JamesHitchcock

On 10th July 1973 J. Paul Getty III, the teenage grandson of the oil billionaire J. Paul Getty, was kidnapped by Italian gangsters in Rome. "All the Money in the World" tells the story of this kidnapping and the efforts of Paul's family to negotiate the payment of a ransom with the kidnappers. The leading figure in the negotiations was the boy's mother, Gail; his father, J. Paul Getty II, at this time hopelessly addicted to drugs and alcohol, played little part. (In fairness I should point out that J. Paul Getty II later overcame his addiction problems, became a noted philanthropist and died a respected figure in his adopted country, Britain, after being knighted by the Queen).

Gail's main problem is that she had little money of her own; when she divorced Paul's father she gave up all claims to alimony in exchange for custody of her children. She is therefore dependent upon Paul's grandfather. Old Getty may have been famous as the Richest Man in the World- his only rival for that title was Howard Hughes- but he was also famous for his meanness. He could easily afford to pay many times over the seventeen million dollars demanded by the kidnappers, but he initially refuses to pay, arguing that by doing so he would only be encouraging further kidnappings of his family members. He does, however, instruct one of his advisers, the former CIA agent Fletcher Chace, to enter into secret negotiations.

Shortly after filming was completed, the film-makers were faced with a potential PR disaster. Its star, Kevin Spacey, who played Getty, faced allegations of sexual misconduct. Again, in the interests of fairness I should point out that Spacey was eventually acquitted, both in the criminal and civil courts, of these allegations, but the filmmakers could not afford to await the outcome of these cases. The decision was taken to reshoot all the scenes in which Spacey had appeared, with Christopher Plummer in the role.

We have no way of knowing what the completed film would have looked like with Spacey, but Plummer gives a masterly performance. He was one of those actors who never retired; indeed, he seemed to make more films in his seventies and eighties than he had done in his younger days. He was 88 when he made "All the Money in the World", older than the character he was playing; Getty would have been 80 in 1973. (Spacey was only 58 in 2017). The Getty we see in this film is the living embodiment of the old saying that money can't buy you happiness. Outwardly he seems a dignified old gentleman, but inwardly he is deeply unhappy, embittered and misanthropic. Apart from his money, his one great passion in life is collecting works of art, because he knows that inanimate objects will never disappoint him in the way that people have done. He seems more concerned to haggle over the latest acquisition for his collection than he does to bargain for his grandson's release. In the end he only contributes a million dollars to the ransom money- by this time the kidnappers have reduced their demand to four million- and he contributes it in the form of a loan to his son because in this way it will be tax-deductible. Despite Plummer's advancing years, this was not his last film; he was to give another fine performance in "Knives Out" two years later.

There are also fine performances from Michelle Williams as the tormented Gail, caught between the ruthlessness of the kidnappers and the flint-hearted avarice of her former father-in-law, from Romain Duris as Cinquanta, the one kidnapper who still has a spark of humanity, and Mark Wahlberg as Chace, who finally finds the courage to stand up to his employer and tell him a few home truths.

Like Plummer, director Ridley Scott seems in no hurry to require. He was eighty when he made this film, and has made three more since. Although much of the film takes place in Italy, this is not the "Sunny Italy" familiar to us from the tourist brochures. Some of the characters show us human nature at its darkest, and the look of the film is correspondingly dark, shot in a neo-noir style. Although it is in colour rather than monochrome, it is visually closer to the traditional noir of the forties and fifties, with many scenes taking place in darkened rooms and a similar emphasis on chiaroscuro lighting effects. With "All the Money in the World" Scott has made another fine film, worthy to stand alongside earlier efforts such as "The Duellists", "Alien" and "Gladiator". It is both a gripping crime story and a moving human drama. 8/10.

At 75% complete, "The Tenth Planet" is the nearest thing we have to a complete serial from the fourth season of "Doctor Who". (None of the others is more than 50% complete, and some are missing in their entirety). The fourth episode is one of the most eagerly sought missing "Doctor Who" episodes as it marks William Hartnell's last regular appearance as the First Doctor- he was to reprise the role in "The Three Doctors" a few years later- and the first episode to feature a "regeneration" sequence, in which the First Doctor transforms into the Second. (The term "regeneration" was not used until the Third Doctor transformed into the Fourth; the phrase used in 1966 was "renewal").

This was also the first serial to feature the Cybermen, the alien race who would become the Doctor's most iconic adversaries apart from the Daleks. The Tenth Planet of the title is their home world, Mondas. (The name was doubtless derived from the French "monde" and the Latin "mundus", both meaning "world". It is the "tenth planet" because in 1966 there were nine known planets in the solar system; Pluto had not yet been degraded to a "dwarf planet"). Mondas was originally a twin planet to the Earth, inhabited by a humanoid race very similar to Earthlings. Some unexplained catastrophe forced Mondas out of the solar system and into deep space; its inhabitants survived by replacing their body parts with mechanical substitutes, thus becoming Cybermen. Another feature of Cybermen is that, unlike humans, they lack all emotions.

It is the year 1986 (still twenty years in the future when the programme was made). The Doctor and his companions Ben and Polly arrive at a space tracking base at Earth's south pole. Great excitement has been caused by the sudden appearance of a new planet, which turns out to be the long-lost Mondas, in the solar system. The base comes under attack from a party of Cybermen, part of an army sent to invade the Earth. It is explained that Mondas will soon be destroyed because it is "losing energy"; the only way in which the Cybermen can avoid this fate is to take energy from the Earth.

William Hartnell was taken ill during the making of this serial, and as a result was absent from the third episode. (The on-screen explanation is that the Doctor has also been taken ill). It was probably his increasing ill-health which led to his leaving the programme. One of the results of his absence is that the script had to be rewritten at the last moment. It falls to his young companion, the cockney seaman Ben, rather than to the Doctor himself, to foil the evil plans of the Cybermen. Ben also needs to foil the human base commander, General Cutler, who wants to destroy Mondas with a weapon known as the "Z-Bomb", something which the Doctor feels would pose an unacceptable risk to the Earth. (The serial was made a few years after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Z-Bomb plot line was doubtless intended as a comment on the politics of the Cold War; the aggressive, gung-ho figure of Cutler represents the way Americans, or at least America's top military brass, were widely seen in Britain at the time, especially on the political Left).

I have wondered if the emotionless, rationalistic and malevolent Cybermen were intended as a riposte to Mr Spock and the Vulcans in "Star Wars", another fictional race who are guided by reason rather than by emotion but who are nevertheless peaceful. The "Doctor Who" scriptwriters seemed to be making the point that a race lacking in all emotions would not be like Spock but would be cruel and pitiless, guided only by self-interest. However, I note that "Star Wars" had only been running for about a month when "The Tenth Planet" was broadcast, making it more likely that the two programmes conceived the idea of a race without emotions independently of one another. The Cybermen in this serial come across as a bit odd, with their cloth faces and what look like car headlamps on their heads, but they proved a hit with viewers and were brought back, in a redesigned form, later in the4 fourth season in "The Moonbase".

Hartnell has never been my favourite Doctor, but it is unfortunate that so many episodes from the second half of his tenure are missing, whereas most of those from the first half still exist. As a result I tend to think of him as the stubborn, grumpy and sometimes cowardly old codger from the early serials, whereas by the end of his tenure his character was evolving into a wise and compassionate, if rather humourless, grandfather figure. This serial also reminded me of what an excellent character Michael Craze's Ben was- prone to be bolshie and hot-headed, but unfailingly loyal and courageous.

"The Tenth Planet" has its weaknesses- the idea of one planet "stealing the energy" of another seems scientifically odd, and it is never explained how Mondas has suddenly returned to the solar system. Nevertheless, this is an enjoyable serial, and gave Hartnell a fitting send-off. 7/10.

"The Hound of the Baskervilles" has a different feel to most of the other Sherlock Holmes stories, being set on the wilds of Dartmoor rather than in London. With its emphasis on the supposedly supernatural legend of the ghostly hound it is in many ways closer to Gothic horror than to a normal crime novel, even if a rational explanation is provided in the end. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that it has proved one of the most popular of the Holmes stories in the cinema and that numerous versions have been filmed. (Apart from this one I have seen two of these, the 1939 version with Basil Rathbone and the 1959 one with Peter Cushing).

Legend has it that, because of a crime committed by one of their ancestors in the seventeenth century, the Baskerville family, wealthy Devon landowners, have been under a curse ever since and that every subsequent head of the family has been killed by a demonic hound that is said to haunt the moor. Recently Sir Charles Baskerville, the owner of Baskerville Hall, has been found dead with the footprints of a gigantic dog nearby. Holmes and Watson are asked to travel down to Devon to protect the new owner, Sir Charles's nephew Henry, although they are not engaged by Henry himself, who dismisses all talk of a family curse, but by a Dr Mortimer, an old friend of Sir Charles.

The 1983 version makes a couple of changes from Conan Doyle's original story. We learn that Sir Charles was having an affair with Laura Lyons, the wife of a local painter. This plot line was presumably introduced to provide a red herring; Laura's husband Geoffrey immediately becomes the prime suspect in Sir Charles's death, especially as he is known to have a violent temper. Of course, the first rule of whodunnits is that the most obvious suspect is almost certainly innocent.

Sir Henry, a Canadian in the original novel, here becomes an American. This was not, however, done to provide a role for a Hollywood star to make the film more attractive to American broadcasters; Sir Henry is played by a British actor, Martin Shaw. Presumably the producers did not have the budget to attract an A-list American star, and felt that Shaw, a big name in Britain in the eighties, would be a bigger draw for British audiences than a Hollywood B-lister. (He could not, however, manage an American accent and had to be dubbed by an American actor).

This film is not really as good as the 1939 version. (I have not seen the 1959 version for many years so will not make a direct comparison). Richardson, however, can stand comparison to Basil Rathbone as Holmes- calm authoritative and rational but humane. I did not, however, think that Donald Churchill was in the same class as Nigel Bruce as Watson, but I liked Ronald Lacey, best known to me as 'Orrible 'Arris from "Porridge", as Holmes's hapless rival Inspector Lestrade and Brian Blessed as the angry, aggressive Geoffrey Lyons. (Holmes diagnoses the cause of Lyons's anger as the fact that he has the vision of a genius but only a mediocre artistic talent with which to express it- a concept which could have made for an intriguing film in it own right).

Nicholas Clay (like Morton Lowry in 1939) is rather anonymous as Jack Stapleton, the story's human villain, but this is in keeping with the original novel. Doyle appears to have made Stapleton deliberately colourless because the real villains of his story are the ghastly hound and the grim, treacherous moor itself. And it is in realising these two villains that the film rather falls down. The moor looks fine in the daylight, but the night-time scenes were all too obviously shot in a studio, and the supposed spectral hound is very unconvincing.

This film was originally made for television. It was intended as one of a series of six Sherlock Holmes films, all starring Ian Richardson, but in the event only one other, "The Sign of Four", was actually made. The producers pulled out when they learned that Granada Television were also planning a Holmes series, with Jeremy Brett. I have never seen "The Sign of Four", but it seems a pity that the series was never completed; Richardson, on the evidence of "The Hound of the Baskervilles", had the makings of a fine Holmes. 7/10.