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An Ideal Husband (1999)
Perennially Relevant
You can wait ages for a cinema adaptation of Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband", and then two come along at once. This was one of two versions which came out in 1999/2000. Such coincidences occasionally happen in the cinema; there was another one in 1973 when two studios were independently working on disaster movies about a fire in a skyscraper. When they discovered the coincidence they combined forces to produce the film now known as "The Towering Inferno". There were two biopics of Wilde himself in 1960 and two of Coco Chanel in 2009, and two versions of Ibsen's "A Doll's House" in 1973.
Wilde is often thought of as a primarily comic playwright, but of his seven completed plays only one, "The Importance of Being Earnest", is a pure comedy. Three other plays are sometimes bracketed with it as "drawing-room comedies", but all three are in many ways problem plays, combining plenty of witty dialogue with serious examination of social issues. In "Lady Windermere's Fan" and "A Woman of No Importance" these are questions of sexual morality, whereas "An Ideal Husband" revolves around political corruption, questions of honour, and the relationship between the sexes.
"An Ideal Husband" has been filmed four times. Oddly, the first version was made in Germany in 1935. Given the Nazi detestation of homosexuality, it seems strange that they should have chosen to film a work by a famously gay author. The next version from 1947 is an early example of the British "heritage cinema" style, being made in colour, which was still the exception rather than the rule in the British cinema of the forties, and featuring the lavish period sets and costumes which were later to become the hallmark of films set in the Victorian era.
Sir Robert Chiltern, a wealthy and successful politician, is approached at a party one evening by a mysterious woman named Laura Cheveley, who attempts to blackmail him to support a fraudulent scheme in which she has invested. She says that she knows, and can prove, that earlier in his career he was guilty of selling a state secret for money, and threatens him with exposure unless he makes a speech to the House of Commons recommending that the British Government support her scheme. The film then explores the complications which arise from this and Laura's other machinations.
Two key characters are Sir Robert's wife Gertrude and his closest friend Lord Arthur Goring. At first Arthur seems to one of Wilde's witty but foppish young men, a gilded dandy whose main talent is for uttering bons mots like "Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not", but in the end he proves to be a loyal and resourceful friend to Sir Robert. Gertrude Chiltern is high-minded and idealistic, but can be inflexible and unforgiving; she finds it difficult to make allowances for those, even her husband, whose moral principles are not as rigid as her own. The need to atone for one's past misdeeds, and the need to allow others to atone for theirs, is one of the key themes of the play. "No one should be entirely judged by their past." Although "An Ideal Husband" does not directly address the question of sexual morality, it does have some relevance to Wilde's own situation. Like Sir Robert, he was hiding what late Victorian society would have considered a guilty secret.
Wilde's story is a good one, but it needs some excellent acting if it is to work on the stage or in the cinema. Fortunately, this film, like its 1947 predecessor, can call on the services of some fine actors, not all of them British; Gertrude is payed by an Australian, Cate Blanchett, and Laura by an American, Julianne Moore. (The 1947 version also featured an American actress, in that case Paulette Goddard, as Mrs Cheveley). I particularly liked Rupert Everett as Arthur, which is not an easy role to play. On the one hand the actor's performance must be light and elegant enough to convey Goring's facade of the cynically witty boulevardier. On the other, it must also be substantial enough to suggest the decent man of principle and devoted friend who lurks beneath that facade, and Everett is able to bring off this difficult double, as was Michael Wilding in 1947. Mention should also go to Jeremy Northam, always good as solid, decent men of principle (like his Mr Knightley in "Emma") and to Blanchett.
The film follows the plot of Wilde's play, with one or two extra twists, and keeps the original period setting in 1895. (One difference is that the scene in the House of Commons is actually shown; in the play we merely hear about it at second hand). I think that this was the right decision as the details of Wilde's plots are often specific to late Victorian times and attempts to update them can fall flat. An example is "A Good Woman", an adaptation of "Lady Windermere's Fan", which makes the main characters American rather than British and transfers the action to 1930s Italy. In my view this film does not really succeed, and an important reason for this is that the film-makers never seem to have taken into account the fact that the world had changed in the four decades between the 1890s and the 1930s. (I understand that the 2000 version of "An Ideal Husband, which I have not seen, has a modern-day setting).
If one looks at the wider themes of Wilde's plays rather than the details, however, they can be seen to touch on many topics of timeless relevance to modern times. This was true of the 1890s, of the 1940s, of the 1990s and remains true today in 2024. The theme of political corruption, for example, seems perennially relevant today. Even more important is what Wilde has to say about love: - "It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us - else what use is love at all"? The combination of wit with a serious discussion of important topics is what makes Wilde's "drawing-room" plays so compelling, and this version of "An Ideal Husband" is an excellent adaptation of a great play. It can stand comparison with the 1947 version. 8/10.
Play for Today: Traitor (1971)
The Child Is Father to the Man
"Traitor" is one of a number of plays inspired by the notorious "Cambridge spy ring" who acted as double agents for the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Others include Julian Mitchell's stage play "Another Country", later made into a film, and Alan Bennett's "An Englishman Abroad" and "A Question of Attribution". What shocked British society most about the spy ring was not so much the treachery of its members as the fact that most of them were from well-off Establishment families and educated at the country's most prestigious schools. (Working-class spies such as John Vassall, Melita Norwood and the members of the Portland spy ring never achieved the same notoriety).
"Another Country" dealt with the schooldays of a thinly disguised Guy Burgess, referred to in the play as "Guy Bennett", and "An Englishman Abroad" is a portrait of Burgess during his days living in exile in Moscow. "Traitor" is also set in Moscow; the main character, Adrian Harris, is partly based Burgess and partly on Kim Philby. (Unlike Burgess and Philby, both Cambridge men, however, Harris was educated at Oxford). A group of Western journalists visit Moscow to interview Harris, a former Foreign Office official who defected before he could be arrested as a Soviet agent. Scenes of the interview are intercut with scenes of Harris's unhappy upper-class childhood, when he was largely ignored by his parents, patronised by the masters at his public school and bullied by his schoolmates. Mitchell was to suggest that Bennett (who like the real Guy Burgess was gay) spied for the Russians not because he was a convinced Communist but as an act of revenge against the British Establishment for rejecting him on account of his sexual orientation. This is not a theme explored here; we never learn whether Harris is homosexual (like Burgess) or heterosexual (like Philby).
Harris is played by John Le Mesurier, who is of course best known for playing Sergeant Wilson in "Dad's Army". Le Mesurier was something of a comedy specialist, so he was cast against type here. Nevertheless, he was to call the role "the best part I ever had on TV", and relished the chance to take the leading role in a serious drama, giving an outstanding performance for which he was to win a BAFTA Television Award for Best Actor.
This was the second play written by Dennis Potter for the BBC's series "Play for Today"; the first had been "Angels Are So Few", broadcast as part of the previous season. (Potter had also written contributions for "Play for Today"'s predecessor, "The Wednesday Play"). Themes of betrayal and childhood are common in Potter's work, and both elements play an important part in this play. Harris tries to defend himself in political terms, insisting that he may have betrayed his class but never his country, and insisting that everything he did was motivated by his belief in communism. For Potter, however, the child is father to the man, and he sees the roots of Harris's treachery as being as much psychological as ideological. Harris's his hatred of the English upper classes is clearly rooted in his miserable childhood. Le Mesurier plays him here as a weak individual, unable to cope with life without the crutch of alcohol; he is normally seen with a glass in his hand, and his attempts to justify himself to the journalists become more and more incoherent as he gets more and more drunk. (Both Burgess and Philby were alcoholics, and their alcoholism became worse after their defection to Russia).
Potter said that he wrote for television because he saw it as a democratic medium, able to reach a wider and socially more diverse audience than the novel or the theatre, literary forms he regarded as primarily middle class. In the short term, that was probably correct, but in the longer term it means that much of his work has been locked away unseen in the BBC's vaults. (Mercifully, little has actually been lost to the Beeb's short-sighted policy of wiping videotapes to reuse them). Fortunately, BBC4 recently gave an airing to "Traitor", giving us an opportunity to view this powerful drama more than fifty years after it was originally made. 8/10.
The Man from Monterey (1933)
Still Relatively Watchable for a Thirties B-Movie
John Wayne's first starring role was in Raoul Walsh's "The Big Trail" from 1930, but when this film flopped at the box-office he spend most of the rest of the decade making third-rate horse-operas for the smaller "Poverty Row" studios. "The Man from Monterey", however, is a cut above that sort of thing. It was the last of six films Wayne made for Warner Brothers in 1932 and 1933, although it is still a B-movie, less than an hour long. The action takes place in California in 1848, during the brief interval between that territory's annexation by the United States following the Mexican-American war and the arrival of the miners in the Gold Rush of 1849, a period during which the majority of the white population of the area were Hispanic rather than Anglo.
The story revolves around a love-triangle between Wayne's character John Holmes, Dolores Castanares, the daughter of a wealthy Spanish landowner, and Don Luis Gonzales, the son of another landowning family. No prizes for guessing who gets the girl. Although Don Luis seems handsome and dashing, he and his father are plotting to acquire the Castanares land by underhand methods. The new US administration have required Spanish land owners to register their lands before a deadline, and the Gonzaleses are aiming to use this requirement as part of their plot. It falls to Holmes, a U. S. Army Captain charged with administering the registration scheme, to foil them.
None of the other cast members are of any great fame; second billing goes not to any of Wayne's human co-stars but to his white horse, Duke. (Presumably named after Wayne's own nickname). Duke had been introduced to the public the previous year in "Ride Him, Cowboy" (in which he plays a major role in the plot) and was a regular fixture in Wayne's Warner Brothers movies.
This film is a lot better than many of Wayne's offerings from the thirties. It is not marked by the sort of bad acting, cheap special effects and incompetently choreographed fight scenes that marred films like "Paradise Canyon" or "The Desert Trail". There is a relatively entertaining story and Wayne, although by no means at his best, is certainly than he was to be in those two films and many others like them. It is also better than "Ride Him, Cowboy", which has a glaring plot-hole at its centre. It would doubtless have vanished from public view entirely had Wayne not gone on to become an American legend in his later career, but it still remains relatively watchable. 6/10.
Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012)
We were good in war. And when there was no war, we made our own.
"Hemingway & Gellhorn" tells the story of the American writer Ernest Hemingway and his third wife Martha Gellhorn. Or perhaps I should say that it tells the story of American journalist Martha Gellhorn and her first husband Ernest Hemingway. Gellhorn always resented being referred to as "a footnote in someone else's life", especially after she and Hemingway were divorced in 1945.
Hemingway and Gellhorn first met, briefly, in Key West in 1936, but their romantic relationship began the following year in Madrid, when both were covering the Spanish Civil War. (This was Gellhorn's first experience of reporting on a war; she was later to become a famous war correspondent). They became lovers, even though Hemingway was married to his second wife, Pauline. Pauline, a practising Catholic, was for a long time reluctant to grant Hemingway a divorce, but she eventually relented and he and Gellhorn were married in 1940. Theirs was, however, always a turbulent relationship, and their marriage only lasted five years. The implication in the film is that their affair was based more on sexual passion and shared political views than on any real affection. (The film was advertised with the tagline "We were good in war. And when there was no war, we made our own").
Clive Owen is one of those actors I have never been quite sure about, largely because he gave poor performances in the first two films in which I saw him, the dull "King Arthur" and the awful "Derailed". He has, however, been much better in a number of other movies, notably "Gosford Park", "Closer" and "Inside Man", and "Hemingway and Gellhorn" is another one of his successes. He plays Hemingway according to every book lover's idea of the man, namely who needs to prove his manhood, possibly because he is secretly insecure about it, by exposing himself to danger in various war zones and by an addiction to macho pursuits like bullfighting, big-game hunting and deep-sea fishing. This view of Hemingway may be something of a cliche, (and I have long suspected that her must have had a more sensitive side to have achieved such success as a writer), but it was clearly the view that the director and scriptwriters wanted, and Owen is able to deliver.
Nicole Kidman is also good as Gellhorn. With her soft, gentle strawberry-blonde looks, Kidman could easily have allowed herself to become typecast as the heroine of kooky comedies and slushy romances, but she has had the courage to branch out into more demanding roles, and I have admired her for this, even if her choices have not always been successful. Her Gellhorn is determined to prove herself just as courageous as her partner and to achieve the same sort of success as a journalist as he has done as a novelist. Owen and Kidman are also able to hint at the dark underside to both their characters; both Hemingway and Gellhorn were eventually to commit suicide. Hemingway's death is shown in the film; Gellhorn's, which occurred many years later, is not.
At considerably over two hours, the film is surprisingly long for a television drama, and this was, I felt, its main drawback. Its running time could, with advantage, have been shortened to produce something tauter and leaner. With this reservation, however, this was a film I enjoyed, showing us something of the driven and self-destructive nature of its two protagonists. 7/10.
Bandidas (2006)
Entertaining and Good Fun
In late 19th century Mexico a big American corporation led by Tyler Jackson are building a railway, and in order to do so are resorting to ruthless methods, forcing farmers off their land and killing those who oppose them. Two young women join forces to oppose them. María Álvarez is a poor farmer's daughter whose father was one of those who lost his land to Jackson's depredations. Sara Sandoval is the daughter of a wealthy landowner who has been murdered for daring to stand up to the corporation.
Despite their differences in character and in social class, Maria and Sara team up to become bank robbers, or in Spanish "bandidas", female Robin Hoods who use the proceeds of their robberies to compensate the farmers who have lost their lands. To capture the "bandidas", Jackson brings in a private detective named Quentin Cooke, but when Cooke realises the criminal nature of his employer, Cooke changes sides and joins the two women.
"Bandidas" owes a lot to Louis Malle's "Viva Maria!", another film set around the same historical period which deals with the adventures of two female revolutionaries in a Latin American republic (probably based on Mexico). Penélope Cruz's character may have been given the name Maria as a tribute to that film, with the name of Salma Hayek's character, Sara, coming from "Two Mules for Sister Sara", another Mexican-set Western. The film also owes something to "Hannie Caulder"; like Raquel Welch's character in that film, Maria and Sara take lessons in criminal techniques from an experienced male mentor.
Like the other three films mentioned in the previous paragraph, "Bandidas" is an action comedy (although actually "Hannie Caulder" is one of those films which seems unable to make up its mind whether is a comedy or a serious Western). As such it works very well. Cruz and Hayek, two of the loveliest actresses of the noughties, combine well as the two-woman revolutionary army, better than Jeanne Moreau and Brigitte Bardot did in "Viva Maria!" (Bardot was handicapped by her poor command of English). The plot moves along at a brisk pace and while the film may not be the most comprehensive analysis of the social problems of late 19th century Mexico, it is entertaining and good fun. 7/10.
Risen (2016)
Twenty-First Century God
How do you make a film about religion in the twenty-first century? One thing you can't really do is to try and imitate the style of the great religious epics of the fifties and sixties like "The Ten Commandments", "Ben-Hur" or "King of Kings". These were made for a very different age in a very different style to anything we are used to seeing today. Recent years have seen attempts to remake "Ben-Hur" and "The Ten Commandments" (under the title "Exodus"Gods and Kings"), and these films, although they have points of interest and are by no means bad, cannot stand comparison with their mighty predecessors. The same is true of another recent attempt to make an Old Testament epic, "Noah".
The storyline of "Risen"- a Roman soldier in occupied Judaea- becomes obsessed with the figure of Jesus and the new religion which has grown up around him- is one that could have been taken straight from a traditional religious epic. This is essentially the storyline of "Quo Vadis?" or "The Robe".
Clavius, a Roman Tribune, supervises the crucifixion of Yeshua (as Jesus is always referred to in the film) and is ordered by his boss Pontius Pilate to ensure that the tomb is guarded; Pilate believes that Yeshua's disciples will try and steal the body and claim that He has been resurrected, and fears that such an event will lead to political unrest. Of course, the body does disappear, and Pilate angrily orders Clavius to find it at all costs. Clavius is originally a believer in Roman polytheism and regards the religion of the Jews, and its Christian offshoot, as pitiable superstitions, but his world is shaken when his investigations lead to him coming face to face with the man whom he saw being crucified.
Stylistically, however, "Risen" is very different to the likes of "Quo Vadis?" or "The Robe". It has much more in common with other twenty-first century New Testament movies such as "The Nativity Story" or "Mary Magdalene", perhaps even Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ", being less spectacular and much grittier and more realistic than the epics of the fifties, shot in dull, muted colours. (The early sixties "Barabbas" can in some ways be seen as a predecessor of this style, at least as far as its photography was concerned, but it also had elements of spectacle such as a gladiator fight).
Another difference between "Risen" and fifties' Biblical epics is in its ending. Those films inevitably ended with the hero embracing Christianity. Clavius seems to be going down the same route as he joins Yeshua and his followers, even witnessing Yeshua's ascension into Heaven, yet the ending is enigmatic, with Clavius left pondering on what he has seen but he never seems to make any definite commitment to the new faith. He is portrayed as a seeker after truth rather than as someone who finds it.
The film has a literate script, co-written by director Kevin Reynolds and Paul Aiello, and a fine performance from Joseph Fiennes in the central role of Clavius. This is perhaps the most intelligent cinematic treatment of Christian themes in recent years. 8/10.
After Tonight (1933)
Contrived Happy Ending
Compared to the vast number of films made about the Second World War during the fifties and sixties, there were relatively few made about the First World War during the twenties and thirties. There were probably a number of reasons for this. The static nature of trench warfare did not make for exciting action pictures, and the relatively primitive film-making techniques of the time made it difficult to dramatise large-scale battles. Another reason is that, while World War II has passed into legend as a heroic struggle against tyranny, there was a widespread feeling during the inter-war era that World War I had all been a dreadful mistake, best commemorated (if at all) through monuments and solemn ceremonies, not through the medium of popular entertainment. This feeling was especially strong in America and contributed to the growth of isolationism during this period.
Hollywood films about World War II almost always concentrated on the American war effort. With World War I this was not always so. "All Quiet on the Western Front", for example, focuses on the Germans and does not include a single American character, and the only American in "A Farewell to Arms" is a volunteer serving with the Italian Army. "After Tonight" is another American World War I film without any American characters. Like the British-made "Secret Agent" and "The Spy in Black" it is a spy film, espionage being easier to portray on screen and affording more excitement than the war in the trenches.
The story is set on the Eastern Front between Russia and Austria-Hungary, a theatre of war which would have been unfamiliar to most Americans. Rudolph Ritter, an Austrian counter-intelligence officer, falls in love with a beautiful Army nurse named Karen Schöntag. (Or Schontag- the pronunciation varies according to which character is speaking). Unknown to him, Karen is really a Russian spy tasked with infiltrating the Austrian Army and discovering military secrets. Eventually, however, mounting evidence begins to indicate to Ritter that the woman he loves may be an enemy spy, in which case it will be his unpleasant duty to arrest her and have her executed. (The use of this unfamiliar setting was probably necessary to ensure that American audiences remained neutral between the lovers. Had Karen been an American spying on the Germans, she would have become the heroine and Ritter the villain, and vice versa had she been a German spying on the Allies).
The film was not a success when it was released in 1933, and lost $100,000 at the box office. The studio, RKO, apparently considered firing the leafing lady, Constance Bennett, although she is probably one of the better things about the film. Her leading man Gilbert Roland, however, is rather wooden, and with his Mexican accent it is difficult to accept him as an Austrian. (Bennett and Roland were later to marry). The film's main weaknesses, however, are its lame dialogue and its storyline, particularly the decision to substitute a contrived happy ending for the tragic one which the plot seemed to be leading up to. After 90 years this is not really a film that stands up well. 4/10.
All Passion Spent (1986)
Devoid of Any Passion
"All Passion Spent" is based upon a novel by Vita Sackville-West published in 1931. Henry Holland, 1st Earl of Slane, distinguished elder statesman, is dead. Although Lord Slane was a prominent member of the British establishment, a former Prime Minister and Viceroy of India- a double not achieved by any one person in real life- he was originally from a humble social background in Huddersfield and possessed little private wealth. His elderly widow, Lady Slane, therefore decides that she cannot afford to keep up their grand house in central London. Where, therefore, should she live? Her children decide that she should come and live with them, but Lady Slane has other ideas. She decides to rent a cottage in Hampstead, today one of London's most fashionable and expensive areas but evidently something of a backwater in the 1930s, where she can live alone with her maidservant.
It has been said that every generation rebels against its parents and makes common cause with its grandparents. Lady Shane, by contrast, rebels against her children and makes common cause, not with her grandchildren (none of whom appear) but with her great-granddaughter Deborah. , whom she sees as a kindred spirit. Deborah is engaged to marry the son of a Duke, but she does not really love him and would rather pursue a musical career. Lady Shane feels that she has spent her entire life as mere footnote in her husband's life, and has basked in his glory without achieving anything of note herself; she wants to save Deborah from a similar fate.
It is easy to see why Lady Slane and her children do not always see eye to eye. Most of them, especially her eldest son Herbert, are pompous, stuffy and money-grubbing. The one exception is one of her younger sons, Kay, a gentle and reclusive bachelor who lives alone with his collection of antiques. Through Kay, Lady Slane meets his friend Mr FitzGeorge, whom she knew during her days in India, who was secretly in love with her. Lady Slane and FitzGeorge renew their acquaintance and become firm friends. When he dies, he leaves her his fortune, which includes many valuable works of art. The question then arises of what she will do with this unexpected legacy.
The series features some well-known names of the British acting profession. Some of the casting seems at first sight eccentric; Lady Slane and FitzGeorge, both opposed to being their mid-eighties are played by Wendy Hiller and Harry Andrews, both in their mid-seventies at the time. Hiller was only ten years older than Graham Crowden as Herbert, even though they were supposed to be playing mother and son. It is possible that the programme-makers were unable to find any actors in their eighties, but I feel that it is also possible that this casting may have been deliberate. Lady Slane is of course physically older than her children, but mentally she and FitzGeorge seem younger than them, and the casting of actors younger than the roles they are playing may be a way of stressing this. FitzGeorge is a generation older than Kay, but the two seem more like contemporaries.
The standard of acting is high, with good performances coming from all those mentioned in the previous paragraph. (The one performance I did not like was from Eileen Way was Lady Slane's French maid Genoux, too much the caricature of the "funny foreigner"). I did, however, have a problem with the series. When I read the book, I felt it was one of those novels which was all talk and little action, and it never really struck me as being a suitable subject for a television adaptation. Even less did it strike me as suitable for serialisation as a three-part mini-series as opposed to a one-off drama of, say, sixty to ninety minutes. It is perhaps not surprising that the series as made, extending to three hours, struck me as too drawn out and slow-moving. The title is perhaps appropriate. The whose thing seemed rather devoid of any passion. 6/10.
The Long Good Friday (1980)
Gripping gangster film which deserves its classic status
Gangster films have never had the same pedigree in Britain that they have long enjoyed in America. Part of the reason is that the formative years of Hollywood in the twenties and early thirties coincided with the growth of organised crime fuelled by Prohibition, a period when the doings of Al Capone and his contemporaries provided a rich source of inspiration for film-makers. Another part of the reason is that during this period the British Board of Film Censors tended to discourage home- made gangster movies. This form of censorship owed little to moral concerns about violence- the BBFC were quite happy to allow cinemas to show American crime flicks- and a good deal to political considerations. British governments, of all political complexions, liked to play down any suggestion that the country had a serious organised crime problem. (And, by American standards, it didn't).
There have, however, been a few isolated British gangster films which have achieved classic status, such as "Brighton Rock" or "Get Carter". The 1980s were to add two more British gangster classics, "The Long Good Friday" and "Mona Lisa", both starring the same actor, Bob Hoskins.
Like "Get Carter", "The Long Good Friday" is very much a product of a particular place and time. Mike Carter's film reflected the Tyneside of the late sixties and early seventies, John Mackenzie's the East London of a decade or so later. For at least a century the economic heart of the East End had been the London docks, which provided employment for many East Enders, either directly as dockers or indirectly as workers in the factories which made use of the raw materials imported through the docks. By 1980, however, the docks were in decline, hit by the growing move towards containerisation, and schemes were afoot for the redevelopment of the Docklands. This process started with St Katharine's Dock, the basin closest to central London; early in the film we see shorts of this area, now transformed into an upmarket marina where the main character, Harold Shand, keeps his luxury yacht.
Shand is a London gangster who is trying to put together a legitimate, or at least semi-legitimate, property development scheme to redevelop parts of the Docklands in partnership with Charlie, an American mafioso and with Harris, a corrupt local councillor who also runs a construction business. His world is rocked, however, by a series of bomb attacks on his property and the murders of some of his associates, including his closest friend Colin. The film revolves around Shand's efforts to discover who was responsible for these attacks and to take revenge. The plot involves a number of the social concerns of the period, including violent crime, terrorism, political and police corruption; besides Harris, Shand also has a senior local police officer on his payroll.
Although there are other good contributions, notably from Helen Mirren as Shand's wife Victoria and Bryan Marshall as Harris, the film is dominated by a tremendous performance from Hoskins as Shand, a man who tries to present himself to the world as a cheerful, likeable cockney geezer but who, beneath his jovial exterior, is no more than a vicious thug. Strangely, the filmmakers wanted to dub over Hoskins's cockney accent, believing that it would be difficult for Americans to understand. Even more strangely, the actor chosen to do the dubbing was from Wolverhampton; a West Midlands accent would have been no more comprehensible in America and in Britain would have sounded completely wrong on the lips of a London gangster. Fortunately, this scheme was dropped when Hoskins strongly objected. This was the film which made Hoskins a star and led to him becoming a leading figure in the British cinema of the eighties and nineties.
The one thing I din't like about the film was the revelation that the Provisional IRA were behind the attacks on Shand's empire, making for an uneasy combination of London gangsterism and Irish politics. (The IRA, and other terror groups, ran their own organised crime rackets in their Northern Irish fiefdoms, but never tried to tangle with mainland gangsters). With that one reservation, however, I found "The Long Good Friday" a gripping gangster film which deserves its classic status. 8/10.
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Well, Nobody's Perfect
In Prohibition-era Chicago two jazz musicians, saxophone player Joe and double bass player Jerry, accidentally witness a gangland massacre. Joe and Jerry know that they have been seen fleeing from the scene of the crime and that the gangsters will therefore be coming for them. They decide that they must get out of town, and learn that a jazz orchestra heading by train to Miami are in urgent need of a saxophonist and a bassist. This seems like the answer to their prayers, but there is one catch. The band in question is an all-female one. Undaunted, Joe and Jerry join the band disguised as women, calling themselves Josephine and Daphne.
In Miami things become more complicated. Both Joe and Jerry find themselves attracted to Sugar Kane, the band's beautiful young vocalist. In order to woo Sugar, Joe adopts a second disguise as a wealthy oil millionaire, while a real millionaire, Osgood Fielding III, falls for the supposed "Daphne" and will not take no for an answer. Things get more complicated still when the Chicago gangsters turn up in Miami for a meeting of the "Friends of Italian Opera", a code term for a mafia convention.
This film was made without the approval of the Hays Office; transvestism was not specifically listed in the Production Code's list of "thou shalt nots", but it could be caught under the ban on "any inference of sex perversion". This was especially so in a film like "Some Like It Hot" which contains slight overtones of lesbianism, and more-than-slight overtones of male homosexuality. The film's final line has passed into legend; when "Daphne" reveals the truth, that she is a man, Osgood famously replies "Well, nobody's perfect", implying that he is bisexual. Today an exchange like this would be mild stuff; in the moral climate of the America of the late fifties it would have been strong stuff indeed.
Despite (or perhaps because of) its controversial theme, the film was a big
critical and commercial success in 1959, and received six Academy Award nominations. (It only won for "Best Costume Design"; other films did not get much of a look-in in the year of "Ben-Hur"). It has remained popular ever since, and is one of my favourites. When I watched it again recently I wondered if I would enjoy it as much as when I first saw it a number of years ago. I didn't. I enjoyed it even more.
Trying to analyse exactly why I love any film is a difficult task, particularly in the case of comedies, because comedy generally defies analysis. You either find something funny or you don't, and I find "Some Like it Hot" very funny, even though it was made more than sixty years ago and even though it no longer seems as daring and transgressive as it once must have done.
Part of the reason must be the acting, particularly from Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon (who received a "Best Actor" Oscar nomination). Their characters are subtly differentiated, with Curtis's Joe being the more the easygoing and relaxed, and Lemmon's Jerry the more serious of the pair. These differences are carried over into their female personas; Curtis's "Josephine" is notably more feminine-seeming than Lemmon's "Daphne", which makes it all the funnier that it is "Daphne" with whom Osgood falls in love. I would rank this as the best of Curtis's films which I have seen (equal with "Spartacus" in which his was a supporting role) and the best of Lemmon's (equal with "Days of Wine and Roses", a serious drama about as different from this one as one could imagine).
And then there's Marilyn Monroe as Sugar. Billy Wilder had initially pencilled in Mitzi Gaynor for the role, not imagining that a star as big as Marilyn would be interested. But Marilyn wanted the role and made it her own; seldom, if ever, can she have as been as utterly adorable as she is here. Again, this is probably the best of her films I have seen- certainly the best in which she had a leading role. And then there are Wilder's direction and the very witty script which he co-wrote with I. A. L. Diamond. This is one of those films where all the elements seem to have come together to produce something of high quality. 9/10.
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011)
Not Found in the Yemen.
Salmon, of course, are not found in the Yemen. There is one species of salmon in the Atlantic, and six in the Pacific, but none in the Indian Ocean, and all are found in temperate waters. The film concerns the (fictitious) efforts of a wealthy Yemeni sheikh to establish a salmon fishing industry in his country in order to boost its tourist trade.
The main characters, apart from the sheikh, are his British financial adviser Harriet Chetwode-Talbot and Alfred Jones, an ichthyologist employed by the British government. Alfred initially dismisses the sheikh's proposal as crazy, but he is pressured into assisting him by the Foreign Office and by the Prime Minister's press secretary Patricia Maxwell, who believes that a story about co-operation between Britain and the Islamic world is necessary to improve the country's international image.
The film is a rather uneasy mixture of romantic comedy and political satire. I have not read the novel by Paul Torday upon which the film was based, but I understand that it concentrated much more on satire than on romance. In the film the balance is the other way round with much more attention being paid to the growing romance between Alfred and Harriet as they work together on the project. Actually, I would have preferred it if the film had been made more as a satire, as I liked Kristin Scott Thomas's Patricia, a ruthless and cynical spin doctor who would have been at home in television comedies like "Yes, Minister" or "The Thick of It".
The sheikh is in some ways Patricia's complete opposite, portrayed as an idealistic soul who not only wants to benefit his country financially but also sees fishing as a gentle, peaceful pursuit, beneficial to its practitioners. (He himself is a keen fly fisherman and owns a home near a salmon river in the Scottish highlands).
I wasn't, however, particularly taken with the romance between Ewan McGregor's stiff, awkward Alfred and Emily Blunt's rather colourless Harriet. The film ends with the conventional "happy ending", although it is only happy for Alfred and Harriet, and not for his wife Mary, from whom he is separated, and even less so for Harriet's soldier boyfriend Robert, who returns from being "missing action" in Afghanistan only to find that his girlfriend is leaving him for another man. Ever since the likes of "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Notting Hill" in the nineties we Brits have tended to pride ourselves on how well we do romantic comedy, but "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" is a rather mediocre example of the genre. 5/10.
Garden of Evil (1954)
Stunning Photography, but Lacking in Interest as a Human Drama
Three American fortune-hunters, Hooker, Fiske and Daly, are stranded in Mexico when their ship, bound for the California goldfields, suffers engine trouble. While drinking in a local cantina, the three are approached by a young woman named Leah Fuller. She informs them that her husband, John, is trapped in a gold mine, and offers them $2,000 each if they will come with her to help rescue him. The film follows their adventures on the long and arduous journey to the mine, what happens when they get there and the return journey during which they are attached by a party of hostile Apaches. The title "Garden of Evil" refers to the town near the gold mine, which was destroyed in a volcanic eruption.
The intention was probably to make "Garden of Evil" as a psychological Western similar to the Mann/Stewart Westerns which were being made at the same time during the mid-fifties, together with some philosophising about what gold can do to a man's (or woman's) soul, along the lines of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre". It doesn't really work as such, however, largely because the characters are mostly a bit one-dimensional. Gary Cooper's
grizzled, laconic Texas lawman Hooker is the nearest thing the film has to a good guy. Cameron Mitchell's selfish young bounty hunter is the bad guy who gets killed relatively early on. And Richard Widmark's cynical professional gambler Fiske is the enigmatic character who might turn out to be either a good guy or a bad guy, although you have to watch right to the end to discover which. Susan Hayward's Leah is a bit of a puzzle. The early scenes suggest that she is very much in love with the husband she is trying to save, but when the two are finally reunited this seems to vanish and there is little attraction or chemistry between them. When her husband is killed, she does not seem grief-stricken and wastes little time in turning her attentions to Hooker.
One thing I disliked was the film's treatment of the Indians. Racist stereotypes of Native Americans as bloodthirsty savages were still regrettably common in the cinema of the fifties, although some films such as "Broken Arrow" and "Apache" tried to take a more favourable view. In this film, however, they do not even seem human enough to count as savages. They seem more like a malign force of nature, with which the travellers must contend. (A similar view of Native Americans was taken in another Western from 1954, Otto Preminger's "River of No Return"). The only explanation given for their aggression is that it is a particular moon in the Apache calendar when they are under an obligation to kill as many whites- a term which includes Hispanics as well as Anglos- as possible. They also seem quite unconcerned by the casualties which they themselves incur- Hooker and Fiske are adept at picking them off with a rifle- in their efforts to wipe out a party of six people who have not attacked them and who, if left unmolested, would pose no threat to them.
The film was shot on location in Mexico, and director Henry Hathaway makes great use of the new CinemaScope widescreen process to capture some stunning vistas of the mountainous Mexican scenery, a feature which saves it from a lower mark. As a human drama rather than a travelogue, however, "Garden of Evil" is somewhat lacking in interest. 6/10.
The Final Test (1953)
Warner is miscast, otherwise my mark might have been higher.
Cricket may be England's national sport- certainly our national summer sport- but we have made very few feature films centred upon the game. Other cricket-playing nations don't seem to do a lot better; about the only one I can remember seeing was the Indian "Azhar", a fictionalised biography of India's Test captain Mohammed Azharuddin. (There are also surprisingly few feature films made about our national winter sport, football).
Harold Pinter, himself a keen amateur cricketer, wrote cricketing scenes into some of his film-scripts, such as "Accident" and "The Go-Between", but in neither case is the sport the main focus of the film. "The Final Test" from 1953 is about the only British film I can think of that focuses mainly on cricket. The script was written by Terence Rattigan, another amateur cricketer, and directed by Anthony Asquith, who had collaborated with Rattigan on a number of other films, including "French without Tears", "The Winslow Boy" and "The Browning Version".
Despite Rattigan's cricketing background, this is as much a human drama as a sporting one, and for most of the time the drama is not centred upon events on the pitch. England are playing Australia in the fifth and final test of an Ashes series at the Oval. The match seems certain to end in a draw; Australia have made a huge first-innings score, which England look likely to match, and a whole day's play has been lost to rain. Even if one side or the other can conjure up an unlikely victory, that will not affect the result of the series, which it is implied Australia have already won.
Several England cricketers- Len Hutton, Denis Compton, Alec Bedser, Godfrey Evans, Jim Laker and Cyril Washbrook- appear as themselves. (Hutton's part is quite a large one). The main character, however, is a fictitious one, Sam Palmer, once a great batsman but now coming to the end of his career. (Rattigan seems to have based him on the legendary Australian batsman Don Bradman and the events of his final Test in 1948). Sam knows that this will be his last appearance for England and wants his teenage son Reggie to be at The Oval to watch him. Reggie, however, has little interest in cricket; he sees himself as a budding intellectual and his great passion is for poetry. He does not want to be at The Oval because he has a chance to meet his great hero, the poet and dramatist Alexander Whitehead. When the two meet, however, Reggie is surprised to discover that Whitehead is himself a cricket fanatic. Another plot line concerns the love-triangle which develops between Sam, his young England team-mate Frank Weller and Cora, the barmaid at Sam's local pub.
The weakest thing about the film is, in my opinion (and, it would seem, in the opinion of a number of other reviewers as well) is the miscasting of Jack Warner as Sam. Sam is probably supposed to be in his early forties, but Warner would have been 58 in 1953, far too old for a professional cricketer. He doesn't even look younger. I like the suggestion of another reviewer who thought that John Mills (45 at the time, and slimmer than Warner) would have been a good match for the role. The relationship between Sam and Cora would also have seemed more convincing if he had not looked old enough to be her father.
Warner had form for this sort of thing. Three years earlier he had also looked too old for a part when, at 55, he played a police constable in "The Blue Lamp", but his advancing years did not prevent his character, George Dixon, from being resurrected in the TV show "Dixon of Dock Green". Warner went on playing the character until he was 80!
There is an amusing contribution from Robert Morley as Whitehead, who despite his literary fame comes across as a pompous, self-important jackass (like a lot of characters Morley played), partially redeemed by his genuine love of cricket. I wondered if Rattigan was using the character to settle scores with some rival playwrights; we see one of Whitehead's plays being broadcast on television, an obvious parody of the verse drama of T S Eliot and Christopher Fry which was popular around this time.
In 1953 Rattigan was at the height of his fame; he was later to be eclipsed by the rise of the theatrical "Angry Young men" such as John Osborne, but he had a gift for writing dialogue and for his ability to create believable human relationships, such as the one between Sam and Reggie in this film. Both end up appreciating and sympathising with the other's position more than they would have thought possible at one time. With a better leading man my mark might well have been higher. 7/10.
A Touch of Love (1969)
A Complex Lack-of-Sex Life
Amicus Productions are perhaps best remembered as the main competitors of Hammer Film Productions in the British horror boom of the late sixties and early seventies, but not all their films fell within the horror genre. "A Touch of Love" is one of the exceptions.
Rosamund Stacey is a highly intellectual but naïve and unworldly young woman, spending most of her time in the British Museum, where she is writing her doctoral thesis. The film may be set in the "Swinging London" of the sixties, but there is nothing "swinging" about Rosamund. The sexual revolution, the Pill and free love have passed her by. Where some people have a complex sex life, she has a complex lack-of-sex life. She is dating two men, Joe and Roger, but is sleeping with neither, although each of the two believes the other to be her lover. When we first meet Rosamund she is a virgin; her first, and only, sexual encounter is a one-night stand with a third man, George, a BBC newsreader, and as a result of this encounter she becomes pregnant.
In the latter part of the book, Rosamund's main relationship is not with George (although he remains a friend), or with either of the other men in her life, but with her daughter, Octavia. After briefly considering, and dismissing, both adoption and abortion (officially illegal at the time the film is set, but widely available through backstreet clinics), she decides to have her child and to raise it herself. She finds that being a mother brings her happiness, but this happiness is put at risk when Octavia falls ill with a serious condition.
The film is in fact an adaptation of Margaret Drabble's novel "The Millstone", written in 1965. In the four years between the book being written and the film being made, abortion had been legalised in England and Wales, but the film is set in 1967, shortly before the new law came into effect. Had I known that the film was based upon Drabble's novel I probably would not have bothered watching it, as this was not a book I enjoyed when I read it, but the film-makers seem to have thought that the title "The Millstone" was not good box-office and to have changed it for something more audience-friendly.
Unfortunately, the film is no better than the book it is based on. In fact, it is rather worse. The Rosamund of the novel is a rather passive character, passionless and sexless, not unpleasant but uninteresting, and the same could be said of the character played by Sandy Dennis here. (Dennis was regarded as a major Hollywood and Broadway star at this period; I am surprised that an outfit like Amicus could afford to employ her). To Dennis's credit, she handles the British accent well. None of the other acting contributions stand out, the best probably being Ian McKellen's George. (As in the book, George is rather camp and effeminate in manner, but the question of whether he actually is gay is tactfully avoided).
My verdict on Drabble's novel was that it was slight, lightweight and a disappointment, given that it had come from the pen of someone widely regarded as one of Britain's leading novelists; occasionally well written but also at times boring. The film, by contrast, is not just boring at times; it is boring all the time. This was the first film to be directed by Waris Hussein, and it shows. The action seems to move at a funereal pace; the running time is 107 minutes but it seems longer. By 1969 the theme of unmarried motherhood was no longer particularly original or controversial in the British cinema; it had been tackled much better in Tony Richardson's "A Taste of Honey" eight years earlier. 4/10.
The Woman on the Beach (1947)
European Auteurs and American Studios are Not Always a Good Match
"The Woman on the Beach" is a romantic drama with elements of film noir. The main character is Scott Burnett, a Coast Guard officer assigned to a remote coastal location. One day Scott meets a beautiful young woman on the beach, and discovers that she is Peggy, the wife of Tod Butler, a much older man. Tod is a famous painter who is now unable to paint after going blind. Although Scott already has a fiancée, Eve, he finds himself increasingly attracted to Peggy, especially when he discovers that her marriage is not a happy one. She is, however, reluctant to leave her husband, largely because of feelings of guilt. It is never made clear exactly how he became blind, but it appears to be the result of some sort of accident for which Peggy holds herself responsible. Relationships between Scott and Tod are initially friendly, but they become more suspicious of one another after the bond between Scott and Peggy starts to develop. Scott even comes to suspect Tod of feigning blindness in order to increase his hold over Peggy.
This was the last film directed by Jean Renoir in America, and he seems to have had a difficult time making it. The studio, RKO Radio Pictures, were not happy with Renoir's first cut, especially after it was badly received by a preview audience, and he was forced to recut it, and even reshoot some sequences, before they were satisfied. Renoir's initial version seems to be lost, but the film that we have does not always flow easily. A lot is left unexplained, and not just the full history of the relationship between Peggy and Tod. Scott suffers from nightmares involving shipwrecks; these may be connected with some traumatic wartime experience, but this is never made clear and we are left unsure of how these sequences relate to the rest of the film. These nightmares also involve a blonde woman who bears a resemblance to Eve- Peggy is a brunette- but the significance of this is not explained. (Eve tends to drop out of the second half of the film, which is dominated by the Scott-Peggy-Tod triangle).
There are some better things about the film, especially Renoir's striking expressionistic photography of the lonely coastal scenes. It was for this reason that I described the film as having noir elements, even though the plot, a romantic love triangle drama, is not really typical of noir, which more frequently concentrated upon crime and violence. The acting is of a reasonable standard, with the best performance coming from starring Charles Bickford as the dark, conflicted figure of Tod, locked in a love-hate relationship with Peggy. We cannot know what Renoir's finished film would have looked like of the studio had not interfered- as far as I know there is no "director's cut" available- but the film we actually have serves as a reminder that European auteur directors and the Hollywood studio system are not always a good match. At least it is better than Renoir's penultimate American film, the frothy and lightweight "The Diary of a Chambermaid". 6/10.
Doctor Who: The Space Museum (1965)
Boo! Boo! Hooray!
The First Doctor and his travelling companions Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki, arrive on the planet Xeros. The planet is under military occupation, having been conquered by the militaristic Moroks who have subjugated the native Xerons. (Boo!) Part of the planet has been turned into a vast Space Museum, designed to proclaim to the universe the glories of the Morok Empire. (Boo!) Our gallant travellers help the Xerons to stage a revolution, overthrow the Moroks and regain their liberty. (Hooray!) The name "Morok" is said to be derived from "moron", although the "morlocks" of H G Wells's "The Time Machine" might also have been an influence.
The first episode of "The Space Museum" does contain one interesting concept. The Doctor and his companions discover that because the TARDIS has "jumped a time-track" they can see a little way into the future. They can see and hear the Moroks and the Xerons, but cannot be seen or heard by them and cannot interact with them. They also see their own fate- to be turned into exhibits in the museum. This concept gives rise to some interesting philosophical questions, principally "Is the future preordained?" and "Can we change our predestined fate by struggling against it, or have we no alternative but to accept it?"
Once the travellers get back on the right time-track, however, these questions fade into the background and the remaining three episodes become a simplistic tale of planetary revolution, in which the main question is "Will the Xerons beat the Moroks or vice-versa?" Now this sort of storyline is far from original, even in the context of Doctor Who. The conflict between Xerons and Moroks is essentially the same as that between Thals and Daleks in "The Daleks", the second serial of the first season, and the previous serial in the second season, "The Web Planet" had told another version of the same story.
Moreover, it is the sort of story that "Doctor Who", with its limited budget, was not well equipped to tell. "The Web Planet", with its elaborate costumes, had gone over budget, and the programme-makers hoped that they could make up for this by skimping on the budget for "The Space Museum". Unlike the insect-like races of "The Web Planet", both Moroks and Xerons are humanoid, thus dispensing with the need for too much make-up, and wear simple costumes. When I reviewed "Battle for the Planet of the Apes", the last of the original "Apes" series, I said that the final scene bore more resemblance to a punch-up outside a pub at closing time than to a battle to determine the future of an entire planet. You could say the same of the ending of "The Space Museum", in which about half a dozen Moroks are taken down by a similar number of Xerons, except that even as a pub brawl this would be a pretty tame affair.
The Doctor goes missing (as he occasionally did) from the whole of the third episode, for reasons which had more to do with William Hartnell's holiday commitments than to the internal logic of the story. The best that could be said of "The Space Museum" is that it marked the arrival of Maureen O'Brien's Vicki, not always my favourite in earlier episodes, as a brave and resourceful member of the TARDIS crew. Overall, however, this is one of the weaker First Doctor stories. 5/10.
The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)
A Handbag?
"The Importance of Being Earnest" is probably Oscar Wilde's best-known play, It is a drawing-room comedy, following the adventures of two young men about town, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieffe, as they pursue two young ladies, Gwendolen Fairfax (who happens to be Algernon's cousin) and Cecily Cardew (who happens to be Jack's ward). The title derives from the facts that both Jack and Algernon, for reasons too complex to explain here, both pretend to be Jack's (non-existent) brother Ernest and that both Gwendolen and Cecily dream of falling in love with a man called Ernest, which they consider a particularly distinguished and masculine name.
This is probably the best-known adaptation of the play. It has also proved particularly influential. I must admit that I have not seen any of the other cinema or TV versions, but I have seen several stage performances, both professional and amateur, and all seem to bear the marks of the influence of Anthony Asquith's film. This is particularly true of Dame Edith Evans's magnificently over-the-top performance as Gwendolen's monstrous old battle-axe of a mother, Lady Bracknell. Dame Edith's expostulation of the phrase "A handbag?" has passed into legend. (She has just learned that Jack, the man courting her daughter, was a foundling, found in a handbag on a London railway station and subsequently adopted by a wealthy benefactor).
The film is faithful to both Wilde's plot and to his dialogue, and is made in the "filmed theatre" style with no attempt being made to "open it up". One difference is that the two male leads are considerably older here than the characters envisaged by Wilde; Jack is supposed to be 28 and Algernon (who turns out to be his younger brother) rather younger, but Michael Redgrave would have been 44 in 1952 and Michael Denison 37. This does not, however, really matter, as both actors are very much at home with Wilde's style of bantering humour and acquit themselves splendidly. The same can be said of Joan Greenwood as Gwendolyn and Dorothy Tutin as Cecily. I wondered if Greenwood was cast because, like Evans who plays her mother, she spoke in deep contralto tones. There is little visual resemblance between them, but there is certainly a vocal one.
"The Importance of Being Earnest" is in my view one of the most sparklingly witty plays in the English language, and here it is given a first-rate performance by an excellent cast. The sale of production may seem a little old-fashioned seventy-odd years after it was made, but it is still well worth seeing. 8/10.
The Wednesday Play: No Trams to Lime Street (1970)
Could Have Been the First Great Liverpool Musical.
Like "On the Town", "No Trams to Lime Street" deals with three sailors on shore leave in a big city, although in this case the city in question is Liverpool rather than New York. It started life in 1959 as a television play, written by the Welsh-born Liverpudlian playwright Alun Owen for the ITV network as part of its "Armchair Theatre" series. The title refers to a scene in which one of the sailors expresses surprise that there are no more trams in Liverpool. (The city's last trams ran in 1957, but he has been away at sea for two years. Lime Street is the city's main railway station).
In 1965 a new version of the play was made by the BBC for BBC2's "Theatre 625", and a third, also produced by the BBC, was made in 1970, for the "Wednesday Play" series. It was later repeated as a "Play for Today", the title of BBC1's flagship drama series having changed in the interval. This is the only version which still exists, the two earlier ones being lost, and even this one survives only in black and white, although it was originally shown in colour. (The same is true of some other "Wednesday Plays" and "Plays for Today" from this period, such as "Robin Redbreast" and "The Long-Distance Piano Player").
This version keeps Owen's original title and the line about there being no more trams, which presumably means that the action is supposed to be taking place in the late fifties, but some of the shots we see were obviously taken in the late sixties or early seventies. It follows the adventures of the three sailors, Billy, Cass and Taffy on shore. Billy picks up an attractive girl named Betty, but becomes less keen when he discovers that she is the ex-wife of his old shipmate Ben, who died at sea. Cass and Taffy both have difficult relationships with their fathers- Cass because his father seems to have an obvious preference for his older brother Terry, and Taffy because his father is an officer on the same ship and has difficulties in combining the roles of parent and senior officer.
The play is only fifty minutes long, which I thought was too short to do justice to the stories of all three lads. We never learn very much about their earlier lives, Billy's friendship with Ben, the roots of the rivalry between Cass and Terry or the strained relationship between Taffy and his father. Had the running-time been extended by, say, another twenty or thirty minutes it could have been more interesting as a drama.
What gets the play an above-average mark is the music. I understand that the lost 1959 and 1965 versions were "straight"plays without music, but the 1970 version was turned into a musical. Despite the 1950s setting the music is more typical of sixties or early seventies pop, but it is very tuneful ad enjoyable. Listening to it I thought that this play could easily have been elaborated into a stage musical. The first great Liverpool musical, before Willy Russell's "Blood Brothers". 6/10.
The Canterville Ghost (2023)
I doubt if it would be possible to make a faithful adaptation of Wilde's story today
Oscar Wilde's "The Canterville Ghost", is, in part, a humorous parody of the classical ghost story. An American family buy an English stately home, Canterville Chase, despite being warned by its owner Lord Canterville that it is haunted by the ghost of his sixteenth century ancestor Sir Simon de Canterville, Sir Simon murdered his wife and has been condemned to haunt the house as a punishment ever since. The family scoff at the idea of ghosts, but even when they discover that the ghostly Sir Simon is indeed real, they treat him with a complete lack of respect. The story is, partly, a satire on the differences in manners between progressive, go-ahead Americans and traditionally-minded Britons, represented by the ghost. Ghosts are supposed to be frightening, and Sir Simon is therefore deeply offended by a family who, in a shocking breach with tradition, refuse to be frightened by him. Unlike most ghost stories, however, this one has a happy, and more serious, ending in which Sir Simon finds both eternal rest and forgiveness for his sins though the intercession of the family's saintly daughter Virginia.
The story has been adapted for the cinema or television screen on a number of occasions, but this recent British animated version is the only one I have ever seen, apart from a West German film I saw on German television many years ago. It is not entirely faithful to Wilde's story, but I wonder if it would be possible to make a completely faithful adaptation today.
In Wilde's story the American paterfamilias Hiram Otis was a diplomat and the father or four children; here he is an eccentric inventor and the father of three, daughter Virginia, aged around twenty, and twin sons Kent and Louis, probably in their early teens. Virginia's elder brother Washington is omitted. Virginia has a very different personality; in the original she was quiet and shy, but here she is outgoing with a rebellious attitude and such a tomboy that she wears riding breeches all the time, even when she is not riding. (She even wears them to her wedding!) Her boyfriend, Henry Duke of Cheshire, plays a larger role than he did in the story (where his Christian name was Cecil rather than Henry) and is portrayed as a nice-but-dim chinless wonder rather than Wilde's golden youth.
The biggest change, however, concerns the ghost. As portrayed here, Sir Simon is stuffy and pompous, and does not much care for what he sees as the vulgar manners of the Americans, but he is not evil. Most importantly, he did not kill his wife in this version. Indeed, he loved her dearly, and was heartbroken when she died in what he believed was a drowning accident. (It turns out that this "accident" was arranged by Henry's ancestor, an earlier Duke of Cheshire, who then framed Simon for the supposed murder so he could seize the estate). There is also a sinister gardener, not found in Wilde's story, who turns out to be Death himself.
When I watched the film I was not too happy with these changes, because they seemed to be missing the point of what Wilde was trying to do, and they didn't always make a lot of sense. It is never explained why, if Simon was not guilty of murder, why he was still condemned to haunt the house. Nevertheless, I I could understand why the changes were made. For all the humour of its opening scenes, "The Canterville Ghost" is essentially a story of Christian redemption, and in 2023 that probably wouldn't have been a popular theme for a film. In the original story Virginia is a rather quiet, demure girl; far more interesting to make her the feisty rebel she is here.
More importantly, you couldn't make a film with a wife-murderer as one of the main characters unless you made him an irredeemable villain. In Christian doctrine no crime, even murder, is unforgivable, and no sinner irredeemable, but the average cinema-goer may well demur at this piece of theology. So Simon had to be not guilty.
Some reviewers have criticised the quality of the animation, but I am probably not the best judge, as animated films only form a small part of my viewing and I don't have too many models against which to judge it. I only watched this one because I was already familiar with the story. It will never be a favourite of mine, but it will probably make acceptable family viewing. 6/10
Some goofs. The action is supposed to be taking place in the year 1900, but we see an aeroplane, something not invented until 1903. The design of the Otises' car and some of the women's fashions would also suggest a date closer to 1910. According to Simon's tombstone he lived in the seventeenth century in this version of the story, but he still wears sixteenth century clothes.
Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957)
The Path of Least Resistance
During the late fifties and early sixties a feature of the British film industry was what have become known as "kitchen sink" films- social-realist pictures focusing on the lives of ordinary working-class people. Because the British literary scene was also experiencing its own "kitchen sink" movement at around the same time, most of these fils were adaptations of either stage plays ("Look Back in Anger", "A Taste of Honey") or novels ("Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", "A Kind of Loving"), but "Woman in a Dressing Gown" began life as a television drama for ITV. The author, Ted Willis, then adapted it for the cinema and then, when the film proved a success, for the stage as well.
Most kitchen sink films dealt with the problems of young people, especially young men. (The "angry young man" like Jimmy in "Look Back in Anger" and Arthur in "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" became something of a cliche at this period). Jim and Amy Preston are a working-class couple living with their teenage son Brian in a cramped flat on a London housing estate. At first they seem happy and contented, and when Jim announces that, unexpectedly, he has to work on a Sunday, Amy happily accepts it. Jim, however, is not being truthful. He intends to spend the day with his mistress Georgie (of whose existence Amy is blissfully unaware). The affair has clearly been going on for some time, and it would appear that Jim has for some time been promising Georgie that he will leave Amy for her, without ever doing so. Georgie is losing patience, and tells Jim that she will end their relationship unless he leaves Amy. The film explores what happens after Jim finally plucks up courage to tell Amy about Georgie and to ask her for a divorce.
Yvonne Mitchell's Amy and Sylvia Syms's Georgie are two very different people. Amy is around the same age as Jim, while Georgie is considerably younger and more attractive, and her accent suggests she may come from a mode middle-class background. Jim's main complaint about Amy is that she is a poor housewife, not very good at cooking and untidy in her habits. Georgie is a much better cook and housekeeper; shots of the Prestons' flat always show it in an chaotic state, while Georgie's is much more spick handspan. Georgie is also more smartly dressed; the film's title refers to the fact that Amy habitually wears a dressing gown around the house. When she tries to smarten herself up to compete with her rival, things do not go to plan. Mitchell was rather cast against type as the slovenly Amy, and her Cockney accent occasionally slips, but this otherwise is a moving performance as a woman who sees her world crumbling around her. Syms, however, does not make a great impression.
Anthony Quayle was a leading light in the British theatre, both as actor and director, but never had quite the same success in the cinema. Most of his films were British- he never attempted to conquer Hollywood- and he mostly appeared in supporting roles. When he did take on a leading role, however, he generally made the most of it, as he did in "The Challenge", a British film noir from 1960, and as he does here. Although Jim is cheating on his wife, he is not the villain of the film; indeed, this is a film without a villain. He is a middle-aged everyman who believes that he is stuck in a rut, trapped in a marriage which has become stale, and who sees a chance of happiness with a younger woman.
There are some similarities here with a later British film, Colin Welland's 1973 television drama "Kisses at Fifty", which also dealt with a middle-aged working-class man, seeking escape from a passionless marriage through an extramarital affair. In that film too the children of the family take their mother's side and turn against the father, as Brian does here. (Kitchen sink drama largely vanished from the British cinema after around 1970, but found a new home on television, especially as part of the "Play for Today" franchise).
The ending, in which Jim gives up Georgie in order to remain with Amy, was criticised even in 1957 as overly sentimental. (The husband in "Kisses at Fifty" makes the opposite decision). Yet I felt that this ending rang psychologically true. Jim is a rather weak figure who finds it difficult to make decisions, especially decisions which will make a big change to his life. (There is a reason why he has put off telling Amy for so long). It therefore makes sense that, faced with an ultimatum he would take the path of least resistance. "Woman in a Dressing Gown" may not be as intensely dramatic as some of the other "kitchen sinks" from the period, but it still has an emotional power of its own. 7/10.
Fire Maidens from Outer Space (1956)
Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Worser!
Anything you Yanks can do, we Brits can do worser! Although there are honourable exceptions such as "Forbidden Planet" and "Destination Moon", American science fiction films from the 1950s generally have a bad reputation. And deservedly so. They were notorious for their low budgets, melodramatic plots, poor standards of acting and, above all, for their feeble special effects. Some of them, most notoriously "Plan 9 from Outer Space", are regularly ranked among the worst films ever made.
The phrase "Outer Space" seems to have been code language for "so bad it's funny"; there was another, equally abysmal, film from around the same period called "Queen of Outer Space". "Fire Maidens from Outer Space" was Britain's entry in the international competition to come up with the "worst movie ever made". It concerns an an Earth-like atmosphere Anglo-American expedition to the 13th moon of Jupiter, which has an Earth-like atmosphere and is therefore considered a likely place in which to find extraterrestrial life. (In 1956 when the film was made, only twelve moons of Jupiter had been discovered, the same number as I learned when I was at school in the early seventies. The real thirteenth moon, given the name Leda, was discovered in 1974).
When the astronauts arrive on the thirteenth moon, they discover that it is indeed an Earth-like place. So Earth-like that the countryside looks just like the English Home Counties. The moon has a human population consisting of one old man and a bevy of attractive mini-skirted girls, the "fire maidens" of the title, all apparently his daughters. Jovian fashions seem to have been about a decade in advance of those on Earth; in 1956 few Earthling maidens would have dared to wear their skirts that short, but by 1966 they had become a common sight on the streets of terrestrial cities. If anyone wonders what humans are doing in such a remote part of the Solar System, the explanation is given that they are descended from the inhabitants of Atlantis who migrated when their continent sank beneath the waves. (Why they didn't just migrate to a drier part of Planet Earth is never explained).
There is little point in trying to set out the rest of the plot as it all gets very silly, although inevitably romances develop between the hunky astronauts and the beauteous fire maidens. There is something about a "monster" (for which read "man in a very unconvincing rubber suit") whom the astronauts have to kill, and Hestia, one of the fire maidens and the fiancee of one of the astronauts, nearly gets sacrificed to the gods by her elder sister Duessa, jealous that Hestia has found a boyfriend before she has. (On the thirteenth moon, apparently, marrying before an older sibling is regarded as a capital offence).
I had always assumed that films like this one would of necessity have a cast made up of unknown, otherwise unemployable actors who lacked the skills necessary to obtain parts in more prestigious productions. I was, therefore, surprised to see some names I recognised among the cast, especially Susan Shaw (a relatively well-known British actress of the fifties) as Hestia. Perhaps her contract required her to accept any part she was offered. Like Shaw, Paul Carpenter also has some much better entries on his filmography, but in most of those he only had minor roles. He was only regarded as a leading man in B-movies, "Undercover Girl" being another example, although even that is not as awful as "Fire Maidens".
The musical score mostly consists of extracts from Alexander Borodin's "Polovtsian Dances" repeated ad nauseam; I doubt if any living composer would have wanted their music associated with a film like this, but Borodin's was safely out of copyright by 1956. (That rumbling noise you can hear is the composer turning in his grave). The acting is uniformly poor, the script makes little sense and the dialogue frequently risible. The scenery is just as wooden as the actors. I normally try to find some redeeming qualities in even the poorest of films, but "Fire Maidens from Outer Space" completely lacks them. For the first time in several years I have come across a film which fully deserves the minimum mark. 1/10.
Lady Caroline Lamb (1972)
It Takes One to Know One
When it was made in 1972 "Lady Caroline Lamb" represented a major project by the British cinema. It was written by Robert Bolt, one of Britain's leading playwrights and screenwriters who had already written the scripts for films like "Lawrence of Arabia", "A Man for All Seasons" and "Dr Zhivago". It starred a major Hollywood star in the shape of Richard Chamberlain and several greats of the British acting profession such as Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson and John Mills. It did very well at the British box office, although it was not the great international success its makers had been hoping for. Yet today it is largely forgotten.
Lady Caroline Lamb was a novelist and one of the leading society figures of Regency Britain, but she is best remembered because of the men in her life. She was the wife of one of the country's leading politicians, William Lamb, who later (as Lord Melbourne) became Prime Minister and, notoriously, the
lover of one of the country's leading poets, Lord Byron.
Bolt said that the film was about "the struggle between the romantics of the world and the classicists". Now it is true that the early nineteenth century was the period of what might be called the struggle between classicism and romanticism in the arts, but Bolt was not particularly interested in the contrast between two different artistic movements. He seems to have been using the words "classicism" and "romanticism" as shorthand for two contrasting attitudes towards life, what others might call realism (or cynicism) and idealism. According to Bolt, classicism is an "ignoble view of life", although it keeps society going, whereas romanticism drives life and instigates new ideas. He said that in the film the main representative of the classical world-view is the Duke of Wellington and Lady Caroline herself of the romantic one.
Actually, I felt that the conflict between realistic and idealistic views of the world was much better brought out in some of Bolt's other films, especially "A Man for All Seasons" and "The Mission". In "Lady Caroline Lamb" this idea tends to get lost. Wellington's role in the film is a brief one, and he does not have much to say about political or philosophical ideas, so he never really emerges as the advocate of cynical pragmatism, or of anything else for that matter. As for Lady Caroline, as played by Sarah Miles she comes across not so much as a romantic idealist but as a silly, self-indulgent, social butterfly who destroys herself by her obsessive pursuit of Byron, a pursuit which she keeps going even after he has broken off their relationship and made it quite clear that he wants no more to do with her. She famously called him "mad, bad and dangerous to know", to which he could quite legitimately have replied "Well, it takes one to know one".
Miles has never been my favourite actress, and I felt that the film might have been improved with another actress as Caroline. I don't think that such an actress would have brought out Caroline's supposed "romanticism", but she could have conveyed the glamour and sexual magnetism which the real Caroline Lamb must have had in spades in order to captivate the likes of Lamb and Byron. This is something which Miles, sadly, fails to put across. Miles was, however, married to Bolt (who acted as director as well as scriptwriter), and by all accounts this was a joint project between them, so there was no way that anyone else would have been cast in the role.
Chamberlain has the looks for Byron, but not the charisma. All those knights and dames of the theatre seem wasted inn a series of cameos. For me the best performance came from Jon Finch as the wronged husband William Lamb. (In real life he had his own amours, but these are not mentioned in the film). Regency society was generally indulgent towards adultery, provided that it was kept discreet; both Caroline's mother Lady Bessborough and William's mother Lady Melbourne were unfaithful to their husbands, but were discreet enough to keep their adulteries out of the public eye and thus kept their social respectability. Caroline, completely lacking in discretion, insisted on thrusting her obsession with Byron in the public's face and thereby made herself a public laughing stock. William, portrayed here as a decent, humane and liberal man, would under other circumstances have been prepared to make allowances for his wife, even forgive her, but the extremes to which she went started to make him ridiculous and damaged his political career. He was eventually forced to seek a separation; even so, his career did not really flourish until after Caroline's death in 1828.
This was Bolt's first film as director, and it shows. Pauline Kael said that he "thrashes about from one style and point of view to another". The film was all too obviously put together by an inexperienced tyro; it moves at a glacial pace and would have been improved by being a good deal shorter. Bolt evidently did not enjoy the experience, because it was not only his first film but also his last. It is occasionally visually attractive, but apart from Finch's contribution there is little to recommend it. Perhaps it is not surprising that it has fallen into obscurity. 5/10.
Three Faces West (1940)
A Bonus Point for Courage
Before America's entry into the war, Hollywood did not have a particularly distinguished record in the fight against fascism. Few films were made explicitly criticising the German or Italian regimes. There was one film, "Blockade", about the Spanish Civil War, but it nails its colours so firmly to the fence that it is impossible to tell whether it was made from a pro-Franco or anti-Franco viewpoint. After 1939 the British contingent in Hollywood- Chaplin in "The Great Dictator", Hitchcock in "Foreign Correspondent", Korda in "That Hamilton Woman"- took up the cause of their mother country, but their efforts were not appreciated by the influential isolationist movement. According to one story Korda was summoned to appear before an angry Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was only excused attendance when the attack on Pearl Harbour took place a few days before his scheduled appointment. (To be fair to America, in the years before 1939 the British film industry could be equally pusillanimous when it came to appeasing Hitler. Hitchcock wanted to set "The Lady Vanishes" from 1938 in Nazi Germany, but the on the insistence of the studio this became an unnamed Central European dictatorship).
Frank Borzage's "The Mortal Storm" is one of the few exceptions, and "Three Faces West" is another. Both films were made in 1940, after the outbreak of war but before America entered it. Karl Braun, a Viennese doctor, and his daughter Leni arrive in America as refugees after the Nazi takeover of Austria. They move to a small Western farming town to provide much-needed medical services. Exactly where the town is situated seems to be a matter of debate, with some reviewers on here stating that it is in North Dakota and others plumping for Oklahoma. It probably doesn't matter; Hollywood scriptwriters often had a rather hazy idea of the geography of anywhere east of the Sierra Nevada.
The town has been badly hit by drought, soil erosion and dust storms, phenomena which affected many areas in the Plains states during the 1930s. The Department of Agriculture persuade the townspeople to move en masse to make a new start in Oregon. The film then becomes essentially a modern-day Western, a 20th century version of all those old wagon train stories with cars taking the place of covered wagons, as it follows the townsfolk on their journey. (John Ford's "The Grapes of Wrath", another tale of climate refugees from the Dust Bowl making their way west, also came out in 1940).
Another strand in the plot deals with the romance that grows up between Leni and John Phillips, the leader of the townspeople on their great trek. At first it appears that their is an obstacle to their love. Leni is already engaged to Eric, a young man she knew in her days in Austria. Although she loves John, she believes that she owes Eric a debt of honour because he risked his life to help her and her father escape to America. Her dilemma, however, is quickly resolved; when she meets Eric again, he reveals that he has (rather improbably) renounced his former liberal ideals and enthusiastically embraced Nazism. It becomes clear that he and Leni are not for one another, and Eric is sent on his way with the Doctor's prophetic words foretelling the downfall of the Nazi Reich ringing in his ears.
I was rather surprised to discover that a film with a liberal political message starred that great Hollywood conservative, John Wayne, who appears here as Phillips. Of course, not all conservatives in 1940 were necessarily isolationists or pro-German- another famously right-wing actor, James Stewart, starred in "The Mortal Storm"- but I doubt if Wayne relished being directed by Bernard Vorhaus, who was known for his communist sympathies, for which he was later to be blacklisted. Perhaps in 1940 Wayne was not yet a big enough star to pick and choose who he would work with.
"Three Faces West" is not a film in the same class as either "The Mortal Storm"or "The Grapes of Wrath", both of which have more gripping plots and more detailed characterisation. It is mostly interesting today as an example of a film which it bucked the isolationist trend which was so widespread in Hollywood in the days before Pearl Harbour. 6/10/ (5/10 for the movie, with a bonus point for political courage).
Outcast of the Islands (1951)
Disreputable, seedy, selfish, lustful and avaricious with no redeeming qualities
How do you follow up a masterpiece? This was Carol Reed's first film after what I (and many others) have always considered his greatest, "The Third Man". That was the second of Reed's trilogy of films noirs, all with a contemporary setting, the other two instalments being "Odd Man Out" and "The Man Between". With "Outcast of the Islands" he decided to do something a little different. It is a late nineteenth century period drama, based on a novel by Joseph Conrad and set in what was then the Dutch East Indies.
The main character is Peter Willems, an employee of a Singapore shipping company, who is sacked for dishonesty. He meets Tom Lingard, a ship's captain who once befriended him as a boy. Although you might think that Willems is the author of his own misfortunes, Lingard feels sorry for him. Lingard has made a considerable amount of money through trading with a village which can only be reached via a dangerous river mouth; the secret of navigating this difficult passage is known to Lingard alone. He takes Willems on his next voyage and introducers him to Almayer, his son-in-law and his representative in the village. The idea is that Willems should act as Almayer's assistant while Lingard is away on one of his trading ventures.
Well, they say that no kind deed goes unpunished. Willems, predictably, proves just as untrustworthy in his new position as he was in his old one. He quarrels with Almayer after the two men take a deep dislike to one another. He seduces Aissa, the daughter of the local village chief and betrays Lingard by revealing the secret of the navigation channel to an Arab trader, one of Lingard's rivals. Eventually he leads the villagers in an attack on Almayer, who escapes with his life but at the cost of a loss of his dignity.
Trevor Howard had appeared in "The Third Man" as Major Calloway, a humane and decent British officer. He appears again here as Willems, a very different type of character. "Outcast of the Islands" is a rare example of a film with a wholly unsympathetic protagonist. Reed's main characters are rarely paragons of virtue or clean-cut heroes, but for all their flaws they generally have some redeeming points. James Mason's IRA man in "Odd Man Out" may be a terrorist, but at least he eventually comes to realise the futility of violence and hatred. Ivo Kern in "The Man Between" (also played by Mason) is a complex, tormented figure, a one-time idealist whose idealism has been cruelly shattered by his witnessing the horrors of Nazism. Even Harry Lime in "The Third Man", although he is a monster of cynical self-interest who has no regard for the sufferings of others, manages to achieve a certain monstrous grandeur.
There is no grandeur about Willems. He is a disreputable, seedy little man, selfish, lustful and avaricious with no redeeming qualities. Even Lingard eventually recoils from him in disgust. It is to Howard's credit that he managed to make so unpleasant a character fascinating enough to hold the audience's interest, even if we only watch in a spirit of "I wonder what this scoundrel will get up to next" or "I wonder how he will get his comeuppance". There is another good performance from Robert Morley as Almayer, a man who, while not as dishonest as Willems, is nearly as unsympathetic- arrogant, pompous, patronising and self-satisfied. It is hardly surprising that they detest one another, as both are detestable.
"Outcast of the Islands" is not quite in the same class as "The Third Man", but then few films are. As an account of colonial-era villainy it remains very watchable. 8/10.
Immaculate (2024)
The Sound of Music It Ain't!
Cecilia, a young, deeply religious American woman, becomes a nun and enters a convent in Italy. And no, this isn't going to be Audrey Hepburn in "The Nun's Story" or Julie Andrews in "The Sound of Music". Or even Whoopi Goldberg in "Sister Act". You can tell it isn't when Cecilia discovers that she is pregnant. Upon being questioned, Cecilia swears blind that she is still a virgin and has never had sex with a man. The church authorities seem surprisingly quick to accept Cecilia's assurances, and hail her as the new Virgin Mary, who will give birth to the Second Coming of Christ.
Of course, there is something nasty in the woodwork. It transpires that Cecilia has been deliberately impregnated by a fanatical group within the Catholic Church who are hoping to bring about the Second Coming using a Holy Nail relic in the convent's chapel; they believe that this relic still contains samples of Christ's DNA. Or are they(as Cecilia comes to suspect) trying to bring about the advent of the Antichrist. I won't set out the plot any further, but you can take it from me that it gets not only extremely gory but also extremely silly.
I should point out that I am not a Catholic and that I have no objection to the cinema or other media being used to voice criticism of organised religion. We certainly do not want a return to the days of the Production Code which forbade any criticisms of the churches or the clergy. I would, however, prefer it if such criticisms were made by those who know what they are talking about, which the makers of "Immaculate" patently do not. To take a few points:-
The expression "Immaculate Conception" does not refer to the Virgin Birth of Christ, as the film presupposes. It refers to the Catholic doctrine that the Virgin Mary was herself free of original sin from the moment of her conception.
The birth of Christ is, in Christian theology, a unique event. Any woman who claimed to have become pregnant without having sex would doubtless be dismissed by the Church as a liar, however much she insisted she was telling the truth. Any group of Catholics who tried to claim her as a "second Virgin Mary" would be disowned by the mainstream Church and their claims regarded as blasphemous.
According to the Bible, the timing of the Second Coming is known only to God the Father himself. It is therefore inconceivable that a group of Catholics, however fanatical, might believe that they could force God's hand by monkeying about with ancient DNA supposedly found on a Holy Nail relic. (And today even the Catholic Church would admit that not all these nails are genuine).
A film whose plot revolves around a series of theological absurdities like these cannot be regarded as making a valid critique of Christianity or of Catholicism. I suspect, however, that the film-makers were less concerned with theological accuracy than they were with using religion as a peg on which to hang a crude and tawdry little shocker of a horror film. This is a film which gains a certain frisson by depicting nuns and priests, more often portrayed in the cinema as peaceful and benevolent, as cruel, violent and evil, but which fails to convince us that they are anything like that in real life.
There have been films in recent years- "Priest", "The Magdalene Sisters", "Philomena"- which have made valid and pertinent criticisms of Catholicism, but these films were all grounded in reality. "Immaculate" is founded in nothing but the unlovely history of the "nunsploitation" film, a genre which has frequently been a vehicle for bigotry and prejudice. I had recently heard of Sydney Sweeney, who stars here as Cecilia, as a promising and upcoming young actress, but I had not seen any of her other films. Seeing "Immaculate" made me think that she desperately needs a new agent. 2/10.