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All the Money in the World (2017)
Money Can't Buy Happiness
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.
Doctor Who: The Tenth Planet: Episode 1 (1966)
So, Farewell Then, William Hartnell
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 (1983)
The Makings of a Fine Holmes
"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.
Jet Pilot (1957)
Cool Aircraft, Awful Film
"Jet Pilot" starts out like an unacknowledged remake of "Ninotchka". A beautiful Russian air force pilot, Lieutenant Anna Marladovna, defects to the West, flying a jet fighter across the Bering Strait from Siberia to an American airfield in Alaska. (We later learn that "Anna Marladovna" is not her real name, but for ease of reference I will refer to her as Anna throughout). A romance grows up between Anna and the base commander, Colonel Jim Shannon, and Anna, despite her puritanical Communist views, seems to be acquiring a taste for the decadent capitalist Western lifestyle.
American intelligence, however, are less taken with her. Her story does not ring true; although she claims to have been fleeing Russia to avoid a death sentence, she still proclaims her loyalty to the Soviet Union and refuses to share any information with the Americans. The authorities decide that she should be deported. To thwart this, Shannon elopes with Anna and marries her, only to be told that he has in fact married a dangerous double agent who staged a fake "defection" in order to infiltrate the American Air Force. This revelation does not seem to shake Shannon's infatuation with the beautiful young woman, and he and Anna defect back across the Bering Strait to Siberia.
So does this mean that Shannon is betraying his country? Well, no. Earlier in his career John Wayne had occasionally played a villain, most notably in "Wake of the Red Witch" and "Reap the Wild Wind", but by 1949, when filming started, his screen persona was well established as the all-American mind hero. So, of course, Shannon also has to be a double agent, making the Russians think he is betraying his country while all the time gathering valuable information for American intelligence. At this point all resemblance to "Ninotchka" vanishes and the film becomes a standard Cold War spy thriller. The main question becomes "How will Anna react when she inevitably discovers her husband's double dealing?
Shooting for the film took place in 1949/50, but it was not released until 1957. (By coincidence, a genuine remake of "Ninotchka", the musical "Silk Stockings", was also released in 1957). The reason for the delay was that Howard Hughes, whose pet project it was, was never satisfied and could not stop tinkering with it. Aviation was as great an obsession with Hughes as film-making, and he saw "Jet Pilot" as a sort of "Aces High" for the jet age. We see lots of jet aircraft, very modern in 1949 but already looking outdated by 1957, something commented on at the time by the military aviation enthusiasts at whom the film was aimed.
I called this a standard Cold War spy thriller, but I should really have said "sub-standard" because "Jet Pilot" is a very poor film indeed. Both the leads were miscast. Janet Leigh, in her early twenties, looks stunning, but seems too young for Anna, who is supposed to be highly experienced, both as a pilot and as an intelligence agent. The role really called for an attractive older woman. (My initial thought was "someone like Ingrid Bergman", not dissimilar in looks to Leigh, but around a dozen years older). As for Wayne, he was old enough to be Leigh's father, and was never at his best as a romantic hero.
The plot keeps getting more and more ludicrous with every twist. So much about the film seems incredible. Would the US Air Force really allow a Russian defector- especially a Russian defector about whose credentials they had doubts- to pilot one of their planes? And how is Anna able to fly an American plane without, apparently, having had any extra training? And why, if the Russians accept Shannon as a genuine defector (which we must accept they do), do they feed him a drug which affects his memory? Would that not make anything he tells them unreliable? Given that the film was made during the Cold War, the answer to that last question is probably just "because they're nasty Commies". The dialogue is no better than the plotting. About the only good thing about the film, and the only thing which saves it from an even lower mark, is the footage of those cool old aircraft. 4/10.
My Foolish Heart (1949)
Why there has never been a film of "The Catcher in the Rye".
"My Foolish Heart" is what would have been known at the time as a "women's picture". These were films made for a predominantly female audience, and usually had a strong female character at their centre. The male characters, and subsidiary female ones, were generally defined in terms of their relationship to her- heroine's boyfriend, heroine's husband, heroine's best friend, and so on.
The heroine here is Eloise Wengler, nee Winters. The film starts with a scene showing Eloise with her husband, Lew; it is obvious that their marriage is unhappy and that they are on the brink of divorce. The story is then told in a long flashback, but for the most part this is not the story of the Wenglers' marriage but the story of Eloise's previous romance with a young man named Walt Dreiser. The film follows their courtship, but as they are falling in love, World War II breaks out and Walt is drafted into the Army Air Force. Tragedy strikes when he is killed in a flying accident.
The above synopsis is short, but the action it describes takes up the greater part of the film. It is implied that, at the time of Walt's death, Eloise is pregnant with his child so desperately needs to find a husband to avoid the stigma that attached to single motherhood at this period, but in the moral climate of 1949 this could not be spelt out too explicitly. In any case, Eloise finds another man- her best friend Mary Jane's boyfriend Lew.
1n 1949 the film did well at the box office but was hated both by the critics and by J. D. Salinger, the author of the short story on which it was (very loosely) based. Salinger hated it so much that he refused to allow any more of his works to be filmed, which is why there has never been a cinema adaptation of "The Catcher in the Rye". Despite its critical mauling, however, the film was nominated for two Oscars, "Best Actress" for Susan Hayward and "Best Music, Song" for Victor Young and Ned Washington. Moreover, both these nominations were well deserved. Young and Washington's song, also called "My Foolish Heart", which has since become a jazz standard, is attractive and melodic, and Hayward (who took over at the last minute from Teresa Wright) plays her part as Eloise very well. ("Women's pictures" demanded a strong performance in the leading role). This surprised me, because I had previously thought of Hayward as an actress who could be very good in good films (like "I'll Cry Tomorrow") but equally bad in bad ones (like "The Conqueror").
The main problem with the film is that it tries to tell two stories, that of Eloise and Walt and that of Eloise and Lew, and there isn't really enough space to tell two in its relatively short running time. Too much time is given to the Walt story, which although it is told at such length should really only have been a sub-plot, meaning that far too little is given to what should have been the main plot, the story of Eloise and Lew's marriage. We never really learn just why their marriage failed; it is implied that they were never really in love with each other, Eloise being still in love with Walt and Lew with Mary Jane, but this is never really made clear. And if Lew was in love with Mary Jane, why didn't he simply stay with her? Despite the song and Hayward's acting (which are the only things saving the film from a lower mark), I felt that the critics who so disliked "My Foolish Heart" were fully justified in their dislike. 5/10.
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)
So, Here We Go Again!
So, here we go again. Ten years after the first "Mamma Mia!", the producers decided that the world needed another one. Or at least that their bank account needed another one, if not the world in general.
It came as a surprise to be told at the beginning of the movie that Donna, the heroine of the original film, is now dead, a few minutes after seeing the words "starring Meryl Streep" in the opening credits. (The solution to this conundrum is that Streep appears as Donna's ghost). This film is both a sequel and a prequel to the original. In the scenes set in the present day, Donna's daughter Sophie and her husband Sky are planning the grand reopening of their Greek hotel, which they have renamed the Hotel Bella Donna, after a refurbishment. These scenes are intercut with flashbacks to 1979, telling the story of Donna's youth in Paris and of how she became involved with Sam, Bill and Harry, the three men who all might conceivably be Sophie's father.
According to the Rotten Tomatoes website, the film "doubles down on just about everything fans loved about the original"- which unfortunately means that it doubles down on just about everything that I disliked about the original. That doesn't mean that I dislike ABBA. If I did, I wouldn't have touched this movie, or its predecessor, with a bargepole. I am probably the only heterosexual British male of my generation who likes the group, or at least who likes them in a straightforward way and not in an ironic, postmodernist spirit of "I know they're naff, but then naff is the new cool!"
I do, however, have problem with musicals which seem to have been cast on the basis of "Singing ability: optional", a growing tendency in the twenty-first century. Both the "Mamma Mia!" films are examples of this tendency, although the worst one is still probably the awful "Moulin Rouge". Occasionally the cast managed to surprise me. I actually liked the version of "One of Us" we hear here better than ABBA's original. The original, about a selfish young woman who dumps her boyfriend in the hope of finding someone better only to regret it when she finds that the world is not beating a path to her door, always left me quite unmoved, but here, as performed by Amanda Seyfried and Dominic Cooper with slightly different words, it becomes a touching ballad about a young couple unsure about where their relationship is going. Cher (who of course began her career as a singer before moving into acting) was a welcome addition as a cast member who actually seemed to know what she was doing. Her rich contralto voice blended in well with the ABBA songs, even if she seemed miscast as Meryl Streep's mother. (She is only three years older than Streep). Nevertheless, there were plenty of others, especially some of the male actors, whose voices were not really up to the demands of the music.
I also have a problem with the whole concept of the "jukebox musical". The normal principle of stage and screen musicals is "story first, songs second". The purpose of the songs is to serve the story by illustrating the thoughts and feelings of the characters. The jukebox musical inverts this by putting the story at the service of the songs. ABBA's songs, of course, were individual pop songs written over a number of years. They were not written in order to tell a coherent story, so the only way a musical can be based around them is to concoct a very contrived plot. Like its predecessor, "Mamma Mia! 2" suffers from a ramshackle plot which is little more than an excuse for the cast to sing one ABBA song after another. Sometimes they don't even need an excuse and break into a song which has very little connection with what is happening in the story. There has been talk of a third "Mamma Mia!" musical, but as far as I am concerned two is enough. Or more than enough. 4/10.
Love for Lydia (1977)
Seriously Overlong
This is an adaptation of the novel by H. E. Bates, first published in 1952. The story is set in the small industrial town of Evensford, possibly based upon Bates's home town of Rushden, a town where the main industry is the manufacture of shoes and leather goods. The story takes place during the late 1920s and early 1930s and the main character is Edward Richardson, a young apprentice journalist on the local newspaper with ambitions to become a writer. (In the novel we never learn his Christian name; the name Edward was given to him for the purposes of the dramatisation).
The title character is Lydia Aspen, a girl from a once-wealthy but now impoverished aristocratic family who, after the death of her father, moves to Evensford to live with her elderly aunts and her eccentric uncle. Edward first meets her when he is sent to their house (a crumbling mansion isolated from the rest of the town behind a high stone wall) to get a story about her father's death. Lydia, a seemingly shy girl, has led a sheltered existence, and her meeting with Edward allows him to introduce her to the pleasures of ordinary life; for instance, he takes her skating on the frozen rivers, a popular local pastime during cold winters.
Lydia and Edward fall in love, but he realises that he is not her only admirer. She has at least three others- the wealthy Alex Sanderson, Tom Holland, a young farmer, and Bert "Blackie" Johnson, a car mechanic. Richardson realises that Lydia is not the shy, innocent girl for which he initially took her but can be wilful and fun-loving, and that she greatly enjoys the attentions of so many young men. His position is made more difficult by the fact that Alex and Tom are both close friends of his, and of each other. Blackie has more difficulty fitting in with the group because of his working-class background; Edward is also from a working-class family, but Tom and Alex seem more willing to accept him, possibly because of his literary aspirations and his more genteel accent.
I did not see this serial when it was first shown in 1977; I was a teenager at the time, had hardly heard of Bates, and the theme did not seem very interesting to me. I was introduced to Bates's work a few years later as a college student who I walked into a bookshop, saw a copy of the Penguin "Love for Lydia" and bought it on a whim, largely because the young woman on the cover looked very like my then girlfriend. I was immediately taken with the story, and over the years the novel has become one of my favourites. I therefore decided to watch the serial when it was recently repeated on the "Talking Pictures" TV channel.
I must admit that I did not enjoy it as much as the book. The main reason is that it is seriously overlong. Thirteen hour-long episodes is far too many for a reasonably short novel. (For the same reason I have never been a great fan of Granada's interminable adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited", even though I am well aware that some people will acclaim it as one of he greatest television serials ever made). Neither the rather bland Christopher Blake as Edward nor Mel Martin as Lydia make much impression. (Coincidentally, the girlfriend I referred to was also called Mel). At 28 and 30 they were also perhaps rather too old for their roles; Edward and Lydia are supposed to be in their late teens or early twenties, and their youth and inexperience are an important factor in the story.
There are better performances from a pre-stardom Jeremy Irons as Alex, from the future Doctor Who Peter Davison as Tom and from Sherrie Hewson as Tom's rather plain sister Nancy, who is besotted with Edward but despairs of ever being able to win him away from the bewitching Lydia. Among the supporting cast I also liked Michael Aldridge as Lydia's awful old Uncle Rollo and David Ryall as Edward's bullying, patronising editor Bretherton, who has a bigger role here than he played in the novel. Nevertheless, this serial will never eclipse the original book in my affections. 6/10.
Hellfighters (1968)
The trouble with the human interest is that the humans are not very interesting.
"Hellfighters" is the only film I know about the exploits of oil well firefighters; the main character, Chance Buckman, is based on Red Adair, probably the world's most famous oil well firefighter. Chance travels around the world putting out fires at well heads; I learned something about how this is accomplished. The idea is to use a crane to lower an oil drum full of nitroglycerine into the flames and detonate it; the resulting explosion will extinguish the blaze by depriving it of oxygen. There is, however, a limit to the number of plot lines which can be derived from oil well fires; once you've exhausted "firefighter in danger; will he manage to escape?", that's about it.
The makers of this film therefore attempt to pad it out with a human interest story based around Chance's family life. We learn that he is divorced; his wife Madelyn left him 20 years earlier, largely because she could not deal with her obsessive fears that her husband might be killed or injured in a fire. Their daughter Letitia ("Tish") has lived with Madelyn, without seeing her father, for all that time, but when Chance is indeed injured in an accident, Tish goes to visit him in hospital. While there, Tish meets and marries Chance's assistant Greg Parker, and the two are married after a whirlwind romance. Unlike her mother, Tish is fascinated by fires, and follows her husband wherever he goes, generally against both his and her father's wishes. Meanwhile, Chance and Madelyn meet up again and decide to remarry.
The fire scenes are certainly spectacular and well mounted. The main problem with the human interest part of the film, however, is that the humans are not very interesting. John Wayne was always better as an action hero than as a romantic hero, and so it proves here. He is fine as the tough, grizzled old firefighter, but less convincing as the man who has to woo Madelyn all over again, while also dealing with his relationships with his daughter and son-in-law. Vera Miles seems miscast as Madelyn; she was more than twenty years younger than Wayne, and only nine years older than her supposed daughter Katharine Ross. Ross herself is nowhere near as good as she had been in "The Graduate" the previous year, but that is not entirely her fault. The script for "Hellfighters" is nowhere near as good as that for the earlier film. Only the fire scenes prevent this film from getting a lower mark, and even they become repetitive after a while. 5/10.
Groundhog Day (1993)
Over and Over Again
Groundhog Day is a celebration which takes place every year on February 2nd, in a number of American towns, the best known one being in Punxsutawney, a small town in Pennsylvania. A groundhog known as Punxsutawney Phil is brought out of hibernation in order to predict the weather; the idea is that if the groundhog sees its shadow, then winter will last for another six weeks. This event is surrounded with a considerable amount of ritual and ceremony.
The main character in this film is another Phil, a Pittsburgh television weatherman named Phil Connors, who is sent by his TV station to cover the Groundhog Day festivities in Punxsutawney. Phil, a bad-tempered, cynical and sarcastic individual, has had to attend this event for the last four years, and finds it ridiculous, something he makes all too obvious in his broadcast. When he attempts to return to Pittsburgh, however, he and his producer Rita and cameraman Larry are prevented from doing so by a snowstorm, meaning they will have to spend another night in Punxsutawney.
Only Phil doesn't spend just one more night in the town. When he wakes up the next morning, he finds that it is not February 3rd. It is February 2nd all over again. Phil has become stuck in a time loop, meaning that he has to relive the same day over and over again. Each morning he is woken at 6 am to the strains of Sonny and Cher's "I've Got You, Babe". Each morning he meets the same people- another guest in his boarding-house who questions him about the weather, his landlady, an old school friend who has become an obnoxiously persistent insurance salesman, an old beggar- before getting to the Groundhog Day ceremony and having to repeat his commentary.
No explanation is given as to how Phil became stuck in this time loop, or why he is the only person aware that time is repeating itself. Nobody else has any memory of having lived this day before. When Phil tries to discuss his problem with Rita, she just thinks he is crazy and suggests he see a psychiatrist. (He does, with no luck). I said that Phil is compelled to relive the same day over and over again, but that does not mean that he is compelled to do exactly the same things every day. He still retains free will, which means that he can choose how he reacts to each familiar situation. He also remembers what happens to him, and can use these memories as a guide to how he should act. The one thing he cannot do is break out of the loop- whatever he does, time will reset itself at 6.00 am the next morning.
At first, Phil thinks that his curious situation has given him the freedom to behave as irresponsibly as he likes, knowing that whatever he does will have no long-term consequences. Tiring of this, however, and despairing of finding a way out, he tries to commit suicide, only to find that even if he succeeds he will be resuscitated as soon as the clock gets to 6 am. He finds himself becoming attracted to Rita, but the two have very different personalities- she is gentle, optimistic and idealistic- and she is not interested. Phil, therefore, decides that to win over Rita he must try and become a better person, and improves his behaviour. He becomes politer and more considerate, tries to help the old beggar and saves people from accidents. He even learns to sculpt ice and play the piano, because Rita has told him that her ideal man must be artistic and musical.
The film was the cause of a breach between its director Harold Ramis and its star Bill Murray. The two had previously made several films together, and were close friends, but creative differences over "Groundhog Day" drove a wedge between them. (They were later to be reconciled, shortly before Ramis's death in 2014). The issue seems to have been that Ramis saw the film more as a romantic comedy, whereas Murray was more interested in the philosophical implications of Phil's predicament.
In the event it was Ramis who largely prevailed; there are philosophical undertones to the film if you look for them- some people have found echoes of Buddhist, Christian and Jewish religious thought- but overall the tone is relatively light and comedic, with a happy ending in which Phil is released from his predicament (or so it implied) by his genuine change of heart and his unselfish love for Rita. Yet, paradoxically, although the film might not have turned out the way Murray wanted, he himself gives an excellent performance and puts his comic talents to good use. Phil might initially seem unsympathetic, yet we find ourselves warming to him as he struggles with his absurd predicament. Andie MacDowell makes a sweet and loveable Rita, showing just why she was such a hot property in the nineties, especially in rom-coms. ("Four Weddings and a Funeral" is another example). Among the supporting cast I would mention Stephen Tobolowsky as the annoying insurance man. The script is both intelligent and witty, making this a very enjoyable film. It has even given a phrase to the English language, "groundhog day" being used to mean any situation, especially an unpleasant one, which seems to repeat itself over and over again. 7/10.
Screen Two: Stonewall (1997)
An Interesting Insight
Why, I used to wonder, was Britain's leading gay-rights pressure group called "Stonewall"? Was it named after General Stonewall Jackson? Was he himself gay? (No, it wasn't, and he wasn't). The truth, of course, is that it takes its name from the Stonewall Riots, which took place in July 1969, in and around the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village. The riots were provoked by the New York Police Department's heavy-handed and discriminatory treatment of the bar's customers, and of gay men in general.
This film was originally shown on British television in 1995 as part of the BBC's Screen Two series of one-off dramas. (It had a limited cinematic release the following year). Much of the action takes place at the Stonewall Inn during the summer of 1969, although the riots are only shown at the very end. The main character is Matty Dean, a young gay man, who arrives in New York from somewhere out of town. We never learn exactly where Matty is from, but the implication is that it is a place with very conservative moral values, especially where homosexuality is concerned. Matty is hoping that the big city will prove to be more liberal, although in some respects he is to be disappointed.
As one might expect, all the main characters are part of the gay community, although one of the film's themes is that there are, or at least that there were in 1969, two separate gay communities. Most of the clientele of the Stonewall Inn are drag queens who today would probably be thought of as transsexual women, but who by the standards of 1969 (and to some extent those of 1995) were still thought of simply as effeminate gay men. The other gay community prefer to think of themselves as "homophiles". They are straight-acting, conservatively dressing men who just happen to be gay, and who are paradoxically more politically active than the drag queens. Their conservative dress and manner is essentially a political ploy to convince public opinion that they are decent, sober American citizens, who are indistinguishable from anyone else except in the matter of their sexual orientation, and who therefore deserve the same rights as all other decent, sober American citizens. It is the homophiles who are to be found going on protests and agitating for gay rights, although they are careful to keep their activities peaceful and within the law. At first the drag queens tend to avoid political action for fear of attracting unwanted attention to themselves, but in the end the brutality of the police forces them to fight back, thus sparking off the riots.
Matty's loyalties are divided between the two groups. On the one hand, he is drawn to the colourful life of the Stonewall Inn, whose customers are gay in the original sense of that word as well as its modern sense. On the other, he supports and takes part in the activism of the homophiles, although he is alienated by some of their arguments, especially when they come out in support of the theory that homosexuality is an illness, hoping that this will make the public more sympathetic to them. Matty's divided loyalties are symbolised by the fact that he has two lovers, the flamboyant drag queen La Miranda (real name Hector) and the sober homophile activist Ethan.
A sub-plot deals with Vinnie, the Italian-American owner of the Stonewall, and his relationship with another "queen", Bostonia. It is implied that Vinnie is a gangster, but despite his gangsterism and his (closeted) sexual preferences, he is a practising Catholic who feels that his homosexuality is something sinful. He therefore tries to persuade Bostonia to undergo a sex-change operation, believing that this will enable them to enter into a conventional heterosexual marriage which will be more acceptable both to his conscience and in the eyes of the world. Bostonia, however, proves unwilling to take this radical step.
"Stonewall" is slow moving at times, particularly in the first half, and not always easy to follow, but there are some good acting performances, especially from Guillermo Díaz as La Miranda/Hector and Frederick Weller as Matty. Although it deals with a basically serious subject, there are some amusing scenes, especially the one where La Miranda has to attend a military induction centre to assess fitness for service in Vietnam. The film is not well-known, but I caught it when it was shown on BBC4 as part of their policy of reviving old dramas which otherwise would be left to gather dust in the BBC's archives. As an outsider, I found it an interesting insight into the history of the gay community and of the ways in which attitudes towards them have changed, for the better, in the last fifty-odd years. 6/10.
Lucy Gallant (1955)
Dull Romantic Comedy
When a young woman named Lucy Gallant is stranded by a storm in the (fictitious) Texas town of New City, she decides to stay when she spots a business opportunity. New City is at the centre of an oil boom, and the fashionable, stylish Lucy realises that the wives and daughters of the oil men have plenty of money to spend, but as yet nowhere to spend it, at least as far as clothes are concerned. She therefore decides to open a dress shop, which proves a big success. The main storyline deals with a romance between Lucy and local rancher Casey Cole (who later goes into the oil business himself when oil is discovered on his land). This being a romantic comedy, there has, according to the time-honoured formula for rom-coms, to be an obstacle to the couple's love, in this case Casey's old-fashioned views about women. He does not believe that married women should work outside the home, and insists that Lucy should give up her business, something she is reluctant to do.
Charlton Heston was not the world's greatest exponent of romantic comedy; he was more at home as men of action, although the word "action" here could encompass intellectual and artistic endeavours as well as physical action. He therefore seems miscast as Casey in a film which shows us little or nothing of his work on the ranch, or of his military service when he joins the Army in World War II.
I doubt, however, if this would have been a very good film even with another actor cast as the main lead. Too many opportunities to expand the rather bare story are wasted. We learn that Lucy was jilted by a previous fiancé when he found out about her father's dishonest business practices. We learn that Casey, during his estrangement from Lucy, was briefly engaged to a fashion model in Paris. But we learn nothing more about these matters, either or both of which could have made for an interesting sub-plot. We see nothing of Casey's fiancée, and do not even learn her name. Lucy suffers a setback when her store is destroyed in a fire, but all we see are fire engines outside a smouldering ruin. We do not actually see the fire itself. (Perhaps the producers lacked the budget to show it convincingly). Even the main development in the second half of the film- the attempt by a conniving banker to take control of Lucy's enterprise- is not dealt with at any length. The film-makers seem more interested in showing us a lengthy fashion parade (similar to the one in "The Women") which does not advance the story at all.
This is not the worst of Heston's films which I have seen. That dubious honour must go to either "Arrowhead" (offensively racist) or "Mother Lode" (incompetently made). "Lucy Gallant is neither of those things. It is, however, dull and uninteresting. 4/10.
Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)
One of Altman's Failures
Robert Altman's "Popeye" from 1980 made a profit at the box office, but was a critical flop, and this, combined with stories about Altman's difficult behaviour on set, meant that he found it difficult to get work in Hollywood. He therefore moved into television and the theatre; "Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" marked his return to the cinema. It is an adaptation of a stage play which Altman had also directed on Broadway.
The film is set in the fictitious small town of McCarthy, Texas. The action takes place in a small five-and-dime store which doubles up as a cafe. On 30th September 1975, the twentieth anniversary of the death of James Dean, a group of Dean's fans are holding a reunion to mark the event. We learn that in the fifties the group formed a fan club called The Disciples of James Dean; all the members were female apart from a gay young man named Joe. There are also a number of flashbacks to 1955 when the club was in its heyday.
The storyline consists of a number of revelations about what has happened to the Disciples over the intervening twenty years. We learn, for example, that Joe has had a sex-change operation and is now a woman named Joanne. The most prominent plot line deals with another Disciple, Mona, who has a mentally handicapped son whom she has named Jimmie Dean. (We never actually see him). Mona claims that Jimmie's father is none other than James Dean himself; she was an extra on the set of "Giant", which was filmed in another town not far from McCarthy, and claims that she and Dean met and had a sexual encounter. Not content with making this claim (about which the other Disciples are generally sceptical), Mona also uses extravagant quasi-religious language about this encounter, saying that she was "chosen" to bring Dean's son into this world, and implying that she was chosen by God or by fate, not just by Dean himself.
I don't know how this story might work on the stage, never having seen the original play. (Indeed, before seeing the film I had never heard of it or of its author, Ed Graczyk). It does not, however, work on the screen. This was not a film I enjoyed. The main reason is that for a long time I could not work out what was happening. There is nothing to indicate that the action takes place in two different periods; the characters (apart from Joe/Joanne) all look exactly the same in 1975 as they did in 1955, and the store itself looks much the same. I was therefore baffled by why in one scene the Disciples refer to James Dean as alive, then in the next refer to him as having died in a car crash, and then in the one after that refer to him as alive again. It was not until the second half of the film that I managed to work out what was going on; it would have been a lot easier if subtitles or some other device had been used to indicate which scenes were taking place in which year and if some effort had been made to make the characters look older in the 1975 scenes.
Altman's famous device of overlapping conversations has proved a controversial one. There have been some films where it works, but here I found that it made it difficult for me to understand what was going on. The acting did not impress me; the characters all seemed to be in a permanent state of emotional over-excitement, which they express by continually shouting, screeching and cackling at one another. Sandy Dennis as Mona is the worst offender, adding another to her extensive gallery of overwrought, neurotic characters. Altman has made some good films (such as "McCabe and Mrs Miller"), even some very good ones (such as "Gosford Park"), but "Come Back to the Five and Dime..." must rank among his failures. 4/10.
The Round Tower (1998)
Melodramatic but Entertaining
"The Round Tower" was one of several novels by Catherine Cookson which were dramatised for television serial by Tyne-Tees Television between 1989 and 2001. These were the days when Britain's ITV network was divided into a number of regional franchises, each with its own distinct character. Tyne-Tees covered the North-East of England, the region from which Cookson came and in which most of her works are set.
Like most of Cookson's novels, "The Round Tower" is a historical romance, although it is set in a comparatively recent period, the 1950s. (Many of her other works are set in the 19th century). The main characters are Vanessa Ratcliffe, the 17-year-old daughter of a wealthy Newcastle businessman, and Angus Cotton, a foreman in the engineering works owned by Vanessa's father Jonathan. The Ratcliffes, needless to say, do not approve of Vanessa's friendship with a young man they regard as their social inferior. Jonathan and his wife Jane are firm believers in keeping up appearances; they already occupy a high position on the social ladder and have ambitions to rise even higher. (Their other daughter Susan is engaged to the son of an aristocratic family).
Things get even worse from their point of view when Vanessa reveals that she is pregnant. Although she refuses to name the father, her parents assume that Angus is to blame. (In fact, the real father is Jonathan's business partner and neighbour, Arthur Brett, with whom Vanessa had a brief fling). Jonathan and Jane make arrangements for Vanessa to have an abortion (still officially illegal in the 1950s, but nevertheless easily available to anyone with the money to pay for one). Vanessa, however, refuses to abort the baby and walks out of the family home, following which her parents disown her. The film then follows the progress of the relationship between Vanessa and Angus, who stands by her and marries her to give her baby a father.
The storyline remanded me in some respects of Stan Barstow's "A Kind of Loving", set in Northern England around the same historical period and which also dealt with a girl who gets pregnant out of marriage, although in that case the man she marries is indeed the father. In both cases the young couple are unable to find a home of their own and have to live with their parents. "A Kind of Loving" was made into a film in 1962, at the time of the "kitchen sink" movement in the British cinema, and the scenes depicting Angus's home life clearly show the influence of this movement. Angus, who has ambitions to go into business on his own, is an example of the "young man on the make", a common figure in "kitchen sink" novels and the films that were based on them.
The story is at times melodramatic, but it is an entertaining one, and there are a number of good acting performances. I would count among these Ben Miles as Angus, Keith Barron as Jonathan and Dennis Lawson as Arthur and Isabelle Amyes as his wife Irene. Arthur is a pitiable figure; he comes from an old-established family in the town, but only holds a junior partnership in the firm and is regularly browbeaten by both his overbearing senior partner Jonathan and by his shrewish, domineering wife, as big a snob as the Ratcliffes. His brief affair with Vanessa was a mistake for both of them, but it is easy to see why it happened. He was desperately looking for the love Irene failed to show him, and she was looking for a father-figure at a time when her biological father paid more attention to his social standing than to her.
"The Round Tower" is still well worth watching more than twenty years after it was made. I shall be watching out for other Cookson adaptations. 7/10.
Angel Face (1952)
One of Jean Simmons's Best Performances
Film noir was normally a male-dominated genre, with a male character at the centre of the action and the main female characters defined as either "hero's wife", "hero's girlfriend" or "sexy femme fatale who influences the hero's life". "Angel Face", however, is a noir with a female character, albeit an anti-heroine rather than a heroine, at the centre of the action, and the main male character defined in terms of his relationship to her, in this case "anti-heroine's boyfriend".
The anti-heroine is Diane Tremayne, the beautiful daughter of a famous British-born writer. Diane's mother was killed during the war, and her father has married a wealthy American widow. Diane may have an angelic face, but her nature is far from angelic. She hates her stepmother, largely because since his remarriage her father, whom she idolises, has hardly written a word, preferring to live off his wife's fortune. Diane's boyfriend is Frank Jessup, the family chauffeur, although he has dreams of going into business as a motor mechanic.
Halfway through the film there is a shocking development when Diane's father and stepmother are killed in a car crash. The police do not believe that the crash was an accident, and Diane and Frank are arrested and charged with murdering the couple by sabotaging their car. Diane had the motive- she was the sole heir to the couple's fortune- and Frank, because of his profession, had the mechanical knowledge necessary to carry out the sabotage. Much of the second half is taken up with the subsequent courtroom drama; both Diane and Frank are acquitted, largely because of clever tactics by their trial lawyer, but it is implied that Diane is indeed guilty of the crime, whereas the hapless Frank was genuinely innocent. An adjective often used to describe this film is "Freudian", particularly with regard to Diane's relationship with her father. Towards the end of the film we see another side of her character as she is racked by guilt over his death; she did not know he would be in the car and only intended to kill her stepmother.
It came as a surprise, at least from my point of view, to see the heartless Diane played by the lovely Jean Simmons, whom I normally think of in terms of sweet young heroines. She needs to convey not only the darkness within Diane's soul but also the seductiveness which enables her to captivate Frank and to lure him away from his established girlfriend Mary. The supporting performances, including that from Robert Mitchum as Frank, are quite good, but it is really Simmons who dominates the film and raises it above the level of the overblown melodrama it might easily have become. By all accounts Simmons did not get on with director Otto Preminger, yet he managed to get one of her best performances out of her. 7/10.
Chariots of Fire (1981)
Perfect Eleven
To celebrate my 2500th review for IMDb, I turn to another of my favourite films, and my favourite sports film of all time. "Chariots of Fire" tells the story of the British men's athletics team at the 1924 Olympics, and in particular of two gold medallists, Harold Abrahams, who won the 100 metres, and Eric Liddell, the winner of the 400 metres. Both men have particular reasons for competing, which go beyond a simple love of their sport. (The title is taken from William Blake's "Jerusalem" which we hear in the opening scene, set at Abrahams's memorial service in 1978).
Abrahams is the son of a wealthy City financier. Educated at public school and at Cambridge, his one great ambition is to be accepted as an English gentleman. He is, however, Jewish, and his father is of foreign origins, which mean that the British Establishment never really accept him as one of their own. Abrahams is keenly aware of these attitudes, and believes that if he can become a star athlete and Olympic medallist, this will help him overcome such prejudices. He is obsessed with winning (he tells his girlfriend Sybil "I don't run to take beatings") and employs a professional coach, Sam Mussabini, to assist him. Although this is within the rules, and does not affect Abrahams's own amateur status, it is seen by many as "not quite the done thing". (Mussabini is so unpopular with the athletics powers-that-be that he is even forbidden to enter the Olympic Stadium in Paris).
Liddell, who is Scottish, is a devout Christian, the son of a missionary. He intends to continue his father's mission work, but also believes that he can use his sporting gifts- besides athletics he is also a Rugby international- to draw attention to his religious faith. His main track event is the 100 metres, but he faces a crisis of conscience when he discovers that the heats for this event are due to take place on a Sunday. This conflicts with Liddell's strict Sabbatarian beliefs, and he withdraws from the event and transfers to the 400 metres.
Contrasting with Abrahams and Liddell, both of whom are in their different ways driven men, is a third athlete, Lord Andrew Lindsay, a carefree, happy-go-lucky aristocrat. Abrahams runs for himself, Liddell runs for God, and Lindsay runs for sheer enjoyment, caring little for winning or losing. Unlike Abrahams and Liddell, who were both historic individuals, Lindsay is a fictitious character, although he is loosely based upon Lord David Burghley, who refused to allow his name to be used for the film. This was one of a number of changes which scriptwriter Colin Welland made to historical fact for dramatic purposes; for example it was Burghley, not Abrahams, who was the first to "beat the clock" in the Great Court Run at Trinity College. (Abrahams never attempted the event).
One of the reasons why I love this film is that when it came out I was a student at Cambridge University, and watching it I am always transported back, mentally, to my alma mater. In 1981, however, it was quite controversial in Cambridge. The university authorities took exception to a scene in which two senior Dons, the Master of Trinity and the Master of Caius, are seen discussing Abrahams in snobbish and anti-Semitic tones, and refused permission to film on university property. The Great Court Run, therefore, had to be filmed at Eton rather than in Trinity itself, and although the two buildings are similar in architectural style, the main courtyard at Eton is much smaller than the Great Court and would not pose such a challenge to runners.
Another reason why I love the film is the quality of the acting. Watching it, I am always surprised that neither Ben Cross nor Ian Charleson went on to become a major star, although in Charleson's case this was partly due to his tragically early death. Cross's Abrahams is an intense, passionate crusader against prejudice, Charleson's Liddell a sincere man of God buoyed up by the strength of his faith, and both actors play their roles with utter conviction. Among the supporting cast, mention should be made of Nigel Havers as Lindsay, Ian Holm as Mussabini and Cheryl Campbell as Liddell's sister Jenny. (In real life Jenny strongly supported her brother's sporting career, but here she is shown as worrying that it might be a distraction from his religious vocation).
I have said in the past that most sports dramas are based upon one of two basic plots, "Triumph against the Odds" and "Rise and Fall of a Champion". Welland's first-class script tells a double version of "Triumph against the Odds", although Abrahams and Liddell triumph over odds of a very different nature. In Liddell's case the odds are sporting; he suddenly finds himself competing over a distance he has never run before against men who specialise in that particular event. In Abrahams's case the odds he faces are not so much to do with sport- he is one of the favourites for his event- as with life in general.
"Chariots of Fire" is sometimes regarded as the film which marked the beginning of the remarkable revival in the eighties of the British cinema, which had rather been in the doldrums in the seventies. It was the first British film to win the "Best Picture" Academy Award since "Oliver!" in 1968, eliciting Welland's famous cry of "The British Are Coming!". It won three other Oscars, for Welland's script, for best Costume Design and, of course, for Vangelis's marvellous score. My most vivid memory of the film is the iconic title scene in which the young athletes run in slow motion along the beach (actually at Broadstairs in Kent) with the sea in the background to the accompaniment of that surging main theme. Whenever I am particularly impressed by the music I normally award a bonus point to a movie's overall score, and I would do so here but for one thing. Even without the music the film is good enough to deserve a "perfect ten", and as IMDb will not permit me to award 11/10, I must reluctantly settle for 10/10.
Some Goofs. At one point Abrahams uses the expression "corridors of power", which did not come into use until Charles Snow used it as the title of a novel in 1964. Abrahams was never romantically involved with or married to the actress Sybil Gordon; Welland appears to have confused her with her namesake and fellow member of the D'Oyly Carte company, Sybil Evers, who did marry Abrahams. (They did not meet, however, until 1934, ten years after the events of the film). The American Olympic team wear sweatshirts with the modern 50-star flag, not the 48-star flag in use in 1924. And Aubrey Montague did not attend Abrahams's memorial service in 1978- he had himself died in 1948.
Doctor Who: The War Machines: Episode 1 (1966)
Rage Against the Machine
"The War Machines" is one of only three serials from the third season of "Doctor Who" to survive intact, the others being "The Ark" and "The Gunfighters". (It could be worse. Not a single serial from the fourth season survives intact). It is sometimes described as the first serial to be set in a contemporary Britain, but this is inaccurate; that distinction belongs to "Planet of the Giants", the opening serial of the second season. Nevertheless, "Planet of the Giants" has a very unusual plot, whereas that of "The War Machines" has the sort of plot- the Doctor and his companions helping the British authorities and military to fight off some threat to society- which was to become very familiar in later seasons, especially during the Jon Pertwee era.
The First Doctor and his travelling companion Dorothea "Dodo" Chaplet arrive in London in 1966, the year in which this serial was broadcast. The Doctor's other companion from this era, Steven Taylor, had been written out of the programme in the previous serial, "The Savages". Dodo, in fact, only appears in the first two episodes of "The War Machines" because Jackie Lane's contract expired halfway through shooting and was not renewed; we learn at the end that Dodo has decided to remain in London. The producers seem to have had a policy around this time of recycling the Doctor's companions regularly. Neither Lane nor Peter Purves, who played Steven, wanted to leave the series, but were given no choice.
The plot revolves around a concept which must have seemed very futuristic in 1966, that of artificial intelligence. A powerful computer, WOTAN, has been installed in the Post Office Tower. (The tower, completed two years earlier, was at the time the tallest building in Britain). WOTAN has become self-conscious, can communicate with other similar computers, and has the ability to control the minds of anyone who can be useful to it. It uses this power to recruit an army of slaves and puts them to work constructing "war machines", tank-like robots with which it aims to seize control of London and ultimately the world. The brainwashed slaves are also used to act as a mouthpiece for WOTAN's ideology, a vision of the future in which machines dominate the world and in which humans are only allowed to survive as slaves to the machines. (It is perhaps significant that Wotan was the German name for Odin, the king of the gods in Norse mythology and that some Nazis wanted to reintroduce the worship of Wotan as an ideologically acceptable substitute for Christianity).
The fear that if we develop machines which can think for themselves they will eventually end up taking over the world is one that has not gone away; indeed, this sort of rage against the machine is probably more prevalent now than it was in the sixties. Nevertheless, "The War Machines" seems less frightening now than it was when first produced. The serial was designed to look very futuristic, starting with the opening titles. The trouble is that what looked futuristic in 1966 looks, at best, retro-futuristic today. Nobody today is going to be afraid of a clunky old 1960s computer like WOTAN with its reel-to-reel tapes and which probably has far less computing power than a 2020s mobile phone. And we don't worry about As for the war machines themselves, they might have been more effective if they had been designed to look more like tanks, or at least some standard piece of military hardware, than something put together by a mad scientist in his garden shed.
That said, "The War Machines" is pretty decent, on a par with "The Ark" and certainly far better than the dreadful "The Gunfighters". I have not always been William Hartnell's greatest fan, but he is certainly on top form here, playing the Doctor as both courageous and authoritative as he fights to thwart WOTAN's plans; with Dodo out of the picture for much of the time he is assisted by Ben, a young sailor, and his girlfriend Polly. (They would become the Doctor's regular companions in the fourth season). This is a serial which fulfils one of "Doctor Who"'s most important functions- indeed, one of the most important functions of all sci-fi- that of asking intelligent questions about mankind's future. 7/10.
Bird's-Eye View: Beside the Seaside (1969)
A Sense of Nostalgia
"Beside the Seaside" was the first in a series of programmes broadcast by the BBC under the title "Bird's Eye View". The idea was that a helicopter would be used to take pictures of Britain from the air, which would then be put together into a montage and accompanied by a commentary from some well-known figure, in this case Sir John Betjeman.
The title is taken from a once well-known music hall song called "I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside". It traces the history of the British seaside holiday; we learn how it developed in the late eighteenth century due to a combination of a contemporary medical theory that sea water was beneficial to health and the Napoleonic Wars, which meant that the Continent was closed to British tourists. King George III did much to popularise the vogue, regularly visiting Weymouth and helping to make the town, previously a port, one of Britain's first seaside resorts. Most early visitors to seaside resorts were drawn from the aristocracy and wealthy classes, the sort of people who would previously have visited inland spa towns such as Bath, Tunbridge Wells or Leamington, but in the nineteenth century the seaside craze spread to the working class, who generally went to the seaside simply for relaxation rather than for medical treatment.
I found the programme more interesting and informative than "The Englishman's Home". Betjeman's previous entry in the "Bird's Eye View" series, and there are some attractive shots of the various places mentioned. The programme was made at a time when what might be called the Golden Age of the British seaside was just coming to an end. In the seventies and eighties many of the resorts shown here, along with those elsewhere in Britain, went into decline as the increasing availability of cheap package deals meant that tourists could now travel to the Continent, especially Spain, in search of the one commodity which was in short supply in Britain- sunshine. Betjeman makes some comment about the stoical ability of British holidaymakers to put up with bad weather, but the truth is that when they were offered the chance of better weather elsewhere, they accepted it eagerly. This sense of a Golden Age just ending gives the programme, more than half a century on, an air of nostalgia. (We never get this sense with "The Englishman's Home", largely because it concentrated on stately homes, buildings which have remained largely unchanged over these fifty-plus years).
There was, however one drawback. The programme was entirely filmed in the Isle of Wight and the south-west peninsula, something possibly done to save costs. Most of the seaside resorts in this area are rather small, although there are exceptions such as Bournemouth, and also rather genteel, catering for a predominantly middle-class market. The long tradition of working-class holiday-making by the sea is dealt with only in terms of a few shots of a holiday camp, a relatively new phenomenon in 1969- in this case Butlins at Minehead. An exploration of the British seaside which shows us nothing of Brighton or Blackpool, Southend or Scarborough, is of necessity going to be rather limited. 6/10.
Flying Leathernecks (1951)
More Than Just a War Movie
A "leatherneck" is American slang for a member of the US Marine Corps which, unlike their British counterparts, have their own air arm. Hence "Flying Leathernecks".
The film is set during the Guadalcanal campaign of 1942/3. The "flying leathernecks" are carrying out ground attacks in support of the American offensive against the Japanese positions. A new commander, Major Dan Kirby, has been appointed to the squadron. He is a strict disciplinarian and orders his men to carry out risky low-level attacks. These make it easier for his pilots to hit the Japanese targets, but also make it easier for the Japanese to shoot down the American planes with anti-aircraft fire, leading to a high casualty rate.
Kirby comes into conflict with his more liberal second-in-command, Captain Carl Griffin. Although they are always outwardly polite to one another, it becomes clear that the two men dislike one another. Griffin resents the fact that he was passed over for promotion in favour of Kirby and feels that Kirby's tactics are risking his men's lives unnecessarily. Kirby thinks that Griffin is not suitable for command because he does not have the strength of character to make hard decisions, especially hard decisions which might lead to his men being killed. Eventually, however, the two work out an uneasy way of working together.
The two leading roles are played by John Wayne and Robert Ryan. It may have seemed like a strange idea to team these two men together, as they disliked one another, largely because of their very different political views, Ryan being as far to the left as Wayne was to the right, but director Nicholas Ray deliberately chose Ryan to play opposite Wayne. It was a gamble that paid off, because the tension between Wayne and Ryan comes across in the form of a similar tension between Kirby and Griffin, and both give excellent performances (It might have been a different matter if Wayne and Ryan had been required to play two characters who were the best of friends).
The scenes of aerial combat are well handled, although they were to be surpassed in some later films such as "The Hunters", "The Blue Max" and"Battle of Britain". Unlike some American (and British) war films from this era, this is not one which glorifies war. It is one which makes the human cost of war all too clear, a cost which is paid both in terms of the loss of young lives and in terms of the mental strain of command which affects both Griffin and Kirby. Kirby may outwardly seem hard and unemotional, but the tough decisions he has to make undoubtedly affect him emotionally. "Flying Leathernecks" is therefore more than just a war movie, it is also a compelling psychological drama, and as such it works very well. 7/10.
A Ghost Story for Christmas: Lot No. 249 (2023)
Suitably Scary Viewing for a Winter's Evening
Between 1971 and 1978 the BBC used to dramatise a ghost story every year under the title "A Ghost Story for Christmas", and the first five entries in the series were all based upon tales by that great master of the genre, M. R. James. The tradition has been revived in recent years, and ten more Christmas ghost stories have since 2005; at first these were shown at irregular intervals, but the practice of making one every year has been revived since 2018. (There was, however, no offering in 2020, possibly because of the Covid pandemic).
"Lot 249", shown on Christmas Eve 2023, is set in an Oxford college around the year 1890. It is based on a story by Arthur Conan Doyle, of "Sherlock Holmes" fame. It opens with a conversation between two men who, at first sight, appear to be Holmes and Watson. One is tall, thin and clean-shaven with a long face; he clearly believes in solving problems by rational deduction. The other, shorter and stockier with a moustache, is clearly from a medical background. We learn, however, that this man (rather younger than normal depictions of Watson) is Abercrombie Smith, a medical student at Oxford University. We never learn the name of the other man; he is referred to in the cast list simply as "the friend".
Smith is worried about his neighbour in college, Edward Bellingham, an expert on the ancient cultures and languages of the Near East. Bellingham keeps an ancient Egyptian mummy in his room which he calls "Lot 249", that being its catalogue number when he bought it at auction. Smith believes that Bellingham is using magical Egyptian rituals to revive the mummy, and fears what this might lead to. His fears are worsened when another college student is mysteriously murdered.
The revived "Ghost Stories for Christmas" have varied in quality between the very good ("A View from a Hill", "The Mezzotint") and the disappointing ("Whistle and I'll Come to You", "Count Magnus" and the most recent offering, "Woman of Stone"). I would, however, rank "Lot No. 49" towards the upper end of the spectrum. There is a nice contrast between the two leading characters, Kit Harington's Smith, a decent, dogged, common-sense rationalist who discovers to his horror that there may be things in heaven and earth not dreamed of in his philosophy and Freddie Fox's Bellingham, the sort of fey, decadent hedonist that seemed to abound in the 1890s, the Aubrey Beardsley of Egyptology. The film may not quite match the standards of the best productions of the seventies series, such as "Lost Hearts" and "A Warning to the Curious", but it nevertheless makes suitably scary viewing for a winter's evening.
Every Which Way But Loose (1978)
Every Which Way but Marden
In the seventies I was a student at Maidstone Grammar School, and shortly after this film had come out I took part in the school's annual comedy review which we called "Every Which Way but Marden". You have to be from Maidstone to understand the pun-Loose and Marden are both small villages near the town- but it's the main reason why I remember the film vividly. (Incidentally, that title looks ungrammatical in British English; we would simply say "Every Way but Loose", omitting the "which").
In 1978 Clint Eastwood was best known for Westerns like the "Dollars" trilogy, cop thrillers like the "Dirty Harry" series, war films like "Where Eagles Dare" and other action movies, so a comedy like "Every Which Way but Loose" was something of a new departure for him. Over the next few years, however, he was to make more comedies like "Bronco Billy" and "Any Which Way You Can" (a sequel to "Every Which Way...").
Here Eastwood plays Philo Beddoe, a California truck driver. Philo's interests, apart from driving trucks, are bare-knuckle boxing, country and western music and fishing. The plot, or what plot there is, follows Philo as he embarks on a cross-country odyssey to Denver, accompanied by his pet orang-utan Clyde, in search of his girlfriend Lynn who has left him. On the way he tangles with a couple of cops and the Black Widows, an outlaw biker gang, who seem threatening but who never seem able to put their threats into good effect.
Like a number of Eastwood's other female leads from around this period, such as Augustina in "The Gauntlet" and Antoinette in "Bronco Billy", Lynn is played by his real-life girlfriend, Sondra Locke. In both those two films, Locke's character and Eastwood's started off in classic rom-com style by hating one another and ending up by falling in love. The relationship between Philo and Lynn, however, is more complicated. At first they seem to be getting on well together, until she abruptly leaves him without explanation. After Philo catches up with her, she rejects him again, and she comes across as a shallow, promiscuous person who is unable to commit to him or to anyone else.
This is one of these films which was almost universally detested by the critics but loved by the public. The vast amounts of critical vitriol poured upon it did not prevent it from becoming Eastwood's most commercially successful film to date and the second-highest-grossing film of 1978. I suspect that its popularity was due to its appeal to blue-collar American males who had (or aspired to) a lifestyle like Philo's, saw him as a cool, anti-Establishment rebel, and could not have cared less for the opinions of snooty, white-collar film critics.
"Every Which Way..." can be seen as falling into the tradition of rebellious, anti-authority road movies which were popular in the late sixties and seventies. ("Easy Rider" and "Convoy", also from 1978, are other examples). It can also, like "Bronco Billy", be seen as a modern day Western which tries to adapt the values of the Old West to the last quarter of the twentieth century, with Philo as the modern-day counterpart to the wandering cowboy. It is not my favourite Eastwood movie- it is not, for example, anywhere near as good as "Bronco Billy"- but a times it can be very enjoyable, and I liked it a lot more than did all those critics who wrote it off back in the seventies. And Clyde the orang-utan gives an Oscar-worthy performance. 6/10.
Screen Two: Memento Mori (1992)
The Great and the Good of the Early Nineties
"Memento Mori" seems to have been a labour of love for director Jack Clayton. He had long wanted to make a film of Muriel Spark's novel, but had little success; producers were not willing to take a gamble on a film which was mostly about elderly people and therefore, according to received wisdom, not good box-office. In the end Clayton achieved his ambition, when he was himself in his seventies. This was to be his final film, and was not (as he had hoped) a feature film, but a TV movie, made for BBC2's "Screen Two" series.
The action takes place in the late 1950s. The leading characters are mostly a group of elderly Bohemians who form part of London's literary scene. Charmain Colston was at one time one of Britain's leading novelists, but now seems to be suffering from senile dementia. Dame Letty Colston, the sister of Charmian's husband Godfrey, is also a successful novelist. Charmain, Godfrey and Letty, and other members of their circle, are all being plagued by mysterious, and anonymous, phone calls. In each case a man announces "Remember you must die" (the literal meaning of the Latin phrase "memento mori") and then hangs up.
The plot is quite a complicated one; apart from the phone calls, much turns upon the will of Lisa Brooke, an associate of the Colton's and a former lover of Godfrey who has recently died. Lisa's housekeeper Mabel Pettigrew is hoping to inherit her estate, and is much put out when Lisa's widower Guy, a literary critic, turns up at the funeral. (Lisa and Guy were separated, and Mabel, along with many others, believed him to be dead). Henry Mortimer, a retired police officer turned private investigator, is called in to probe into the mystery of the phone calls, which many people are convinced have some connection to Lisa's past. Despite the portentous overtones of the film's title, the overall tone is more comic than serious.
I have never read Spark's novel, but watching the film I could not really understand why Clayton was so obsessed with filming it; the plot came across as not only complicated but also confusing, and the solution to the phone call mystery, revealed at the end, did not make a lot of sense. Nevertheless, the film still richly repays watching for the gallery of superb performances from some of the senior members of the British acting profession. There are too many good contributions for me to mention them all, but I would single out the following:-
Michael Hordern as Godfrey, a practised Lothario who even in old age still lusts after every younger woman he sets eyes on.
Renee Asherson as Charmian, seemingly a charmingly dotty old lady, but actually more with-it than many people, including her husband, suspect.
Maggie Smith as the cynically mercenary Mabel, the nearest the film has to a villain.
Maurice Denham as Guy, still mischievous and twinkly-eyed, and with as much of an eye to the ladies as Godfrey, despite his advancing years and the fact that he has to hobble about on a pair of sticks. And, unlike Godfrey, he ends up with a girl young enough to be his granddaughter.
Thora Hird as Jean Taylor, Charmian's former maid, now confined to hospital.
Stephanie Cole as the arrogant and overbearing Letty. Cole, unlike most of her co-stars, is still with us, but she was much younger than her character's supposed age. She was one of a number of British actors- Clive Dunn and Angela Lansbury are two others who come to mind- who seemed to specialise in playing characters much older than their real age. (It was around this period that Cole, then about fifty, starred in the sit-com "Waiting for God" in which she played a character aged around eighty).
Another reviewer, writing in August 2023, points out that the film had as at that date "sadly never been repeated on TV since its broadcast in 1992". It was, in fact, repeated last year on BBC4 as part of their policy of reviving classic BBC dramas, and I was glad to catch it as a chance to see some of the great and good of the early nineties. 7/10.
Horse Feathers (1932)
Reinventing Comedy
I was surprised to realise that "Horse Feathers" is the first Marx Brothers film I have reviewed for this site, even though I was at one time familiar with their work. I think that the reason is that during the eighties and nineties their films were quite frequently shown on British television but are only rarely shown today, now that the generation who can remember the brothers in their heyday have largely passed away.
The film has nothing to do with either horses or feathers; "horse feathers" is, or was in 1932, an Americanism for "nonsense". The plot revolves around a college football game between two fictitious universities, Huxley College and Darwin College. (Presumably named after Charles Darwin and his "bulldog" Thomas Huxley). Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, the president of Huxley College, a wants to recruit professional football players to help Huxley win the match, but ends up with two incompetent local "icemen", Baravelli and Pinky. A sub-plot deals with the Professor's attempt to romance the "college widow" Connie Bailey. ("College widow" is another period Americanism, never used in British English. It refers to young women in university towns who would only date college students. Such women were not for the most part widows in the literal sense of the term; Connie is always referred to as "Miss" rather than "Mrs Bailey", so we can presume that she is not).
This film, like all the early Marx Brothers films, stars four of the siblings, Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo. Zeppo later dropped out of the team; their next film, "Duck Soup" was to be his last. They all played essentially the same character in each film. Groucho (who here plays the Professor) was a wisecracking cynic, whose main props were a cigar and a prominent moustache, and who had a strange loping walk. Chico (Baravelli) was a fast-talking hustler who normally spoke with an Italian accent. Harpo (Pinko) always wore a blond wig (he was naturally dark-haired) and never spoke in his films, always acting in mime; he also regularly showed off his talents as a performer on the harp from which he took his stage name. Zeppo was the "straight man" of the team; here he plays the Professor's son Frank, a student at the college.
Trying to evaluate an early Marx Brothers comedy like this one, more than ninety years after it was made, is a difficult task, because the brothers were themselves trying to take on a difficult task, that of inventing a new form of comedy. In 1932 it was only five years since the invention of sound cinema. Some (notably Charlie Chaplin) remained loyal to the slapstick and mimed comedy of the silent era, but there was clearly a need for a new comedy to suit the new medium. The Marx Brothers, who had only made one silent film (now lost) and whose background was in vaudeville, were ideally placed to fill this gap.
As often with the Marx Brothers, the main appeal of this film is not in the plot but in various set pieces. I particularly enjoyed the following:-
Groucho's sarcastic and cynical songs "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It" (a phrase which seems to sum up his philosophy) and "Everyone Says I Love You" (later borrowed by Woody Allen).
The speakeasy scene with its "swordfish" password and series of outrageous puns.
The anatomy lecture, with another sequence of puns.
The final football game (although I might have understood this better if I knew more about the rules of American football. Like most Brits I normally think of the game as a cross between rugby and rollerball).
I greatly enjoyed watching this, my first Marx Brothers film for a number of years. I'll have to look out some of the others. 8/10.
Tycoon (1947)
Cutting off his nose to spite his face
The "tycoon" of the title is Frederick Alexander, a wealthy British industrialist with business interests in South America, but he is not the main character in this movie. That is Johnny Munroe, an American engineer who is building a mountain railroad tunnel for Alexander. There are two strands to the plot. One concerns a romance between Munroe and Alexander's beautiful daughter Maura. The other concerns a dispute between Alexander and Munroe as to how the tunnel should be built. Munroe (who would have preferred to build a bridge as an alternative, but was overruled) wants to line the tunnel with cement, which he believes would make it safer. Alexander believes that the cement lining is unnecessary and would make the project too expensive.
There are some good things about this film. There is some attractive photography of the mountain landscapes (supposedly in the Andes but actually shot in California) and there is a thrilling cliffhanger ending. The film's main problems, however, are firstly that it could have done with some judicious cutting, and secondly the inconsistent way in which the characters are written.
At first Alexander is strongly opposed to his daughter's romance with Munroe, and then he is virtually hustling them to the altar. The explanation for this sudden volte-face is that he wants to save his daughter's honour after she has been seen with Munroe alone and unchaperoned. Well, perhaps Latin American fathers might have behaved like this in 1947, but Alexander is clearly English, and I doubt if any Englishman of this period would have forced his daughter into a shotgun marriage unless she were actually pregnant. The marriage does not make Alexander any fonder of Munroe, and to express his dislike he cuts off the supplies which Munroe will need to build the tunnel. The scriptwriters seem to have overlooked the fact that, by behaving in this way, Alexander is acting against his own interests, as the tunnel is being built for his company. (The phrase "cutting off his nose to spite his face" comes to mind).
One reviewer writes that "Most people don't like this film at least in part because Wayne convincingly plays someone completely unlikeable - and that's the point". I cannot agree. Wayne did occasionally play villains, in films like "Reap the Wild Wind" or "Wake of the Red Witch". I don't think, however, that it was ever the intention to portray make him completely in "Tycoon" At the beginning Munroe comes across as the typical Wayne hero- a brave, strong man of action, something of a rough diamond but basically decent at heart. When Alexander seems to be doing his best to frustrate his project, Munroe tends to overreact by throwing his toys out of the pram, abandoning his previous concern for his men's welfare and for getting the job done professionally, leading Maura to leave him, but by the end of the film Munroe seems to have been rehabilitated and he and Maura are back together.
RKO were not the wealthiest of the major Hollywood studios, and this was their most expensive production to date. It was popular at the box office, but not popular enough to recoup the costs of production, and it ended up losing money. Today it comes across as overlong and difficult to watch, probably of most interest to John Wayne fans. 5/10.
A Ghost Story for Christmas: Woman of Stone (2024)
Not the best of the series
Between 1971 and 1978 the BBC used to dramatise a ghost story every year under the title "A Ghost Story for Christmas", and the first five entries in the series were all based upon tales by that great master of the genre, M. R. James. The tradition has been revived in recent years, and ten more Christmas ghost stories have appeared at irregular intervals since 2005; "Woman of Stone" is the most recent episode, having been broadcast on Christmas Eve 2024.
When I was young I used to love the children's stories of E. Nesbit, such as "The Railway Children" and "Five Children and It", although I must admit that I have never read any of her works for adults. "Woman of Stone" is based on one of these, her short story "Man-Size in Marble". The film begins in the 1920s when Nesbit is an old woman with not long to live. She narrates the story to her Indian doctor. In the 1880s a young couple named Jack and Laura Lorimer move into a country cottage. Although they have not been married long, we learn that there have already been difficulties in their marriage, largely caused by Jack's unreasoning jealously.
Jack and Laura learn, partly from the local doctor (also Indian, and played by the same actor) and partly from their housekeeper Mrs Dorman, of a local legend about two life-sized marble effigies of knights in the village church. It is said that the two men murdered their wives whom they wrongly suspected of adultery. According to the legend, every Christmas Eve the two effigies rise from their tombs at midnight and make their way out of the church towards the site of their castle- which just happens to have stood where Jack and Laura's cottage now stands. The film explores what happens when Jack goes to investigate whether or not the legend is true.
The basic idea seems an intriguing one, but the denouement here is not very interesting. The knights come to the cottage and strangle Laura, presumably to punish her for her supposed infidelity to Jack; Jack is then arrested and hanged for her murder. The end of the story is so rushed that several important points are swept under the carpet. We never learn what evidence there is against Jack, apart from the circumstantial evidence that he is known to be a jealous husband. As another reviewer points out, if Jack really was guilty of murder, he certainly would not have invited the doctor back to the cottage where the dead body is lying. And a man who kept babbling about how his wife had been killed by a stone effigy would probably have been found not guilty by reason of insanity; no sane murderer would have invented such a story to explain away his crime.
Although the story is supposed to be part of the "Ghost Story for Christmas" series, Mark Gatiss, who wrote and directed the film, seems less interested in the ghosts than he does in the marriage of Jack and Laura and what this tells us about the balance of power between men and women. He gives both the elderly Nesbit and Mrs Dorman long feminist diatribes about the way women have been treated by men. Admittedly, the real-life Nesbit had good cause to complain, as her first husband, Hubert Bland, had been an incorrigible womaniser, but the story of her matrimonial woes doesn't really have much to do with the ghost story which is the ostensible subject of this film. Gatiss has produced at least one excellent "Ghost Story for Christmas", "The Mezzotint", but "Woman of Stone" is not in the same class. 5/10
A goof. Although the story is supposed to take pace around Christmas, the leaves are still on the trees and just staring to turn to their autumn colours, suggesting that filming actually took place in October.
Wuthering Heights (1939)
Only tells half the story- but does so very well.
There have been a number of feature film adaptations of Emily Brontë's novel, including Spanish, Indian and Japanese versions, but the only two I have seen are this one and the 1992 version with Ralph Fiennes. I won't set out the plot at any length, because the novel is so well-known.
Here the story is told in "framework" form by Ellen, a servant at Wuthering Heights, an old farmhouse on the Yorkshire Moors, to a traveller forced to seek shelter in then house by bad weather. She tells him how Mr Earnshaw, a wealthy Yorkshire merchant and the owner of the Heights, found Heathcliff, a young foundling, on the streets of Liverpool and brought him him up as an adopted son at the family home. Heathcliff fell in love with Earnshaw's daughter Catherine ("Cathy"), but was hated by Earnshaw's biological son Hindley, and when the old man died Hindley treated Heathcliff as a servant. Cathy and Heathcliff were in love, but there could be no question of their marrying, and Cathy eventually married Edgar Linton, the son of a neighbouring landowning family.
The big difference between this version and the 1992 one is that this one essentially only tells half of Bronte's story, ending with the death of Cathy. The original novel, however, also told the story of a second generation- the children of Heathcliff, Cathy and Hindley- which is omitted here but which was included in the 1992 film. The plot of the novel, in fact, is particularly complex, and the version filmed here simplifies it considerably. Bronte set her novel in the late eighteenth century, but the film is set in the 1840s, around the time that she was writing. A similar change was made when Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" was adapted for the screen the following year, and in both cases two explanations have been given for the change. One is that the studio wished to use more flamboyant costumes than the relatively restrained and simple ones of the 1790s. The other is that they had recently made another film set during the early Victorian period and wanted to re-use the sets and costumes.
Heathcliff is played by Laurence Olivier, who was also to play Mr Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice". Superficially Heathcliff and Darcy are quite different characters, but both are passionate men, the difference being that in Darcy's case his passion is restrained beneath a formal exterior of manners and breeding. Given his impoverished early upbringing and his ill treatment by Hindley, there is nothing in Heathcliff's character to restrain his passion in this way, and even in the later scenes, when he has become owner of Wuthering Heights and therefore a "gentleman" by position, we are always aware from Olivier's interpretation that Heathcliff is not a gentleman by breeding; the Liverpool Street urchin always shows though. Nevertheless, Olivier makes him magnetic enough for us to understand Cathy's passion for him.
Olivier wanted his lover, and future wife, Vivien Leigh, to play Cathy, but producer Sam Goldwyn thought that she was not well-known enough in America, and Merle Oberon was cast instead, much to Olivier's disgust. (He and Oberon disliked one another, a dislike possibly stemming from their previous film together, "The Divorce of Lady X"). Nevertheless, Oberon makes Cathy a lovely and enchanting heroine, and any off-screen animosity between her and Olivier does not come through. It is this film, together with that song by Kate Bush, which is responsible for there received idea that "Wuthering Heights" is simply the love-story of Cathy and Heathcliff, when the novel is more complex than that. As for Leigh, she was offered by way of consolation prize the part of Isabella Linton, which she indignantly refused- thus leaving herself free to accept the part of Scarlett in "Gone with the Wind", and make herself probably the best-known actress in America.
Unlike the 1992 film, this "Wuthering Heights" was shot in Hollywood rather than Yorkshire, although there was some outdoor location shooting, something which was not always the case in the thirties and forties, and director is able to capture the wild, romantic atmosphere of the moors which play so important a part in the novel. The 1939 film may not tell the whole of Bronte's story, but it nevertheless works well as a piece of cinema in its own right. 8/10.