Ministry of Fear (1944) - Fritz Lang

   Right from the ominous opening music and image of a pendulum slowly swinging back and forth you know that Ministry of Fear isn’t going to be a comedy. Of course it isn’t, it’s a Fritz Lang adaptation of a novel by Graham Greene how could it be anything other than a nourish thriller? And yet despite those credentials Ministry of Fear does have a gloriously dark streak of humour running through it. In that way (and a few others) it’s the most Hitchcockian Fritz Lang film I’ve ever seen, an innocent man on the run, a league of evil wrong doers operating within plain sight of ordinary society, a blonde love interest and of course the all important McGuffin to propel the film ever forwards. It’s all so Hitchcock in fact that you almost keep an eye out for the great man’s cameo. Almost. But I’m getting ahead of myself a bit here, so let’s wind back to that opening pendulum and pick it up from there.

   It turns out that said pendulum is attached to a wall mounted clock (Lang does love his clocks), which is being stared at intently by our films hero Stephen Neale (Ray Milland). As it strikes six o’clock someone enters the room and informs Neale that he is free to go, and offers up the advice that in future he should try and steer clear of the police. So far so mysterious. It turns out Neale is leaving an asylum, although why he was in there we don’t find out just yet. This opening scene of Ministry of Fear really sets the tone for the rest of the film with it's long dark shadows. Lang is always one step ahead of his audience, it’s a mystery which we are encouraged to try and solve as the film progresses and as such it works extremely well.

   Anyway poor old Neale leaves the asylum determined to head for the bright lights of London. Before he even makes it to the train station though he spots a fete and the first of many suspension of disbelief moments begins. Maybe I should have mentioned that the film is set during WWII, since a fete at six in the evening seems a little unlikely. But as it turns out that’s the least of this films lapses in logic. So where was I? At the fete Neale ends up winning a cake (don’t ask), which becomes Ministry of Fear’s McGuffin. You see due to a mix up involving a palm reader (like I said, don’t ask), Neale has been given a cake that was meant to go to a Nazi spy. Oh yes it’s 1944 and the bad guys are all Nazis don’t you know. Anyway to cut a long story short Neal hops on a train to London, gets attacked by a blind man en route, who then nicks his cake and runs off across what looks like no mans land (but is in fact an obvious sound stage outdoor set) during an air raid, dodges bullets and bombs, gets accused of shooting someone at a seance and becomes that innocent man on the run that I mentioned earlier.

   All of the above happens within the first thirty minutes of Ministry of Fear. So to say it’s fast moving would be doing it a disservice, it rattles along at a cracking speed and at a few minutes shy of an hour and a half is over before you know it. There’s no title card at the start of the film informing us when and where the action is taking place, instead we get constant references to life during wartime. The cake is praised as being made with real eggs, which would really be something during those heavily rationed times. Black drapes hang everywhere too and there is constant chatter about the blackouts that were a nightly occurrence during the Blitz. A whole section of the film even takes place in one of the London Underground stations which doubled up as air raid shelters back then. All of the above works supremely well and grounds the film in the period in which it is set. Of course London is never actually shown being bombed, that sort of thing just wouldn’t do. There was a war on after all.

As is well documented the villains of this film in real life had an affinity for Fritz Lang's films. So much so that according to Lang he was approached by Joseph Goebbels to become the head of UFA (Universum Film AG) which would have resulted in him being a huge part of the Nazi propaganda that was churned out during WWII. Lang baulked at the idea and fled that night to Paris, and then later to the safer shores of the U.S. I can’t say for sure but I’m guessing Goebbels wasn’t so keen on Lang’s American output, which during the early forties was chock-a-block with Allied propaganda. Manhunt for instance starts with an assassination attempt on the Führer. For Lang it must have been incredibly important to distance himself from the insanity that his countrymen were wreaking across the globe, especially since he had settled in the U.S.A. a country that despite being founded by European immigrants was well known for it’s intolerance of anything other then the American way of life.

   Anyway back to the film, Ray Milland is pretty darn good as a the man on the lam, able to switch between wry one liners delivered with a raised eyebrow to running and jumping style action at the drop of a fedora. The sort of thing that Cary Grant always made look so easy. Of the rest of the cast Percy Waram as Inspector Prentice really stands out and makes a great foil for Neale during the last third of the film. Marjorie Reynolds is the love interest and doesn’t really get all that much to do sadly, she’s mainly there as a crutch for the men in the film. Far more interesting is Hillary Brooke who gets the full five star noir introduction walking out from darkened shadows into the light.

   The most obvious thing this film has going for it and probably the reason you’re reading this now is of course Fritz Lang. By this time in his career he was already a master director with enough classics under his belt to ensure he’d always be remembered. His American films may not hold a candle to his earlier German output but they were always well directed. He was a real master with shadows and light, the final rooftop shoot out in Ministry of Fear for instance where a darkened stairwell is lit fleetingly by gun blasts is one of the best looking things you’ll see in a film from this period. The same can be said of the seance scene which takes place in a gigantic room with a circular table and chairs in its center. Once the lights drop Lang gives each of the people at the table a spotlight, visually it’s reminiscent of Ken Adam’s war room set for Dr. Strangelove. Which of course was a full twenty years away from being filmed.

   It’s impossible to write about Ministry of Fear without mentioning Graham Greene and his famously sniffy attitude to Hollywood adaptations of his books. I can see why, since quite often they jettisoned back story and motivation for characters and delved straight into the story. I haven’t read the Greene novel this is based on so I can’t really comment on how it differs. What I can say though is that Greene’s prose doesn’t have any real zip to it. Whereas this film really is the cinematic equivalent of a page-turner, it’s episodic with Neale being thrown from one situation to another leaving the audience with almost no time to work out just who the villain is.

   Talking of villains the two things the audience have to work out during the course of Ministry of Fear are the identity of the head of the Nazi ring and just what was in that 4lb 15oz cake? Anyone familiar with the language of cinema will be able to spot the chief Nazi straight away. How? Just by the way he/she holds a cigarette since all screen Nazis hold their cigarettes in a weird way. As for the cake, well it’s not so much what was in it that is the mystery as much as how did it not get blown to kingdom come when the police were finding bits of the guy holding it scattered all over the show? But as always with these films it’s not so much the destination as the journey.

   Ministry of Fear falls into a strange place in Lang’s oeuvre, it’s not anywhere near his best work and yet it’s nowhere near bad enough to be dismissed or forgotten either. It falls somewhere in-between those two camps, and is best viewed as such. There’s little point in pouring over why characters do what they do, or even what happens to certain people once their value to the story has run dry since logic seems to take a back seat at times. It’s best to just go along with it all a-la Hitchcock and enjoy the ride.

I, Anna (2012) - Barnaby Southcombe

Great slow burning London set crime drama that for once doesn’t involve gangs of hoodies talking in a language that no English speaking person over the age of thirty can understand, nor does it involve shooters, there’s no tart with a heart, no swearing, no Danny Dyer and no silly action scenes. Instead we get that old fashioned thing of actors, for want of a better word - acting.

Charlotte Rampling is middle aged lonely heart Anna Welles and Gabriel Byrne is D.C.I. Bernie Reid investigating the murder of George Stone (played by the always value for money Ralph Brown). Anna and George meet up at a singles night and by the next morning George is dead. Bernie clocks Anna and being recently separated himself decides to try his chances with her. Throw into the mix Hayley Atwell as Anna’s daughter and Eddie Marsan as one of the flatfoots working the murder with Bernie and you have a seriously decent cast.

Written and directed by Rampling’s son Barnaby Southcombe this is a slice of modern noir set in and around London’s Barbican. The acting is top notch, not at all showy, with Rampling in particular giving a note perfect performance. At it’s heart I, Anna is a murder mystery, but an old fashioned one without the yawnable multiple twists we’ve become so accustomed too. In fact the ending feels right on the money, well earned if you like. Southcombe directs the whole thing with a keen eye but never allows his camera to take center stage, everything is geared to serving his script and allowing the cast to do their stuff.

It’s always a treat to see actresses over a certain age up on the screen in an interesting role. It seems to be that in Hollywood once the wrinkles set in then for some reason there’s no work for actresses as a leading character. It’s all mad aunts and grandma’s, which is a pretty tragic state of affairs and one that probably goes quite a way to explaining just why so many of them feel the need to have the dreaded plastic surgery. Anyway I’m drifting a little here, so to get back to the film I’d say this is a must see. Unpredictable in a way so few films are nowadays, if that sounds like your cup of tea then I'd say it's well worth taking a punt if you get the chance to.

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?

Shock Corridor (1963) - Samuel Fuller

Sam Fuller at his pulpy best. Shot in a Cormanesque 10 days on just a handful of sets, on the surface this is an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents spun out to feature film length. The story is pretty simple - a patient (Slone) is murdered in a mental home, three patients witnessed said murder and Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) a journalist with an eye on wining a Pulitzer, feels that if he can smuggle himself into the hospital by acting crazy he can interview them and solve the crime. As I said it's Fuller at his pulpy best. It's never explained why the police haven't interviewed the witnesses, or even how Barrett knows about them in the first place, and let's not even start to question the fact that the testimonies of three mental patients would never stand up in court.

Of course all of the above is just what you see if you watch the film, but you don't have to look so very far under the surface to see that the mental hospital is actually post WWII America in microcosm, or at least the problems that America was going through at the time. So as Barrett moves his way through the film trying to solve the mystery, we get monologues about Communism, the after effects of war, life during the nuclear age and something that crops up in Sam's work fairly regularly - racism. In fact it's Trent played by Hari Rhodes who is the highlight of the cast for me. He gets some real choice lines and believes that he is the founder of the KKK, despite of course the fact that he's black. It's a champion idea and Fuller runs with it.

Of the rest of the cast Peter Breck as Johnny Barrett is massively over the top as characters sometimes are in Fuller's films, he's watchable but it's not such a surprise to see that he never really made a career in films and drifted back to TV work. I'd love to have seen Richard Widmark play Barrett instead, but that's just me I guess. Constance Towers as Cathy was also pretty good, she's the only female in the film really, but she gets quite a lot to do and manages to make her scenes memorable. It's the background actors that are the real joy of the film though, there's a fair bit of dribbling & screaming 'I'm fucking nuts me' type acting, but there are also some great little moments in there too.

Of course Sam Fuller was a journo before becoming a director, so I can imagine the story kind of wrote itself once the initial idea had been formed. I don't think the script is really where this film soars though, it's much more the way it's shot, all faces in half shadow, or just a strip of light across the eyes and noirish shadows in every background. Which isn't all the surprising when you see that it was lensed by the Godlike Stanley Cortez. There are shots towards the end of the film that look like they have been lifted by Kubrick for The Shining - which is after all another film about mental illness. Not important that, but interesting to me at least. As is the fact that there's always a crooked picture in the doctors offices, the film even begins with a picture being straightned. It's not too hard once you've seen the film to see what connection they have to the story, but it's a cool little touch.

You'll see the end coming a mile off, but that doesn't spoil the fun of the film. After all you get the 60's equivalent of the fight between Roddy Piper and Keith David from They Live, it just seems to go on forever. Oh and there's the best line of the film too - Nymphos!

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.

Le Samouraï (1967) - Jean-Pierre Melville

 Jef Costello (Alain Delon) is an assassin, the sort of guy you shouldn't really double cross. So when after a successful job Jef is pulled in for questioning by the law, his employers decided that he's a liability and decided to off him. They botch the job, and now Jef is out after blood. If you read that synopsis on the back of the DVD, would it make you watch this? I'd probably stick it back on the shelf thinking that I've seen that film a few hundred times before. Yet Melville, like all great directors is able to take a familiar yarn and turn it on it's head, creating something entirely original and recognisably his.

Le Samouraï is unmistakeably Melville, containing as it does several of the directors trademarks. For a start before anything happens we are presented with a hokey quote, supposedly from some ancient samurai text, but of course being straight from Melville's pen. Then there are the Melville staples - the doomed loner character (Jef), the huge American car (Valérie's), Jef's white gloves and long hard gaze into the mirror at the start of the film. All of these things appear again and again in JPM's films. Even the staircase in Jef's building turns up a number of times in his flicks.

By '67 Melville had well established his film language, all muted washed out colours (usually greys and pale blues) and sets that had a more than run down appearance. His characters always dress to the nines with police and gangsters adopting the same dress code, that of trench coats and trilby hats. Something that is touched upon in the scene where Delon is told to stand in a line up amongst other policemen, all of whom are told to put on their coats and hats, of course they all look like gangsters, or is that policemen? Then there's Melville's meticulous eye for detail and his relish at showing the audience the minutest details of the most mundane things. In Le Samouraï we are very carefully shown exactly how Jef sets up his alibi and walked through how the police plant a bug for example. Sometimes these scenes almost feel as if they are shot in real time, although of course they aren't. The weird thing is that despite this obsession with detail, his characters don't appear to breathe the same air as us. His world is a few steps removed from ours, for example when Jef (twice) steals a car he does so in broad daylight by simply walking up to it, opening the door (unlocked!!), then using the huge ring of keys that he carries around with him, he slowly and methodically works his way through key after key until finding the one that will start the car. Interestingly a similar scene is to be found when the police break into Jef's apartment using the same massive bunch of keys.

As I said Melville's world is like ours but slightly different. It's almost fantasy like, when Jef shoots his victims, both times you see Jef taking his white gloved hands out of his trench coat pockets, he isn't holding a gun, then we cut to the victim who has pulled a gun and quickly goes to pull the trigger, however quite unbelievably Jef manages to outdraw them. As I said it's Melville's world as much as when you watch Play Time it's Tati's.

Melville worked almost exclusively in two genres throughout his career, those being crime and resistance films. This isn't my favourite of his crime films (Le Cercle rouge just pips it, just), but it's still a masterpiece. There is just so much to enjoy about this film, such as the wonderfully cold performance from Delon. He's almost like a mannequin, he hardly talks during the film (in fact there is no dialogue at all for the first ten minutes), and when he does it's very spartan, with almost no emotion detectable. The room he lives in is a reflection of him, only the barest essentials are on display, water and cigarettes are stacked neatly on top of a wardrobe, a bed pushed against one wall the chest of drawers empty. The caged bird that Jef keeps is an obvious metaphor for Jef, who as far as we see has no companions, no love, nothing. Delon is often framed entirely alone, frozen out from the rest of the people that populate the film. There is more to say, but I just feel that I'm wittering on, I haven't mentioned the use of Kurosawa style wipes in the editing or even the great fetishistic way Jef is with his hat, let alone any sort of discussion about how perfect the end of the film is (hint think about the title). The thing is there has to be some stuff for you to discover for yourself, you don't want me telling you everything now do you?

In a Lonely Place (1950) - Nicholas Ray

Bit of strange one this, it's noir but not as we know it. There's no guns, gangsters, running from the cops, heists, no huge shadows even, in fact it's none of the things we come to expect from a noir flick. But then this isn't just a film noir, it's got touches of melodrama and has a murder mystery running through the background to boot. At it's heart though it's a guy meets gal film, romantic in a dark smokey twisted sort of way.

Bogart plays screenwriter (see I told you it wasn't your run of the mill noir, didn't I), Dixon Steele. Dix has a temper on him, the opening scene alone see's Bogie offering to lamp someone when he stops his car at a traffic light, he ends giving just about every person that he runs into a slap at some point or other in the film. He's not a likable guy, yet played by Bogart you can't help but feel for him. Those hangdog features, the sad eyes, the downcast looks they almost make you forget just what a heel the guy is, almost. Gloria Grahame is Laurel Gray, newly moved in across the courtyard from Dix. You know those women that only seem to exist in American films from the 50's, all pointy bras and sassy in a way that no person on earth could be? Well that's Gloria. She's no dumb broad, she's independent and a great foil for Bogart. You wouldn't call her a dame, not to her face at any rate. Well of course Dix falls for her and that's really what the film is about. There is a murder in there but that's kind of secondary (it happens off screen), it pushes our lovers together and then pulls them back apart. It keeps the pressure on the relationship, since both the cops and the audience are uncertain whether Dix did the bad deed or not. Gloria first meets Dix when she provides him with an alibi. It's one of the many great scenes in the film between the two leads, not great in the way it's lit, directed or edited, great in the way the dialogue is delivered by Grahame and Bogart. The two policemen in the room with them melt into the background, I think it's around here that it becomes obvious that Ray is going to focus on the relationship between these two, and not the murder that had been the focal point up to now.

Any film that is going to put a screenwriter under a microscope had better be well written, and In a Lonely Place is just that, and then some. The plot is as tight as a seventies footballers perm, the dialogue is the sort that you wished you'd said, yet know that if you cribbed it people would think you a right wally. 'I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.' Wonderful stuff, Bogart does this kind of thing in his sleep. The timbre of his voice is perfect for these kind of lines, he really sells them. He even makes smoking seem cool, you can see why a generation took him to their hearts. He may have only had three expressions when acting, but he uses them so devastatingly. I really don't know what more to say about this film, since I don't want to give away any plot. It really is one of those films that deserves to be praised to the heavens. Put it this way, from now on if I read a list of great films from the 50's and this isn't on it, then I'll know just how clueless said list is. Convinced yet? What is the lonely place that the title eludes to? Is it the the site of the murder, Hollywood itself or Dixon's heart? I know what I think, I'll be surprised if you can guess how it all pans out, now there's something you can't write about every film.

I've seen this twice, this time the way God intended (at the cinema) and the print was beautiful. There are a couple of great lighting moments when Bogart's eyes are highlighted as he goes into a frenzy telling a story, which are the sort of touches I adore in these older films. I'm not really all that au fait with Nicholas Ray (hey that rhymes, maybe I should make a hipster T with that on it), but that's all going to change this year. He's someone who I'm determined to see a few films by before 2011 becomes 2012.

Watchmen (2009) - Zack Snyder

I used to have a really nice leather bound edition of the Watchmen graphic novel. Like a mug I punted it out on E-Bay and spent the money I made on early Sarah singles. I kind of regret doing that now (still I do love those singles), but that's life I guess. What I'm getting at is that I haven't read Watchmen for well over a decade. I always felt that had it been a 'proper' novel, rather than a graphic one then it would be held up alongside those other modern classics that all teenagers read, The Wasp Factory or The Dice Man for example.

Unfilmable. That was always the cry that went up whenever news would seep out from Hollywoodland, that some poor unfortunate was about to spend the next few years of their life trying to figure out how to bring this to the screen. Which isn't all that surprising when you look at just what Watchmen is. The story itself is incredibly dense, with stories within stories (even a whole separate comic tale being told parallel to the main event), it takes place over a period of fifty years (so lots of jumping back and forth through time), it's very violent and wouldn't take to being toned down in any way, so it would have to be marketed towards adults (which in those pre Dark Night years felt far too risky for major studios). Plus it would be expensive, really expensive. Oh yeah and the threat of nuclear war hangs over the whole thing like a huge wet blanket. Happy stuff then. Summer blockbuster? Yeah right. There was more chance of Terry Gilliam making Don Quixote, than Watchmen ever ending up at the local Odeon.

So you get the gist, with even Gilliam deeming the book unfilmable, after circling it for a year or so and eventually giving up. After all just making Dr Manhattan (huge naked blue bloke) come to life was enough of a headache to keep most people away from attempting an adaptation. However roll forward a decade or two, and the leaps in technology now meant it was possible to make a faithful version of Watchmen. Enter Zack Snyder, a man who is able to make films that on paper sound woeful, remaking the classic Dawn of the Dead for instance and actually turning in a finished film that I enjoyed, when all I really wanted was to hate it. That impressed me. He followed that with 300, yet again I was more than ready to despise it and once again I liked it, even if it was as empty as an English church. So for me it wasn't a problem that he was going to be the person to bring Watchmen to life.

There was always only going to be two ways of making this film. First you either cut it down to the bone, throwing away all the little sub plots and have it as a straight ahead murder mystery. Or you go with the second option, just go for it, film everything, leave nothing out and have a huge flabby beast of a film. I'm glad Snyder did the right thing and went for the later option. It was trimmed for the theatrical version, to a mere 162 minutes which was all over the place in terms of pacing. So you can imagine what the version I watched was like coming in as it does at a whopping 215 minutes. Oh yes it's the full bells and whistles edition, they don't call it the ULTIMATE CUT for nowt you know. It staggers forward, and after a while you just settle in and watch it in much the same way you would a decent mini series. There is no real momentum to the film, it starts and then drifts along at it's own pace until it ends. I can't see how it could be any different and still be faithful to the source novel though.


The actual story itself is set in a slightly alternate reality, where superheroes exist but have been outlawed, Nixon is president despite the fact that it's 1985, and the cold war is very much raging with the threat of all out nuclear war hanging over the film. But as I said earlier there are multiple storylines taking place in various periods in time, throw into the mix an animated pirate tale and you have the sort of mess that only someone like Robert Altman could pull off. But Snyder manages it, and it really comes across that he is a fan of the original story. Alan Moore who scribed said original story didn't want anything to do with Watchmen, after watching Hollywood wreck two of his other babies, From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Hopefully he'll calm down and see just what a service Snyder has done to his pride and joy. There are shots and dialogue that come directly from the pages of the original. The casting is spot on, Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach is particularly memorable, kind of like Dirty Harry played by Ewen Bremner. As I said I can't see how it could have been better. Maybe the awful sex scene could have been cut, but that's about it. Oh and some of Snyder's music 'taste' is dubious at best.

Okay so far so positive. Now for the negative stuff, well there is that sex scene which is just so horribly tacky. It made me squirm and I was sitting there alone, it's a painful watch. Then there is the fact that Snyder doesn't really have any style as a director, he's good at what he does, but not once in any of his films do you feel that you are watching a Zack Snyder film. He is at the top of that tree of the new breed of generic directors that use slow motion because it looks good. There doesn't seem to be any thought beyond 'what would look awesome'. Maybe I'm being mean, I don't think so though. Stick any of them next to a Kurosawa or Lean and they'd become as transparent as their films. But maybe it's the fact that Snyder doesn't have a unique vision that that has allowed this film to be so close to the comic it was based on.

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.

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.

The Innocents (1961) - Jack Clayton

Children and horror, horror and children. Now they should be like oil and water shouldn't they? They're not though, since there is a whole horror sub genre totally devoted to the little tykes. Normally they are split neatly into two categories, firstly where the children are the victims (The Shining, Sixth Sense), which is all well and good, but the far more interesting category is the second one where the little bleeders are the horror. Think about it for a second. At the top of the heap there's The Omen and The Brood, in the middle somewhere you have Village/Children of the Damned and then right at the bottom about as low as it gets there's Pet Sematary and the Children of the Corn series. Far better than most of the above though are the recent slew of hoodie horrors, such as Eden Lake and best of the bunch Ils.

But anyway what has all the above to do with The Innocents I hear you scream at your Hello Kitty stickered laptop. Well it's funny you should ask, since as we all know British horror is a genre unto itself, and as such it has had it's fair share of children doing what children do best, i.e. evil nasty things. The best two for me are Nothing But the Night and Unman, Wittering and Zigo. Now I can add The Innocents to that list. This isn't a horror film that will make the nighttime dash along the hallway from the bathroom to the bedroom, a near heart attack experience. It's far more subtle than that. In fact it reminds me a little of Robert Wise's The Haunting, in as much as very little happens but there is an atmosphere hanging over the whole film like an icy mist.

The two children, let's call them Miles and Flora since that's what they're called in the film, are perfectly mannered Victorian (did I mention it was a period film? No, oh well I have now), kids. However they have an air about them of weirdness, that propels the film ever onwards towards it's grim ending. Now I don't really want to write too much about the plot or anything like that, since it's gossamer thin as it is and you don't need me ruining it for you.

Safe to say Deborah Kerr is wonderful as Miss Giddens whom the whole story revolves around, as is Michael Redgrave as the childrens uninterested uncle. Both the child actors do a great job too, I particularly found the kissing scene between Kerr and Martin Stephens (Miles) to be creepy in the extreme. Miles' little smile afterwards really sealing the scene. The other noteworthy mention has to go to cinematographer Freddie Francis who makes this film look like one Bergman's better efforts. It really is beautiful to watch. There is a scene that is supposed to be lit by only a candle, now as most people will be aware these are the sort of things that take you right out of a film if not handled properly. Since if it looks too fake then you start thinking about the lighting and not what is happening on screen, and well you know the rest. Now when you have a candlelit scene and said candle is hand held and moving from room to room, then you need a really great DP. Freddie Francis is that DP. It's no wonder he went on to work with both Lynch and Scorsese.

One last thing, and this might be purely because I'm English but I love it when actors that I've grown up with on TV, turn up in films and you realise that they can act. I'm thinking about Ian McShane for instance, I just thought he was Lovejoy and that's that. But he had a great string of roles before that (and after too). Now even though he's hardly in this, Peter Wyngarde (he of Jason King fame) is a revelation. One of the creepiest entrances in a film ever. Anyway to wrap this all up, it's always great to discover a gem of a British film, even more so if it's a horror. And that is precisely what this is, an until recently for me undiscovered diamond.

The Night of the Hunter (1955) - Charles Laughton

Laughton's only film as director is of course rightly held up as a masterpiece. However it wasn't always so. Back on it's initial release the idea of a scripture quoting, spiritual singing man of the cloth, who also just so happened to carry a flick knife next to his bible, and have a nice little sideline in murder, was a little too much for the great unwashed. Resulting in both poor reviews and box office takings and a swift exit from the theaters. A quick glance at the top three grossing films in the US for 1955 shows just what people were willing to shell out their hard earned nickles for, and just why something as dark and downright nasty as The Night of the Hunter didn't stand a chance. Those top three films were Lady and the Tramp, Mister Roberts and Guys and Dolls, bright life affirming films every one, none of them dealing with anything quite as grim as this little beauty.

So it's no wonder that Laughton never directed again (on screen that is, he would direct several theater productions), for a start he had his own demons to battle, being a closet homosexual (was their any other kind back then), and having a reputation for being one of the more difficult types to be working in Hollywoodland. He apparently had a huge dislike of children too, which must have made directing this a particular chore for him. The old adage of never working with children or animals might as well have read children or Charles Laughton, as anyone who had ever had the pain of doing so would probably tell you. Still Laughton was a phenomenal actor, and worked with many of the greats, Lean, Kubrick, Hitchcock and Renoir to name but four.

Anyway I digress, The Night of the Hunter has dated, it's not quite as evil as a modern audience would expect, Robert Mitchum is a joy to watch but not as menacing as he is in Cape Fear for example. Although having said that the reveal of Willa at the bottom of the river is still grim, especially the way the camera lingers for so long. Some of the dialogue sounds quite hokey now, and it has to be said Sally Jane Bruce who played Polly is awful, no wonder that she 'retired' after this role. Billy Chapin is somewhat better as John Harper, but both could have probably done with a little more help from their director. It's been said that Mitchum himself helped out with the children, which frankly baffles me, since it would have been better for the film if the kids had been wary of him. That way the tension would have come across on screen without having to try and cajole the little ones into something as tricksy as acting. But there you go, what do I know?

The acting, story and direction on a whole are all pretty solid, but the real star of the film is Stanley Cortez. One of the top cinematographers of his day, Cortez is responsible for the what we see up on the screen, that shot of the boat drifting through a spiders web, the effortless matching of lighting between location and set, that's all down to him. Cortez is a master, just have a quick shufty through his filmography and you'll see what I mean;- Ambersons, Shock Corridor and Naked Kiss. He knew his noir, so it's a good thing he was on this picture, since if Night of the Hunter is anything it's noir, and not only that but noir at it's best.