metropolis's coffin. Cheers Moroder. After this the restoration process began, and that brings us bang up to where we are now.

Now I'm sure you don't need me to go through what the storyline of Metropolis is, do you? Okay deep breath here goes, dystopian future world, the rich lording it up, while in the depths of the city the workers kill themselves to keep the cogs of society moving. There is no bridge between the two, the central message of the film is the need for the workers to unite with those that run their world. Into this are weaved biblical allegories, effects galore, some of the hammiest silent screen acting ever, mad scientists, revolution, epic sets, a touch of that famous German expressionism, and a (wo)man machine. Metropolis is a beautiful film to watch, but it feeds the brain as well as the eyes. There are ideas galore, and it's a great way to waste a few hours of your life. Lang was at the peak of his powers and it shows, his next four features would be the last of this golden age for him. After 1933's Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse Lang would flee Germany for America, where he would struggle to make anything approaching his German masterpieces. To say that Metropolis has had an effect on the world we live in would be an understatement, films, music, books and so many other things have been touched by this flop of a film, and the funny thing is that despite being the obvious masterpiece it is, it's not even Lang's best film, which of course is 1931's M.

The Red Shoes (1948) - Michael Powell

What's the first thing that pops into your mind when you see or hear the words The Archers? If it's something to do with the fictional village of Ambridge then you probably don't qualify as a film bore/obsessive. If however you think of the film production team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, then that would probably explain why you are reading a film blog in the first place. Between 1943 and 1957 they created some of the greatest British films ever, including this little beauty that I'm writing about here. 

Year in year out, there are certain films and directors that I always return to. Twelve months doesn't pass in my home without a handful of Kurosawa, Coen Brothers, Loach, Hitchcock and a whole stack of others films being stuffed into the DVD player. That goes double for Powell & Pressburger films, well the good ones at any rate, of which there are more than enough.

Anyway onto The Red Shoes, it's loosely based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. The film is about the sacrifices artists have to make for the sake of their art, the extremes that people push themselves to, and the general idea that what the viewer sees is only half the story. Quite often great works of art are born out of pain, tragedy and those other dark things that most ordinary people spend their lives trying to avoid. This is true not only of films, but sport, writing, music, dance, comedy, painting, almost everything in fact. Maybe that's why we are so drawn to people like Francis Bacon, George Best, William Burroughs, Spike Milligan et cetera. Okay so let's get back on track shall we?

Anton Walbrook in possibly his finest role is Boris Lermontov, the hard headed cold hearted founder of the world famous Ballet Lermontov. Moira Shearer is Vicky Page a young gifted dancer, and Marius Goring is Julian Craster a young composer and the last of our doomed triangle of characters. Right from the get go we are thrown straight into the world of ballet, with the real world staying well and truly outside. Come back though, even if you have no interest or knowledge of ballet (like myself), have no fear since we are guided through this foreign land by our two novices Vicky Page and Julian Craster. Both of whom are plucked from obscurity by Lermontov, and put to work on creating a ballet of The Red Shoes. Of course Page and Craster fall for each other, much to Lermontov's annoyance. In his world you choose either life or ballet, there is no third option. It's this that is the meat of the film and what propels it along to it's tragic ending.

Now this being directed by Powell you know it's going to look stunning (which it does), but on top of that we have Jack Cardiff, who I doubt anyone would argue is one of the greatest cinematographers ever. Cardiff received special training from Technicolor on how to best use their process. Obviously an apt student Cardiff makes this one of the best British Technicolor films you'll ever see. Especially the 17 minute long ballet sequence in the middle. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that didn't I? Powell & Pressburger are audacious enough to be able to slip The Red Shoes ballet into the center of the film. It's a condensed version, but all the same the fact that it doesn't ruin the flow of the film is a masterstroke. The Red Shoes is quite simply about a pair of enchanted (aren't they always?) shoes that once put on, are unable to stop dancing. This leads to the heroine of the ballet literally dancing herself to death. As far as stories within stories go, this is one of the best. Obviously anyone that knows their films will realise that the story of The Red Shoes ballet has to be echoed in The Red Shoes film. Which of course it is.

There is so much to say about this film, for a start it is so opulent, so lavish, with post war Britain still on rations, life must have felt as if it was in black & white, so this was the type of escapism that people deserved and needed. I'd say if you haven't seen it then you really should try and alter that as soon as possible. It's a perfect rainy Sunday afternoon film, best seen with tea and digestives. Those that have seen it will know that rather than reading about it, it is far better to dig it out and watch it again. I'm still kicking myself for missing out on the opportunity of seeing this at the cinema last year. But then that's me all over, maybe next time, eh?

Modern Times (1936) - Charles Chaplin

Stubborn little bleeder that Chaplin was. Along with a couple of the greatest directors of the silent era (Fritz Lang and René Clair), he held off of using sound in his films for as long as possible. This film was released nine years after The Jazz Singer (the benchmark for the end of the silent era), but is still essentially a silent film with added sound effects and score. There is no real dialogue, it's title cards all the way with this one, as I said stubborn sod that Chaplin. I guess you can't blame him really since sound in films back then was deemed a bit of a distraction from what was happening on the screen. Plus Chappers (as I promise I won't call him again) was a master of silent cinema. So it all makes sense really, he was just sticking to what he was best at and what he understood. However this would be the last of his silent films. Modern Times marks a more prominent last too for Chaplin, it would be the final bow for his most famous character, The Little Tramp.

Now as a lad I loved Laurel & Hardy, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and just about any other silent celluloid comedian that was prepared to risk their life to make me laugh like a donkey, a donkey that enjoys a good laugh that is, not any other kind. All that is except Charlie Chaplin. He just didn't make me laugh, not even a titter. Stan Laurel lighting a cigarette with a flame from his thumb now that's funny, little bloke with a Hitler moustache, bendy cane and big shoes not doing much at all, was just plain boring for a wee fella like meself. Almost enough to make me want to go outside and play during the summer, almost. As I got older all those aforementioned funnymen still made me laugh, but it took until my mid twenties before I saw the light with Chaplin. I caught a couple of his films on Swedish TV and it just clicked how great he actually was, not only as an actor, but also a writer, director and even composer. The Robert Rodriguez of his day in a way, except he made genius films, none of which featured Danny Trejo.

Anyway Modern Times is like a fair few of those early slapstick films, a series of set pieces linked fairly loosely together. Kind of like four Chaplin shorts, the most famous being the first segment which see's our guy working in a factory. Now this is where the difference between watching Chaplin as a kid or as an adult (albeit a very childish adult) comes in. Since now it becomes obvious that Chaplin is knocking the idea of technology taking over lives, turning people into machines. Especially when you take into account just how bad life was for so many of the people that would flock to the cinema, in order to escape their own poverty for a few hours at this period in time in the States. It's the very same thing that Lang had touched on in Metropolis, and Jacques Tati would spend his career exploring. The factory itself owes a huge debt to René Clair's À nous la liberté. Clair states that Chaplin actually told him that he had 'borrowed' from his film, Clair found it flattering since he was a huge Chaplin fan himself.

All the silent stars were physical actors and really able to throw themselves around, Chaplin is no exception. The jailhouse sequence is great for this, but Chaplin has something that is lacking in other stars from this era, a kind of sadness maybe something that people could relate too. Seeing him use a chicken as a funnel for some coffee is both surreal and touching. I can't really describe it, it's one of those things that needs to be seen. Modern Times contains one of my favourite Charlie Chaplin moments, a flag falls off the back of a truck, the Tramp rushes forward picks it up and runs after the truck, as he does this a protest march swings round the corner and falls in behind him. On paper it doesn't sound like much, on screen it's a powerful image coupled with a humerous overtone. Which is something that happens time and time again in the film, the fantasy home sequence where grapes grow right outside the kitchen door and milk comes directly from the udder, is followed by the reality of a tumbledown shack on the edge of town. Of course the comedy is there, but there is always that undertone of sadness. Yeah so Chaplin's a genius, I can see that now. I'm hoping to see more by him this year, so watch this space.

Great Expectations (1946) - David Lean

As you might have guessed I like to watch the odd film or two, and I tend to see a fair few films during the Christmas break. Normally I catch up with things that I just haven't had time to see, or those films that are simply too long to be seen during a normal working week (take a bow The Human Condition). Still when the big day rolls around I do like to see something special, it can't be any old tat - not on Christmas day. It's almost always a version of A Christmas Carol since that is by far my favourite Christmas story. Far superior to that other one about that couple that have a kid in a barn. It feels like I've seen just about every version of A Christmas Carol though, and so I've moved on during the past few years to just watching either this film or Lean's other Dickens adaptation Oliver Twist. Since I saw both Lean's and Polanski's versions of Twist earlier in the year, this years film was a bit of a no brainer.

Lean adapts the story well, anyone familiar with the novel will notice that certain liberties have been taken (especially with the ending). But that's what you get when you adapt a book for the cinema. What works on the page doesn't always work so well on the screen, I doubt people will ever be able to accept that though, since time after time a film is slated for not being like the book. Boo fucking hoo, just go back and read the book, it hasn't changed because of the film has it? Anyway I'm not about to complain since this is one of my favourite Lean films. It's got a brisk feel to it, and being from the days when David Lean was able to make a film that ran under two hours, it does move along quite quickly.

Anthony Wager plays Pip as a boy and I have to say I think he is great in the role. For those who don't know the story it goes something like this. Pip meets an escaped prisoner (Magwitch) one night, and instead of dobbing him in to the boys in blue he gets him a file and some food. Magwitch is caught however and heads back off to chokey. Pip meanwhile comes to the attention of local weirdo rich type Miss Havisham, if I write spinster then you'll be able to picture her, she never leaves her decaying mansion, was jilted at the alter, you know the type. Anyway it's here that the young Pip meets and falls head over heels for Estella. Cut to ten years later and now Pip is a young man who looks like John Mills, and just settling down to a life of drudgery when Mr. Jaggers, a solicitor from the Big Smoke arrives with the news that Pip has a secret benefactor, and is to leave his old life behind, and head off to London town to learn how to become a gentleman. Phew.

Who is the mystery benefactor, will Pip get it on with Estella and what's all that about Jaggers' maid? Well despite the fact that you probably consider yourself a cinephile, you'll be amazed at just how great it all comes together. It's always a treat to be surprised by reveals in old films, and that happens in this film. It's a great story, Dickens' character names alone are worth the entry price, but couple that with Lean's magnificent eye for angles and camera set ups and you know you are onto a winner. All that and Alec Guinness in his first film role. You can see why I return to this film time and again.

Seven Samurai (1954) - Akira Kurosawa

You see this is why I think The Internet Movie Data Base is a bad tool for the average monkey to judge films with. It always bugs me when someone mentions what the score for a film is on the IMDB. After all, those numbers only prove that people in general know naff all about what they watch, and probably spend more time thinking of what score to give, than reflecting on said film. Let's face it rating films, or music, or anything come to that, is such a lazy way to express what you thought of something. I never rate films in that way, or music, or books, or sex for that matter. At most I'll say I thought it was good or bad and give my reasons why, although not normally with the sex thing to be honest. At the time of writing this Seven Samurai, one of the greatest films ever made, has an IMDB rating of (drum roll) 8.8 out of 10. Shocking. How anyone can find any kind of fault with this film is beyond me. Just to put it in perspective Avatar has a rating of 8.3, so does that mean it's almost as good as Seven Samurai? Maybe the people that rate films drive big cars and have a dog called Tyson, if you know what I mean.

So let's move on shall we? This was Kurosawa's 14th film, and by my reckoning his third masterpiece. It was his first foray into the Jidaigeki (samurai films to you and me) genre, the style of film with which he'd eventually become most associated. Some think of this as his finest moment, which is a pretty tough call to make since he made so many stone cold classics. However if you want to name this one above all the others, then be my guest, I won't argue. Seven Samurai has been remade twice in the west. First in 1960 as The Magnificent Seven, and then 20 years later as Battle Beyond the Stars. Neither version comes close to the mastery of Kurosawa's epic though, and one (Battle Beyond the Stars) failed to even credit the great man.

The story itself is pretty simple. Japan 1580's, small village of farmers get wind that a gang of bandits are going to rob them of their crops after the harvest, so the villagers decide to hire samurai to protect themselves. Well you would, wouldn't you? In fact so simple is the story that you might wonder just why the running time is well over three hours. Well the answer is that Kurosawa was a big fan of procedural film making, showing his audience the minutest details of sometimes the most ordinary of things. In contrast some of the more obvious events that an average director would absolutely show, Kurosawa saw fit to skip over. For example when we first meet Shimada (played by Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura), he is shaving off that most sacred of the samurai's garb, his topknot. We spend a fair bit of time watching this act from a number of different viewpoints. It turns out he's doing this so that he can pose as a monk, in order to enter a barn and rescue a child that is being held hostage inside. So normally you'd expect to see the action between the bad guy and the samurai after such a build up, but instead we linger outside with the onlookers, never seeing the swordplay. We only witness the after effects, as the kidnapper stumbles out into the open and falls (in a rare use of slow motion in a Kurosawa film), to the floor, dead.

Instead of seeing the samurai rounded up via montage, we get to see each one being recruited individually. I'm fairly sure that this cinema staple was first employed here. We learn more about the character of the samurai and their effect on the group dynamic this way. Just like the Seven Dwarfs, each of the titular samurai has their own personalities, some are novices, others old hands, some have seen combat, others not. In the same way Kurosawa doesn't just hurl us into a battle between the samurai and the bandits, he takes us around the village via Shimada, and allows us in on the battle plan, building tension and anticipation for the climax of the film - when they finally do fight. There are also many small sub plots involving the villagers and of course the samurai. It really is the tightest of scripts, and considering the length of the film (207 minutes), it amazes me just how quickly it flies by.

There are so many great moments, but for me the real clincher (with the exception of the ending), is when that other Kurosawa regular Toshirô Mifune (playing Kikuchiyo, a wannabe samurai who turns out to be a farmer's son), is half submerged in a river while holding a baby he has rescued. He breaks down, crying that the child was him all those years ago. Heartbreaking stuff, it really is.

Then there's the ending. That final battle that takes place in Kurosawa's famous rain. It always rains in Kurosawa films, and that rain is always heavy and normally (although not always) signifies impending doom. Now Seven Samurai over ran it's shooting schedule by a colossal amount, for various reasons including Kurosawa falling ill at one point. Anyway it ended up shooting for almost a year, so the end scenes that were originally due to be shot during the summer, actually ended up going before the cameras in the dead of winter. So when you watch Seven Samurai next, have a think about that when you see Mifune running about pretty much naked from the waste down, up to his knees in freezing cold water. You'd never know how uncomfortable it was from the madness on screen.

Of course the whole film looks gorgeous, AK was a master at framing and it is evident here, just look at how he frames the samurai when they are just sitting around. Flawless. The cast and crew are made up of people that Kurosawa would return to again and again, every one of them perfect in their roles. If there is one thing that is important about a film it's the ending, always end with a strong image. Seven Samurai opens with a shot of the hills surrounding the village, and ends with a shot of the burial mounds that echoes that opening shot. As I say this is a flawless film, one that should be watched again and again. It deserves it's reputation as one of the greats. It'll be interesting to see just what we'll still be watching and discussing from 2010 in fifty years time. Avatar maybe? I hope not.

Night and the City (1950) - Jules Dassin

Jules Dassin was one of America's great Noir directors. The three films that precede this one, (Brute Force, The Naked City and Thieves' Highway) are all absolute classics. Each one dripping with the smell of men stuck in a bad place at a bad time. A place where rooms have huge window frame shadows burnt into their ceilings, and the night time streets are permanently wet. Prior to shooting this film, Dassin was warned by Fox head honcho Darryl F. Zanuck that he was going to be blacklisted.* So Dassin was packed off to London to make this, which would end up being his last American film for a whopping eighteen years. Still America's loss was Europe's gain, since Dassin wouldn't have been offered what many consider his masterpiece (1955's Rififi), if the silly sods hadn't seen red.

Night and the City is every bit as good as any of the films I've mentioned above. It's the story of Harry Fabian, a chancer, a ponce and general all round bad 'un. How bad? Well he steals money from his girlfriend (the wonderful Gene Tierney), and for a living cons people into a side street drinking den, to be fleeced alive by the girls working there. He always has some scheme on the go, everyone of them destined to fail. Everybody knows that he's one of life's losers, everyone that is except Harry. A chance encounter with an ex superstar wrestler sparks an idea in Harry's grifter brain, and sets in motion a series of events that will see our man spiral deeper and deeper into troubled waters, until the inevitable happens.

Fabian is played with enough nervous energy to power a large town by Richard Widmark, who hardly sits still for the whole film. He's in almost every scene and is sheer joy to watch. Of course having the action take place in London is great for me, but even better than that is that it takes place not in the West End, but down by the riverside and in the still rubble strewn East End. As you'd expect it looks sexy as fuck, lot's of location shooting, shadows that stretch down long wet roads, lit by god alone knows, but when it looks this good who cares. It's got all the usual noir trappings, but feels so fresh just by being set in London and not New York. The supporting cast are all on top form, you've got Googie Withers pulling Fabian's strings, while Herbert Lom sets about teaching poor Harry Fabian a lesson that no man should have to learn. Even the hardest of you will wipe a tear from your eye, (even if you do use the excuse that your not crying, just tired), by the time the end credits roll.

Like a lot of the great old films (or at least the ones I like), there is very little back story, I'm not sure why Harry is in London or even how long he's been there. Not that any of that matters, by the time you are caught up in the story you won't have time to wonder anything. Of course it bombed on release and is now hailed as a masterpiece. Some things never change, eh? If you haven't seen this and are a fan of Noir, then you really should do something about it. Likewise with the other Dassin films I mentioned, everyone a classic or your money back. Now would I lie to you?


*Back in 1947 the good ole US of A began rooting out those evil COMMUNIST types from it's entertainment industry. This went on for the best part of a decade, ruining many a career. Some managed to get work by using pseudonyms, but for most it spelt the end of any sort of life within the film world.

Frankenstein (1931) - James Whale

I recently watched a three part BBC series hosted by The League Of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss, entitled A History of Horror. It was a very selective personal look back at that most misunderstood of film genres. Being a fan of both Gatiss and the type of horror films he adores (non slasher, mainly British with a healthy dose of the original 30's classics), I loved the show. What with it being Halloween too, I slipped into a bit of a horror rut, which it seems I'm still in. Anyway Gatiss reminded me that I hadn't seen the original Frankenstein since I'd moved to Sweden (13 years and counting), which for a film like this is far too long a gap.

So onto the film itself, well let's start by saying that it's not exactly a faithful rendition of the novel. However it is deserving of the kudos that are heaped upon it. A lot of that is down to three people, first up is Jack Pierce for the make up. His design for the look of the monster is still the first image that pops into any right thinking persons head upon hearing the word Frankenstein. Second is one of Britain's most underrated character actors, Boris Karloff. It's he who made that make up work so well, anyone familiar with his work will know just how good he was at being able to transform himself, especially his face. Last up is Whale himself who does some interesting things with his camera, setting it up high looking down on the action during the monsters creation scene for example, which I took to be because of the fact that Henry Frankenstein is playing God. Likewise low angle set ups when the monster is being taught, emphasizing the innocent child like nature of the soon to be killer.

The laboratory where the monster is brought to life, is the template for every mad bastard professor that ever appeared on screen after this films premiere. The monster himself is talked about long before he is seen, building up anticipation in the audience. When he is finally revealed, he walks into a room backwards (for no apparent reason), turns around, and we get rapid edits bringing us tighter and tighter onto that face. It's as good a moment as any in the horror canon. Up there with Leatherface swinging his chain saw about, all in a tizz at the end of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, or Sergeant Howie blubbing like a wee lassie during The Wicker Man's closing scenes.

To say I enjoyed Frankenstein would be an understatement, but at the same time it works only when put into the context of the period it is from. It doesn't deliver on the shocks or scares as much as one would expect, except during the scene where the monster throws a girl in a lake, which is by far the best sequence in the film for me. As good as Frankenstein is, it's not a patch on the following years Freaks, which is still my favourite horror film from the thirties.

Le Doulos (1962) - Jean-Pierre Melville

There were a couple of bits of graffiti that I'll never forget from back when I was a nipper. In fact so old were they that they were done with white paint and a paint brush. Not quite Banksy. The first was off of Southend high street and declared 'Neil Queen* is a supergrass', the second was in Wickford and said 'Watkins** is a coppers nark'. Now God alone knows why they have both stuck in my head, but they have. What's this got to do with Le Doulos? Well Doulos is French slang for a grass, maybe somewhere in Marseilles there is a guy in his late thirties writing about remembering Doulos being badly painted on a wall. Well perhaps not.

Anyway as you probably already know Jean-Pierre Melville only really made two kinds of films, WWII French resistance flicks and crime capers. This one falls neatly into the later category, what with it being about robberies and the naughty types that do that sort of thing. The big question that runs through the film is, who is the police informant? The set up is simple and the mid film reveal is a stroke of genius. It's one of those moments where you realise that the director has pulled the wool over your eyes. It'll have you wanting to rewatch it again ASAP, just so you can say to yourself that you saw it coming a mile off.

Jean-Paul Belmondo plays his usual brash, treat the girls like shit they love that sort of thing character, Serge Reggiani as always is far more understated, and for me at least is the real star of the film. He appears to not do much, but conveys far more emotion with just one glance than Belmondo manages with his mugging to the camera style of acting. As per usual in a Melville film the female characters (of which there are only three) are very two dimensional. They only exist as an extension of their male counterpoints. I don't think Melville is quite the misogynist that critics have labeled him, he just made films about relationships between men. Plain and simple. It's just that sometimes you have to put a dame in there too.

There are a few things to look out for in Melville's crime films, some obvious some less so. So let's start with the simple ones. Hats, if you're not wearing a hat, you're not in the film, same goes for trench coats. Then there are the huge American cars that all the bad boys drive, they look so out of place when they have to park up next to some little fart box Citroën. But then Melville's Paris is like something out of Sapphire & Steel, a kind of parallel Paris that is twinned with Chicago. Then come the smaller things, white gloves for instance, the top boy always has white gloves. The lead characters looking at their reflection in a mirror, is another. All of these things are in Le Doulos, if they weren't then you wouldn't be watching a Melville film.

Of course there is a lot more to Le Doulos than that, for starters there is a fantastically shocking scene between Belmondo and Monique Hennessy, and enough little twists to keep things moving along at a decent pace. Oh and a lovely long tracking sequence during the main titles. There is one other thing that always happens during Melville's police and thieves films, and that is how they end. Now I'm not going to give anything away here, but I'll just say they always have the same ending. If you haven't seen this, then you really should if you are a fan of this sort of thing. Things got a whole lot better for JPM after this, and his genius years were just around the corner. I've convinced myself whilst writing this that I really need to rewatch them all. Happy days.


*I can't remember the actual name and have substituted a friends name instead.
**Same story here as the one above. As far as I'm aware neither Haydn Watkins or Neil Queen have grassed anyone up, only time will tell though.