I just thought; if that quote about the vape smoke is true they’re being a bit disingenuous, as the tree fall and subsequent tasing certainly uses digital effects.
Moonfall is an old-fashioned movie given all the bells-and-whistles of something far more modern. It is basically a cross breed of When Worlds Collide, Armageddon and Independence Day, coupled with sound effect motifs from Close Encounters, visual dream sequences from 2001 and a host of familiar alien conspiracy theory mumbo jumbo. It is more-or-less complete rubbish. By the time the ridiculously over-engineered computer generated special effects kicked in, I was bored, which was when the action was meant to make me sit up and take note. I just couldn’t. It was too dauntingly familiar.
I should have done my research. Roland Emmerich, a director responsible for explosion after explosion on any number of big blockbuster epics, helmed, wrote and part financed this monstrosity of silly theory and ludicrous CGI. The action scenes are so unreal even the cars and mountains are computer generated. Not only is the story unbelievable but so is all the incident. Pity, as Moonfall started off quite spectacularly well, with a space shuttle put in imminent danger. After that the only surprise is there are literally no surprises. The movie stretches itself to accommodate three story arcs when one was more than enough, given it is an end-of-the-world scenario.
Do I have any praise for Moonfall? Maybe the music. I don’t know. I made it through with gritted teeth and wished I’d watched Moonraker which was on the other channel, is equally silly, but has the benefit of being James Bond silly.
A sort of cross between a swashbuckler (very popular at that time) and a horror (Boris Karloff plays an apparently sinister jailer), based on a story by Robert Louis Stevenson and directed by Joe Pevney (lots of Star Trek TOS).
When the nominal hero meets villain Charles Laughton, Laughton is sitting with his back to him then swivels his chair around as he says "I've been expecting you". Made me sit up and pay attention, that did. If he'd been stroking a cat I'd have spat out my coffee. Laughton has a splendid time chewing the scenery and later leaving the hero in an easily escapable chamber. If he hadn't died around the time the Bond films started he'd have been a terrific Bond villain.
And Michael Pate, the first Leiter (CR54), is his main henchman.
I am not sure I am qualified to discuss the subtext of playwright Arthur Miller and actress Marilyn Monroe’s unhappy marriage, a theme that runs through this modern western drama with unashamed obviousness, or indeed her depression and obsessions, which are also touched on here – animals replace sex as a metaphor for her wantonness – but what I can tell you is The Misfits is a very fine film, neglected on release and still considered one of Monroe’s lesser works. It really shouldn’t be. Okay, so it isn’t a witty comedy, but then Monroe is an actress and every comedienne every now and then wants to stretch her non-panto-muscles. This is a sterling and surprising effort.
Firstly, Monroe looks marvellous, benefitting, as she did in Some Like It Hot, from monochrome photography, hiding the lines and the heavy, puffy eyes. She plays Roslyn Tabor, newly divorced from a man who is never there. Like a joke he appears at the quickie-court in a vain attempt to win her back; she hasn’t seen him for weeks. Roslyn is a good looking 30-something who takes up with Gaylord Langland, one of the last of the old-fashioned cowboys, a man who considers the wilderness his friend and the campfire and saddle his home. Gay is authored by Clark Gable, delivering one of his greatest performances, a melancholy taste of what could have come in his twilight career had a heart attack not taken him at the ridiculously early age of fifty-nine. Leaving genre pictures behind, Gable announces himself as an aging lothario, but also a man of passion and depth, who aches for a time-past while yearning for the uncertain future. Roslyn encompasses his hopes, both in her availability and her loneliness. There is something, one feels, for both of them to cure.
Gaylord’s best pal is Eli Wallach’s Guido, a crop duster pilot slumming it as an autocar engineer. He spots Roslyn first, but the loneliness he shares following the death of his wife, is too bitter for Roslyn, although she readily accepts his proposition of living in Guido’s half-finished house – she just invites Gaylord to stay with her, this despite Guido being charming, young and a much better dancer. After several weeks of treading around each other, the triad relationship comes to a head when the boys decide to rustle mustangs. They enrol rodeo rider Perce [Montgomery Clift] a still younger man whose daredevil antics frighten Roslyn. The quartet carouse and argue and end up fighting over the fate of a half-dozen tethered horses in the Nevada deserts. The boys, of course, are really arguing over Marilyn, but at first she’s too melancholic to see it. Then, with sudden revelation, she sees how each of them is so much more of a misfit than she – it is Roslyn, not Gay, Guido or Perce who has bonded the group together. She offers them purpose when they have none and it affirms her nature, so she is able to remonstrate and forces them to free the mustangs. Losing the money the animals would bring is nothing it seems to losing Roslyn’s favour. Only Guido, the bitterest of them, objects.
The film shares themes of loneliness and drift, of loss and survival, and by the end Arthur Miller’s literate script helps achieve a sense of belonging, at least for the central pairing. He and director John Huston are aided immensely by some fine performances all round. Even supporting star Thelma Ritter gives one of her most particular and warming displays. Monroe and Gable are an excellent pairing, and she seems to bring out the tenderness in his rough core, something other actresses [albeit from poorer screenplays] never seem to do. Gable allows the star herself to shine by being self-effacing when it matters; he shares the screen when in former years he might have seized it.
The photography, from the fabulous Russell Metty, is excellent. The minimal set designs well-accomplished. The location shooting, particularly at Dayton and the town’s rodeo, is superbly achieved. The film is not quite as crisp as it might be, you sense an editor uncertain of the feel of the movie. Alex North’s music score is a trifle over enthusiastic, but his restraint during the romantic sections is to be lauded.
The film has had whole books – and plays – and chapters of books written about its making, so there is plenty of resource literature if you want to delve into the background of a trouble production, a difficult actress, a dying Hollywood star, a diligent playwright, a disillusioned actor and the terrific director who brought them all together.
Last night I watched a similar film with themes of intergenerational loneliness - Jason Statham in The Mechanic (2011).
This is a beer and pizza movie so if you find yourself thinking how dumb it is, you need to reassess your beer to pizza ratio. Statham plays an elite assassin who accepts jobs via a website and as with his role in The Transporter, things go well until they don't.
Due to a turn of events, he finds himself self-appointed mentor to a younger, charmless wannabe assassin and this allows for mistakes to creep into things. It also explains why early on in the film there are some perfunctory sex scenes between Statham and a woman he meets in the bar who plays no part in the plot whatsoever, it later occurred to me it's to make it clear the two male assassins aren't gay. Otherwise, and this is just one of those a beer to pizza ratio moments, you would kind of think, why is he helping out this younger guy when he doesn't have to?
Okay, there is some motivation to do so, but the movie doesn't get the emotions right, it is really quite leaden even for the kind of movie it is. Donald Sutherland has a small role in this but doesn't do too much with it and you don't get a sense of any real bond between him and anyone.
In my Man With The Golden Gun review I pointed out that it's a question of perspective - the 10 year old yoikish kids at the screening loved it. Likewise, of course you notice that after one nearly failed assassin by the trainee, we see him smashed around a luxury apartment and stabbed in the body with a screwdriver but he isn't hospitalised and in the next scene he looks like he just fell over badly while coming out of a bar. But very possibly that's the point of the scene - so a bloke can pause as he puts the pizza up to his mouth and then say knowingly to his mate, 'See how he doesn't seem too damaged...' and have his mate laugh and concur, and take a sip of his beer, it allows for that kind of smart alec wisecracking that a better film wouldn't allow. What I mean, it's quite possibly deliberate.
There are some ingenious planned killings in this, they are quite well done, on the basis that as Statham's character points out, the idea is best that nobody even realises there has been an assassin, it looks like an accident. (Make sure to tune in early or on the dot if you want to catch the first one.) That said, you feel uneasy with them because we are spoon-fed that all is morally okay - the victims deserve to be offed, so that's alright then. It reminds me of that Chinese state assassination, I think it was, some years ago - they got two young women to spray stuff at the main rival for government and kill him, they thought they were taking part in a game show, so they said. Some interest might be had here because it later becomes clear that Statham was gullibly spoon-feed information about the virtues or otherwise of his victims.
Some interest might also be had by contrasting the sly invisible intent of an effective assassin with the increasingly noisy, blundering shootouts that occur in the latter part of the movie but if that was intentional, the director doesn't do much with it.
I think I saw the sequel some months ago on telly but it was a different kind of movie, a kind of B-movie Bond with cable cars and submarines; very forgettable.
The Mechanic is kind of timeless - it's getting on a bit now, what, 15 years old - but I'm not sure they make these kinds of films nowadays.
Hammer Studios took a shot at the Raj adventure with this horror-thriller of some panache. Based extremely loosely on real events at the time of the East India Company, Terence Fisher’s atmospheric but flawed movie revolves around a British officer’s attempt to convince his superiors of the existence of a Thugee Cult, Indians devoted to the God Kali who will strangle victims to death, usually after robbery. The subject matter of The Stranglers of Bombay is exaggerated of course, but the rudiments of a decent drama are in place: clashes with authority, exotic locales, crazed villains, dutiful wives, some action, some gore. Half a nod is given to the misunderstanding and misappropriation of the native culture. Most of the nods go to shock and horror.
The film’s cheapness does it no favours. You can tell it is studio bound, other than a few excursions to the seaside or a quarry. The cast is unexceptional, filled almost entirely by the sort of actors who would later turn up in The Saint, The Avengers and Dr Who. George Pastell is the best of them. Roger Delgado, Paul Stassino and Marne Maitland join him in donning the elaborate clothes and black-face makeup. Guy Rolfe is the unappealing hero, who does not endear himself to the blundering Alan Cuthbertson and Andrew Cruikshank. The set design reminded me entirely of the sort of fare we saw in those black-and-white episodes of The Saint. Where was Sir Roger when you needed him? Oh, of course, brightening up The Alaskans or some such.
The film is brisk, occasionally engaging to look at and has moments of pure nastiness that give it an edge, all thanks to Terence Fisher because the screenplay doesn’t feel polished and no actor is trying very hard to be convincing. Frankly, it’s amazing the director delivered anything watchable at all. The monochrome photography keeps it the right side of sensational, but the slack editing and the obvious mini-climaxes don’t help very much. The Stranglers of Bombay is an up and down experience which could have been much better than it is with a bigger budget and a high-calibre production team. As it is, the film really does feel like a more gory version of a sixties TV show.
Not bad then, but a tad disappointing.
The Stranglers of Bombay is on TV tonight in the UK, on Talking Pictures, if you are interested.
Snatch still right up there, although it is more an ensemble piece. The Bank Job. Safe. The Transporter, naturally. For shear idiocy, Crank. Sometimes, I wish he would do something to stretch his acting chops. He is one of those actors, like Bronson, Coburn or Schwarzenegger I always find oddly watchable and can't explain why.
Before David Lean went on his way to enormous financial success and critical acclaim with huge internationally staged blockbuster films like Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Doctor Zhivago, he was making smallish features with big stars. Hobson’s Choice was his final wholly made British film, released through London Films, and what a treat it is.
Charles Laughton stars as Henry Hobson, a gregarious and garrulous Salford businessman, whose three grown up daughters wish to fly the nest and be married. The trouble is, he doesn’t want to pay endowments, or do any work; he drinks the profits of his successful cobbler’s shop while lordly ruling the roost of his domestic circumstances. Timid expert leather-worker Willie Mossop, an understated John Mills, catches the interest of Hobson’s eldest daughter, Maggie, played with a sharp tongue and eye by Brenda de Banzie. She plots her way out of the family home with all the fiery toned energy of her own father and twice as much deception.
The film is notable mostly for its superb performances. Laughton especially had not been this good since the 1930s. He’s superb, commanding every inch of the screen and every letter of script. An immense performance of controlled bitterness and loping pathos. We know people like Henry Hobson, full of ideas, full of gin, full of bull, empty of love, life and the essentials of living. It isn’t even money that motivates him, so much as reputation, even as his own begins to sour. Blinded by the past, he doesn’t anticipate the future or its affect on him. Circumstances, not intentions, reign over him, and Laughton, all blubber and balderdash, occupies this stately, dying breed as tight and thick as a bannerman’s glove.
Meanwhile, if Laughton can create controlled outrage, director Lean, tied to an extremely amusing script based on a successful stage play, has to restrict his palate. So, he models for his characters a series of cringing working class interiors and dingy landscapes, some of which recall his Dickensian masterpieces Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. For instance, the setting for Willie and Maggie’s courtship is a rutted canal towpath, Manchester’s factories belching in the distance – “I walked here once,” says Mills’s Willie Mossop, as if it’s the most romantic spot in the world. The little shop he and Maggie open is in a destitute basement, no better than the cellar workhouse where he plies his lot at Hobson’s. Naturally, the street Hobson lives on is pockmarked with puddles and muddied by potholes. Obstacles for drunken walks. And it rains. A lot.
While the story is slight, we are not here for the story. We are here to witness a master at work: Laughton bestrides the film, all bluster and indignation, his powerful voice and only-when-necessary actions suggesting the latent boiling anger which resides inside him. Hobson in fact knows his ailments, but draws a curtain of authoritarian domesticity over them, striking out verbally at all who criticise and praise. His tongue only meets its match in Maggie’s rough, tough, unblemished copy-cat attitudes. You wonder how he raised such delicate second and third daughters. Although their complaints have an equal merit, it is the delivery that matters for Alice and Vicky’s characters share Hobson’s louche behaviours. The patriarch’s complaint that he was a hen-pecked husband is not unnoticed by his familiar cronies in the Moonrakers public house; for he has grown to be a hen-pecked father to his eldest off-spring. Maggie pulls all the strings and when he laughs at her intention to be married, she demonstrates not only what she will gain, but what he will lose.
Masterfully photographed by Jack Hilyard in beautiful black-and-white, expertly designed, thoroughly entertaining and heart-warming, Hobson’s Choice was deservedly voted Best Film at the fledgling BAFTA’s of 1955, although it sank without a trace in America. Watching this reminds us of how good a filmmaker Lean could be, especially in the confines of the lower classes. There’s nothing wrong with his later, bigger, pictures, but many of them seem to be missing a heart, choosing instead to focus on the head or even the soul, and so confusing intellect with entertainment.
Billy Wilder’s undisguised attack on the Hollywood Dream is aided by a suitably garish performance from silent movie legend Gloria Swanson, who makes her screen comeback a decade after dropping out of the public consciousness. Swanson repeated the feat after this sterling success, instead turning away from film to radio, stage and television for her dollars. In Sunset Blvd, Miss Swanson plays Norma Desmond, a deranged and dependant ex-movie star, who entices hard-up writer Joe Gilles [Willaim Holden] to become her companion in exchange for rewriting an appalling film script and accepting her dollars, wardrobe and aging body. The latter is only occasionally directly alluded to, although we know exactly what is happening here, as does Joe the first time he ascends Norma’s gloriously ghoulish staircase and enters her bedroom. The fade away as Norma embraces Joe’s neck, teeth glinting in the last light of the table lamp, has all the hallmarks of Universal’s Dracula cycle, and Norma Desmond is a true manipulative monster of drama, albeit one who elicits sympathy, at least until the movie’s climax. And even here, Wilder and co-writer Charles Brackett wring every ounce of audience compassion for the decline and fall of movie stars by having her lucidly proclaiming her insanity – acting for the cameras as if directed by Cecil B. De Mille when she is in fact walking to a police wagon charged with murder.
It has to be said that while the film is strong on dialogue and look, and features a quartet of brilliantly observed characters central to its story, the narrative bricks are fairly unimpressive and it is only in the film’s final stark reel that we detect the moral intent of director and writer, punishing both major protagonists for the ultimate human failures of lust, greed and, most scaringly, narcissism. Indeed, Norma’s whole mansion is decorated with pictures of her as a young woman; she spends weeks attempting to beautify herself – for the cameras, she says, but really it is for Joe. For Norma knows she can’t compete with the delicious girl-next-door charm of script editor Betty Schaffer [Nancy Olsen, never better]. Like a waiting hangman, her servant Max von Mayerling, has seen the story unfold before – first, when he was married to Norma and she deserted him for a younger fresher model – and there are no surprises for him, only a sighing realisation that his devotion has alienated Norma from both society and reality. Erich von Stronheim is superb as the blank faced, careful watchman, whose every move anticipates his mistress’ whim. That he should become an ally to Joe is not initially apparent; that he should coax his heart’s desire to her doom demonstrates his turn of conscience, although it is performed with sagging shoulders.
Brilliantly designed as if Sunset Blvd is a gothic opera, photographed as if it is a crime noir, acted like a Tennessee Williams deep-south pot-boiler, scripted as a disguised satire of fame, yet devoid of almost all laughter and sensitivity, the film marks a turning point for American cinema, one feels, when mainstream entertainment ceased to always mean enjoyment and frequently becomes significant social comment. The latter always existed, but never dressed up in headline movies of this manner. Sunset Blvd was out Oscared by All About Eve, a much more biting satire on the demands and fickleness of fame, and you can see why. Sunset is not an enjoyable experience. The story is very simple, but it is extravagantly told, both in look and manner.
Swanson doesn’t have to improve much on the performances of her ‘silent days’ when expression was more important than vocal tone and phrase, Norma Desmond is that kind of caricature, so there is an element of unreality about proceedings that disguise both the tawdry and the preposterousness narrative. All About Eve, by nature of its wit and complexity, feels more human, more real, and ends on a note of recognition which is indefinite, repeatable, almost natural. Norma Desmond’s mental breakdown, while realistic, closes the curtain on her life as if this is how all old screen stars meet their end, in sorrowful headline grabbing, stuttering, embarrassment.
Towards the mid-point of the movie, Norma Desmond mutters to herself that “All stars are ageless” and this is her singular viewpoint. By the end, Billy Wilder, through the cameras of Von Stroheim’s Max Mayerling, reinforces it. Yet, that surely isn’t the point, for as we know, stars are not ageless and Norma has effectively signed her own death-warrant. Joe Gilles’s rejection of Betty doesn’t exactly cheer us either: he sets himself up as a moral compass for her, while abandoning the circumstantial crutch both he and Norma require to function as adults. He’s about as cynical a hero as you can get. Anti-hero, maybe.
Sunset Blvd is well-worth a watch, strong in what I mentioned, but it isn’t a very satisfying experience. Admirable, refined and observed sum it up well.
1) Swanson surely must have been the model for Disney's Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmations about a decade later.
2) Sunset Boulevard sometimes seems a dry run for Some Like It Hot - the down-at-heel guy having to place himself in an inappropriate romantic situation with a millionaire to get himself out of hock. It even contains the midnight smooch with the famous foxtrot anthem used in Billy Wilder's later film, also filmed in black and white.
I saw a bit of The Sound of Music, a Christmas and Easter staple, it seems to be rationed and owned by the BBC. I like this because a) It's a long movie, that like other seasonal staples such as Where Eagles Dare and Some Like It Hot, benefit from not having ad breaks. b) Also, they don't get flogged to death the way other films are, that said I don't know why they keep showing The Ipcress File all the time on the Beeb.
The opening is terrific late 70s Bond movie stuff, you get your money's worth right there, three knock-out songs, four if you include the credits with its lovely shots of Austria, not always seen in the film itself. The other one straight after the credits might almost have come from John Barry's The Lion in Winter, which hasn't 't been on telly much lately.
Straight after the credits the onscreen blurb talks of the 'golden days of the 1930s in Austria' or some such thing, with a sepia-gold tinted shot of Salzburg which doesn't last, the next establishing shot of the abbey is the usual cinematography, perhaps it was originally intended to go straight into the dark interior of the abbey which would be a natural segue.
I find the comic byplay between Plummer and Andrews to be a joy, it's just brilliantly done. I am sort of squirming in my seat with it, it's so good. But it does a number on us, because in her earlier establishing scenes Fraulein Maria is meant to be this ingenue, almost a dolt, while in the next scenes she manages to out manipulate the von Trapp kids very easily and has the measure of young Lisl and her paramour Rolfe at once. This is a standard bit of narrative film fun - the apparent idiot we like and sympathise with who, it turns out we find, is not such a dolt at all, and we see it in things like Clark Kent/Superman or The Scarlet Pimpernel and so on.
Young Kurt looks like one of the Wint and Kidd characters, I can't remember which is which of those.
But we turned over to The Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines - the thing about The Sound of Music is it's a bit much, it's a three-course meal when sometimes you want to just snack. I find myself welling up even in the credits, it's sort of pavlovian really after all the decades. I do find Captain von Trapp's moral stand a bit wearying on what is possibly the 200th viewing, I can't fault it, it's just sometimes you don't have the energy for it. Flying Machines has some great contraptions and it's nice to see the old faces again - Eric Sykes, Terry-Thomas, Willie Rushston, Flora Robson etc - even if none of them seem to have been given that much to do, on a larger screen than I'd have had from Radio Rentals back in the 1970s, it's enjoyable to look at. It does seem one of those films, like the later Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Thoroughly Modern Milie or even OHMSS - that take a heck of a while to get going. James Fox and Sarah Miles still going out of that lot, not sure if there are any others?
Disowned by its stars, sisters Ann and Vicki Michelle, Virgin Witch is a cheap but effective horror skin flick which encompasses both the folk horror subgenre and the burgeoning soft-core erotica scene. Naked bodies – mostly female – are on ample show. So too are a couple of bizarre witch’s initiation rites that, told in epic mime, at least have the benefit of leaving the dialogues up to an audience’s imagination, that’s if they can tear their minds away from Ann Michelle’s nudity long enough to notice.
Virgin Witch (sometime advertised as The Virgin Witch) had a rough ride with the censor, but I can’t imagine why, except possibly the scenes of deflowering which are on the repulsive side by their very nature. Put all that aside, the film at least attempts to be sinister and supernatural. We learn early on that Christine (Ann Michelle) is rather special: she can see in the dark and later demonstrates second sight. This serves her well when an interview for a modelling job turns into an excuse for model agent Sybil to strip her and get tantalisingly close by measuring her vital statistics [wrongly as it happens, obviously actress Patricia Haynes has never been fitted for a brassiere before]. “Your tremendously tiny,” she says as the two women’s eyes interlock with undisguised sexual tension. [She is not, by the way, talking about Christine's breasts.] You feel the girl knew this was on the cards from the moment she was asked to disrobe; her demeanour was so wanting, unquestioning. At this point we are uncertain who is bedevilling whom and the play is enacted over and over, as Sybil’s lesbian overtures are rejected by the beguiling Christine. She prefers the more obvious attentions of photographer Peter.
Her sister Betty, meanwhile, is the reluctant half of the pair, more taken with flyboy Johnny, who picks the two hitchhikers up as they struggle towards London. Later he chases after them when he learns that Sybil’s modelling agency is a front for a centre of satanic ritual and sexual exploitation. It isn't clear which one bothered him most. Christine, under the tutelage of Wiccan priest Dr Gerald Amberley, has taken the initiation rite and her psychic powers have grown stronger and more menacing. She persuades her sister and Johnny to join the witch's coven – but will they succumb to her wiles…?
A decent if bargain basement cast tries really hard to make Virgin Witch a worthwhile experience and to be fair, they mostly succeed. Director Ray Austin, who spent most of his time working as a stuntman on The Saint and stuff like that, injects plenty of fizz and zip and the photography has a bright arcing feel to it. The climax is suitably manic, robust and bathed in red and black. Like the culmination of many a folk horror, the end is left unexplained and open to interpretations. Suffice to say, one thing Virgin Witches misses, which makes it somewhat unique, is excessive and bloody murder.
Overall, despite being very low-grade, Virgin Witch is rather enjoyable; crass, yes, but then many horror films were in those days. Its sheer delirium gives it top marks even if the screenplay is clichéd beyond cliché. The early scenes of cod-comedy are fairly dreadful, but once the dread kicks in the action and the menace is well-handled and certainly intriguing. Ann Michelle – who now openly detests the movie – is startlingly good in this. I was reminded of the rasping intent of Madeleine Collinson from Hammer’s similar Twins of Evil, released the previous year. Miss Michelle certainly adds an icy, demure and deadly disposition to her calmness and rapine intent.
I’m gonna give Virgin Witch a thumbs up, because it is so unusual and so grind house shitty it deserves to be better known to more than just fans of obscure British horror movies. It was one of the last movies made by the independent company Tigon Film Production and follows up their better known Witchfinder General, Blood on Satan’s Claw and The Sorcerers. It is certainly better and more innovative than some of the Amicus or even Hammer products of the time.
As with Home Alone (1990) at Christmas, I read the shooting script of the movie before watching the movie itself, in a long while. More or less, the shooting script has pretty much all the scenes in the movie. Sure, some lines are cut, and scenes are filmed uniquely from the presentation in the screenplay. The one scene that was known to be improvised is Arthur's random cleaning out his fridge and hiding in it. Joaquin Phoenix thought it added to the randomness of Arthur. As someone said on a forum from somewhere, the screenplay is the definition of "show, don't tell." Lots of vague descriptions of little actions, not just for the characters. In the version that I have, there is an interview Q & A with Todd Philips, as there is a lot of information about how it came to be. It's worth purchasing for the Q & A alone.
As for the movie itself, it's still a favorite of mine. While I wish there were some characters from the comics in it, (namely Dr Hugo Strange, The Ventriloquist and the Toyman), it works with its generally original characters. I feel that it is one of the best Robert De Niro performances since Jackie Brown. Murray Franklin was generally just doing his job, although he should have asked Arthur to use the videoclips from his standup. He might have lived to tell the tale. An underrated actor in the movie is Leigh Gill as Gary, Arthur's short and mistreated (but nice) coworker. He is enjoyable, as one of the two nice people in the movie (the other being the Arkham Clerk played by Brian Tyree Henry). The showdown at Murray Franklin's show is worth watching the whole movie for. As for Thomas Wayne, it was a bit of a change to what people are used to. There was a lot of dark humor in the foreshadowing in terms of his being called a hero, when his son Bruce will become the ultimate hero. Jessica Chastain said it best about Joaquin Phoenix and his performance: It's one of the best pieces of acting that I've seen. I think the same here. Switching emotions at a random moment is tough to do when acting, and Phoenix does it beautifully. He earned his awards sweep. While I don't hate Folie a Deux, I do feel that it was a missed opportunity, in particular with the lack of comic book characters listed above, making it a musical, and Lady Gaga being underused as Harley Quinn. Honestly and ironically, I think Joker 2019 would be a great stage play. Hopefully that will happen one day, as comic book characters deserve to be shown on stage as very much. Also, I hope Clayface takes some (but not a lot) of influence from this movie. More comic book villain characters (namely from DC) are welcome. Joker was relevant for its time and it still is. It's message for me is be kind, you don't know what personal problems and battles someone else is dealing with. Highly recommended, in particular with these tough times.
Howard Hawks’s affectionate western. Sherrif John T. Chance and his deputies Dude, Stumpy and Colorado protect their town and the jail from the marauding Nathan Burdett, a cattle baron who is trying to usurp the rule of law for the law of the gun. Old-fashioned, amusing, gripping, beautifully staged and excellently played. The outcome won’t surprise anyone. Getting there, as with any Hawks film, is all the fun
John Wayne, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan and Ricky Nelson are the heroes. Angie Dickinson has all the best lines as Wayne’s woman, a showgirl card-sharp who virtually stumbles into his arms and stays there. The villains don’t really matter; they are numerous and nasty. If anything, the film feels slightly dated, encumbered as it is by the overreaching humour, some of which doesn’t work, and the stylised chapter-by-chapter scene-by-scene narrative technique which gives the characters a lot of things to say but don’t move the plot forward. Most of the best scenes have nothing to do with the Burdett Brothers at all, they are to do with relationships and reputations, how you build them and destroy them.
Well photographed and costumed, with Wayne in his signature outfit; a Dimitri Tiomkin score keeps the background happy. One gets the feeling it was as much fun to make as the actors make it look on the screen.
Very good indeed. Rio Bravo was so good Hawks had the temerity to remake it twice in the next ten years, both movies with the Duke in the saddle.
I read somewhere, don't know how true it is, that Elvis was offered the Ricky Nelson part and was keen to do it but the Colonel asked for too much money plus top billing over John Wayne (!) and Dean Martin.
Not sure about that. I think he may have been in the army. But it was certainly true of True Grit. I agree the Ricky Nelson role would have suited Elvis, as would the James Caan version in El Dorado.
In 1943 Universal had a hit with their second version of “The Phantom Of The Opera”. Unlike the first from about 20 years prior, this one had colour and sound. Claude Rains made a good Phantom (although the make-up when his face is finally revealed disappoints, especially compared to Lon Chaney in the older film) but was overshadowed by the singing of Nelson Eddy and Susanna Foster who received much more screen time – as a critic said, “too much opera, not enough Phantom”.
It was a big production and Universal wanted to use the expensive sets and costumes again. After some thought of making a sequel (“Son Of The Phantom” or “Return Of The Phantom” were considered) they decided on a follow up rather than a direct sequel. Susanna Foster returns in pretty much the same part and Boris Karloff replaced Rains doing the horror stuff.
They wanted more of the same and that’s what they got. Far too much faux-opera (not even real opera), beautiful costumes and scenery (most of which had been seen in “Phantom” the year before), and a leaden pace guaranteed not to keep the interest.
Karloff is in his first colour movie here and is his usual reliable self. Ms Foster is called on to look pretty and sing really high notes, both of which she does well. I’ve watched it once (it was part of a set) and won’t again.
Excellent satire on the 1930s British class system disguised as a star-studded upstairs-downstairs murder mystery set in a country house. Robert Altman directs. Julian Fellowes writes. Other than a hopelessly miscast Ryan Phillippe and an over-the-top Stephen Fry, there isn’t a single bad performance on view. Production values universally good. Charlie Chan in London it is not.
Talking Pictures TV secured a rare showing for this 1979 movie notable for starring a young Ray Winstone. He plays a guy let out of young offenders prison who heads to Torquay to try his luck in a swimming contest there.
It's odd because Winstone was in Quadrophenia that year but here he still seems a bit short and tubby, in the other film as a rocker he's a tall, swaggering presence, you can't just say its acting. Maybe this movie was shot a year earlier and Winstone shot up in the interim.
It's low key enjoyable stuff, like those old social media accounts with pictures of times gone by that sometimes come with a dodgy agenda but looks can be deceiving; if England were to get rid of first and second generation immigrants we'd all go back to hating each other, or the Scots or the Irish, or the Welsh, or the posh, with a vengeance, and as is depicted here, a trio of Scots prove to be young Ray's enemies.
Fun to spot occasional actors - the pub landlord was the bully who threatened Godber's parole in the final episodes of Porridge, while the bossy hotel housekeeper I only twigged from the end credits was Stephanie Cole. The film is a bit marred by having Winstone's local pal with a similar look and build to Winstone himself. Plenty of hits of the day on the soundtrack, it's all a bit Minder, though after a while you sort of wonder what the point of it is - it's pleasing enough in a pass your time sort of way.
Airport started the 70’s disaster movie cycle off in fine style, a star-studded exercise which on-and-off for a decade replaced the epic movie genre for spectacle, fine music and long cast lists. George Seaton was a surprising writer-director to take on Arthur Hailey’s doorstep bestseller. He created a phenomenon of sorts. The soap opera style domestic goings-on prove more interesting in acting circles than the over indulgent ‘disaster’.
A bomb is smuggled on Dean Martin’s 707 jet plane, explodes with some viciousness and endangers crew and passengers. The nearest runway, at Burt Lancaster’s snowbound Lincoln Airport, is blocked by another 707 which George Kennedy is trying to free by pure brute force. It seems to take an age but the timeline is a bare few hours, time enough though for romance to blossom, divorces to begin and Helen Hayes to win an Oscar as a serial stowaway. Airport is frequently a lot of fun.
Lancaster is very good, although he’s mostly filling in; Jean Seberg too is a good foil as his P.A. Dean Martin demonstrates he can act when he needs to – the memories of Matt Helm are no more – although it might have helped believability if he had occasionally removed his uniform jacket. Jacqueline Bisset looks lovely as the stewardess he loves. A sharp script that is lumbered with what are now considered genre cliches keeps things moving, although it does drag occasionally. It’s a bit Grand Hotel meets The VIPs hence tension isn’t nearly as high as you might want it. Still, the film looks decent and has a mighty music score of much success, courtesy of Alfred Newman, his last composition of a very long career. The explosion itself is a moment of brilliance, although a few seconds can’t save the entire project which ultimately isn’t lapped with enough suspense. Pity.
Airport was preceded by good-looking well-cast experiments like Krakatoa and Hellfighters, which also used ‘disaster’ as a background to multiple domestic or political / societal upheavals. Several sequels followed, as well as the outstanding articles of the disaster genre The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure. Time hasn’t been kind to Airport, chiefly because a very funny film called Airplane ruthlessly mocked the genre (and others) and made the serious-faced goings on of the source material seem ridiculous. They didn’t think so in 1970. Airport was a huge hit, very well regarded in its time and accumulating an astonishing nine Academy Award nominations, mostly in the technical categories.
A sequel that doesn’t do very much other than diminish the original. If Airport at least tried to be sensible and drew us in with a series of neat vignettes about its central characters, the 1975 vintage deletes all that in favour of more ‘thrills’. In fairness, the disaster happens half way through in this one, and we spend the remainder wondering how stewardess Karen Black is going to pilot a 747 to safety. The original garnered most of its intrigue in the two hours before the explosion. Here, the condensing doesn’t really work. The characters, including a marvellously offhand Gloria Swanson playing a marvellously offhand Gloria Swanson, don’t have enough screen time to interest us. And there are too many of them, as if the writers concocted two dozen different scenarios and picked the best seven sins to concentrate on, including a singing nun, a dying child and a trio of drunken businessmen. I use the term ‘best’ ill-advisedly. Charlton Heston saves the day in a suitably macho manner. In fairness, the last fifteen minutes are well made, very tense and brilliantly photographed. It’s what came before that hurts.
The cast list is huge and features many stars young and old (mostly old). Of interest to TV viewers would be Erik Estrada, playing a young navigator, and an almost unrecognisable Sharon Gless as the hotpot stewardess he fancies. These two would go on to star in CHiPs and Cagney and Lacey respectively.
A third stab at aeronautical disaster, Universal Studios’ Airport ’77 was a worldwide hit, although when you compare it today to what later came in 1977 [The Spy Who Loved Me, Close Encounters, Star Wars] it looks remarkably flat and old-fashioned. This time out, the usual relationship troubles are enlivened by a bickering Christopher Lee and Lee Grant, playing a marine diver and his alcoholic wife. James Stewart is a Howard Hughes type who owns an airline and is freighting to a new museum his collection of priceless impressionist paintings. Jack Lemmon is the pilot entrusted with the deed. Unfortunately, his first officer is a hoodlum who wants to steal the art for profit. The plan goes seriously awry when the hi-jacked low-flying luxury 747 strikes an oil rig and sinks to the bottom of a shallow sea. Among the panicking exclusive passengers is Olivia de Havilland, along with Stewart one of the very last of the Golden Era of Hollywood still making movies at the time. The action is slick, rather wet, and very fast. You may not believe the rescue as presented, but the science is proven and the tactics used to raise the sunken plane were, at the time, accepted U.S. Navy procedures. The movie is much better than 1975, chiefly because the human relationships are better presented. It’s still pretty much standard fare though.
The movie was so successful, when it was shown on television, an extra 70mins of footage originally edited out was added back in to stretch the runtime to a monumental 3hours.
Note:
Executives liked the Oscar nominated sound stage so much [a cut-up replica of a two-tiered 747 inclusive of a first class piano lounge and a main cabin chock full of sleeping berths] they had it cut up and the mid-section was used for an audience participation exhibition at Universal Studios Tours. Audience members were filmed taking part in the mock show. The audience would then watch a play back of the footage intercut with scenes from the real movie. I saw this performed in 1980, but not having seen the film, or even being aware of it, I had no idea why the exhibit should be so popular. Oh, little fool me.
The film that killed this disaster movie franchise probably wasn’t the comedy Airplane, but this desultory affair which features one of the stupidest scenes in movie history when George Kennedy fires a flare pistol out of the cockpit window of a Mach 1 travelling Concorde jet plane. I think there are others equally as silly (loop-the-loop anyone?), but I can’t be bothered to check IMDB to find out.
Not really a disaster movie so much as a thriller in the skies to do with terrorists and missiles, the plot really doesn’t make any sense. A huge cast prance about not doing very much. The eventual ‘disaster’ has the plane landing on a snowy mountainside. I am not sure that was possible either.
The movie did, in fact, make a lot of money worldwide, but it is a fairly ham-fisted attempt at suspense. Then came Airplane and disaster movies [almost] forevermore bit the dust.
I enjoyed all of those at the time - they looked spectacular on the big screen - and then, as you say, "Airplane" came calling and no rewatches on TV could be done.
(Except for the much earlier "Zero Hour", of course, which was the predecessor of all this, and should be watched on one of @CoolHandBond's double bills with "Airplane")
And don’t forget ZeroHour was based on the television play FlightIntoDanger by (yes, you guessed it) Airport author Arthur Hailey.
I like the Airport movies and watch them occasionally, the Airplane connection doesn’t bother me, in fact joining up the dots between the two is rather fun 😁
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Comments
I just thought; if that quote about the vape smoke is true they’re being a bit disingenuous, as the tree fall and subsequent tasing certainly uses digital effects.
MOONFALL (2022)
Moonfall is an old-fashioned movie given all the bells-and-whistles of something far more modern. It is basically a cross breed of When Worlds Collide, Armageddon and Independence Day, coupled with sound effect motifs from Close Encounters, visual dream sequences from 2001 and a host of familiar alien conspiracy theory mumbo jumbo. It is more-or-less complete rubbish. By the time the ridiculously over-engineered computer generated special effects kicked in, I was bored, which was when the action was meant to make me sit up and take note. I just couldn’t. It was too dauntingly familiar.
I should have done my research. Roland Emmerich, a director responsible for explosion after explosion on any number of big blockbuster epics, helmed, wrote and part financed this monstrosity of silly theory and ludicrous CGI. The action scenes are so unreal even the cars and mountains are computer generated. Not only is the story unbelievable but so is all the incident. Pity, as Moonfall started off quite spectacularly well, with a space shuttle put in imminent danger. After that the only surprise is there are literally no surprises. The movie stretches itself to accommodate three story arcs when one was more than enough, given it is an end-of-the-world scenario.
Do I have any praise for Moonfall? Maybe the music. I don’t know. I made it through with gritted teeth and wished I’d watched Moonraker which was on the other channel, is equally silly, but has the benefit of being James Bond silly.
The Strange Door (1951)
A sort of cross between a swashbuckler (very popular at that time) and a horror (Boris Karloff plays an apparently sinister jailer), based on a story by Robert Louis Stevenson and directed by Joe Pevney (lots of Star Trek TOS).
When the nominal hero meets villain Charles Laughton, Laughton is sitting with his back to him then swivels his chair around as he says "I've been expecting you". Made me sit up and pay attention, that did. If he'd been stroking a cat I'd have spat out my coffee. Laughton has a splendid time chewing the scenery and later leaving the hero in an easily escapable chamber. If he hadn't died around the time the Bond films started he'd have been a terrific Bond villain.
And Michael Pate, the first Leiter (CR54), is his main henchman.
Maybe, but it's just an IMDB quote.
THE MISFITS (1961)
I am not sure I am qualified to discuss the subtext of playwright Arthur Miller and actress Marilyn Monroe’s unhappy marriage, a theme that runs through this modern western drama with unashamed obviousness, or indeed her depression and obsessions, which are also touched on here – animals replace sex as a metaphor for her wantonness – but what I can tell you is The Misfits is a very fine film, neglected on release and still considered one of Monroe’s lesser works. It really shouldn’t be. Okay, so it isn’t a witty comedy, but then Monroe is an actress and every comedienne every now and then wants to stretch her non-panto-muscles. This is a sterling and surprising effort.
Firstly, Monroe looks marvellous, benefitting, as she did in Some Like It Hot, from monochrome photography, hiding the lines and the heavy, puffy eyes. She plays Roslyn Tabor, newly divorced from a man who is never there. Like a joke he appears at the quickie-court in a vain attempt to win her back; she hasn’t seen him for weeks. Roslyn is a good looking 30-something who takes up with Gaylord Langland, one of the last of the old-fashioned cowboys, a man who considers the wilderness his friend and the campfire and saddle his home. Gay is authored by Clark Gable, delivering one of his greatest performances, a melancholy taste of what could have come in his twilight career had a heart attack not taken him at the ridiculously early age of fifty-nine. Leaving genre pictures behind, Gable announces himself as an aging lothario, but also a man of passion and depth, who aches for a time-past while yearning for the uncertain future. Roslyn encompasses his hopes, both in her availability and her loneliness. There is something, one feels, for both of them to cure.
Gaylord’s best pal is Eli Wallach’s Guido, a crop duster pilot slumming it as an autocar engineer. He spots Roslyn first, but the loneliness he shares following the death of his wife, is too bitter for Roslyn, although she readily accepts his proposition of living in Guido’s half-finished house – she just invites Gaylord to stay with her, this despite Guido being charming, young and a much better dancer. After several weeks of treading around each other, the triad relationship comes to a head when the boys decide to rustle mustangs. They enrol rodeo rider Perce [Montgomery Clift] a still younger man whose daredevil antics frighten Roslyn. The quartet carouse and argue and end up fighting over the fate of a half-dozen tethered horses in the Nevada deserts. The boys, of course, are really arguing over Marilyn, but at first she’s too melancholic to see it. Then, with sudden revelation, she sees how each of them is so much more of a misfit than she – it is Roslyn, not Gay, Guido or Perce who has bonded the group together. She offers them purpose when they have none and it affirms her nature, so she is able to remonstrate and forces them to free the mustangs. Losing the money the animals would bring is nothing it seems to losing Roslyn’s favour. Only Guido, the bitterest of them, objects.
The film shares themes of loneliness and drift, of loss and survival, and by the end Arthur Miller’s literate script helps achieve a sense of belonging, at least for the central pairing. He and director John Huston are aided immensely by some fine performances all round. Even supporting star Thelma Ritter gives one of her most particular and warming displays. Monroe and Gable are an excellent pairing, and she seems to bring out the tenderness in his rough core, something other actresses [albeit from poorer screenplays] never seem to do. Gable allows the star herself to shine by being self-effacing when it matters; he shares the screen when in former years he might have seized it.
The photography, from the fabulous Russell Metty, is excellent. The minimal set designs well-accomplished. The location shooting, particularly at Dayton and the town’s rodeo, is superbly achieved. The film is not quite as crisp as it might be, you sense an editor uncertain of the feel of the movie. Alex North’s music score is a trifle over enthusiastic, but his restraint during the romantic sections is to be lauded.
The film has had whole books – and plays – and chapters of books written about its making, so there is plenty of resource literature if you want to delve into the background of a trouble production, a difficult actress, a dying Hollywood star, a diligent playwright, a disillusioned actor and the terrific director who brought them all together.
I’ll just say one word.
Brilliant.
Last night I watched a similar film with themes of intergenerational loneliness - Jason Statham in The Mechanic (2011).
This is a beer and pizza movie so if you find yourself thinking how dumb it is, you need to reassess your beer to pizza ratio. Statham plays an elite assassin who accepts jobs via a website and as with his role in The Transporter, things go well until they don't.
Due to a turn of events, he finds himself self-appointed mentor to a younger, charmless wannabe assassin and this allows for mistakes to creep into things. It also explains why early on in the film there are some perfunctory sex scenes between Statham and a woman he meets in the bar who plays no part in the plot whatsoever, it later occurred to me it's to make it clear the two male assassins aren't gay. Otherwise, and this is just one of those a beer to pizza ratio moments, you would kind of think, why is he helping out this younger guy when he doesn't have to?
Okay, there is some motivation to do so, but the movie doesn't get the emotions right, it is really quite leaden even for the kind of movie it is. Donald Sutherland has a small role in this but doesn't do too much with it and you don't get a sense of any real bond between him and anyone.
In my Man With The Golden Gun review I pointed out that it's a question of perspective - the 10 year old yoikish kids at the screening loved it. Likewise, of course you notice that after one nearly failed assassin by the trainee, we see him smashed around a luxury apartment and stabbed in the body with a screwdriver but he isn't hospitalised and in the next scene he looks like he just fell over badly while coming out of a bar. But very possibly that's the point of the scene - so a bloke can pause as he puts the pizza up to his mouth and then say knowingly to his mate, 'See how he doesn't seem too damaged...' and have his mate laugh and concur, and take a sip of his beer, it allows for that kind of smart alec wisecracking that a better film wouldn't allow. What I mean, it's quite possibly deliberate.
There are some ingenious planned killings in this, they are quite well done, on the basis that as Statham's character points out, the idea is best that nobody even realises there has been an assassin, it looks like an accident. (Make sure to tune in early or on the dot if you want to catch the first one.) That said, you feel uneasy with them because we are spoon-fed that all is morally okay - the victims deserve to be offed, so that's alright then. It reminds me of that Chinese state assassination, I think it was, some years ago - they got two young women to spray stuff at the main rival for government and kill him, they thought they were taking part in a game show, so they said. Some interest might be had here because it later becomes clear that Statham was gullibly spoon-feed information about the virtues or otherwise of his victims.
Some interest might also be had by contrasting the sly invisible intent of an effective assassin with the increasingly noisy, blundering shootouts that occur in the latter part of the movie but if that was intentional, the director doesn't do much with it.
I think I saw the sequel some months ago on telly but it was a different kind of movie, a kind of B-movie Bond with cable cars and submarines; very forgettable.
The Mechanic is kind of timeless - it's getting on a bit now, what, 15 years old - but I'm not sure they make these kinds of films nowadays.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
@Napoleon Plural the original The Mechanic is better, with Charles Bronson and Michael Winner directing, but I still like this one too.
THE STRANGLERS OF BOMBAY (1960)
Hammer Studios took a shot at the Raj adventure with this horror-thriller of some panache. Based extremely loosely on real events at the time of the East India Company, Terence Fisher’s atmospheric but flawed movie revolves around a British officer’s attempt to convince his superiors of the existence of a Thugee Cult, Indians devoted to the God Kali who will strangle victims to death, usually after robbery. The subject matter of The Stranglers of Bombay is exaggerated of course, but the rudiments of a decent drama are in place: clashes with authority, exotic locales, crazed villains, dutiful wives, some action, some gore. Half a nod is given to the misunderstanding and misappropriation of the native culture. Most of the nods go to shock and horror.
The film’s cheapness does it no favours. You can tell it is studio bound, other than a few excursions to the seaside or a quarry. The cast is unexceptional, filled almost entirely by the sort of actors who would later turn up in The Saint, The Avengers and Dr Who. George Pastell is the best of them. Roger Delgado, Paul Stassino and Marne Maitland join him in donning the elaborate clothes and black-face makeup. Guy Rolfe is the unappealing hero, who does not endear himself to the blundering Alan Cuthbertson and Andrew Cruikshank. The set design reminded me entirely of the sort of fare we saw in those black-and-white episodes of The Saint. Where was Sir Roger when you needed him? Oh, of course, brightening up The Alaskans or some such.
The film is brisk, occasionally engaging to look at and has moments of pure nastiness that give it an edge, all thanks to Terence Fisher because the screenplay doesn’t feel polished and no actor is trying very hard to be convincing. Frankly, it’s amazing the director delivered anything watchable at all. The monochrome photography keeps it the right side of sensational, but the slack editing and the obvious mini-climaxes don’t help very much. The Stranglers of Bombay is an up and down experience which could have been much better than it is with a bigger budget and a high-calibre production team. As it is, the film really does feel like a more gory version of a sixties TV show.
Not bad then, but a tad disappointing.
The Stranglers of Bombay is on TV tonight in the UK, on Talking Pictures, if you are interested.
Seconding the love for Statham's THE MECHANIC. It may be my favorite Statham movie.
I DO think the Bronson/Vincent version might be the better film but there are enough differences between the two to make them both worth watching.
THE MECHANIC: RESURRECTION isn't as good as the first one but has its moments.
A Jason Statham love in ?
Snatch still right up there, although it is more an ensemble piece. The Bank Job. Safe. The Transporter, naturally. For shear idiocy, Crank. Sometimes, I wish he would do something to stretch his acting chops. He is one of those actors, like Bronson, Coburn or Schwarzenegger I always find oddly watchable and can't explain why.
HOBSON’S CHOICE (1954)
Before David Lean went on his way to enormous financial success and critical acclaim with huge internationally staged blockbuster films like Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Doctor Zhivago, he was making smallish features with big stars. Hobson’s Choice was his final wholly made British film, released through London Films, and what a treat it is.
Charles Laughton stars as Henry Hobson, a gregarious and garrulous Salford businessman, whose three grown up daughters wish to fly the nest and be married. The trouble is, he doesn’t want to pay endowments, or do any work; he drinks the profits of his successful cobbler’s shop while lordly ruling the roost of his domestic circumstances. Timid expert leather-worker Willie Mossop, an understated John Mills, catches the interest of Hobson’s eldest daughter, Maggie, played with a sharp tongue and eye by Brenda de Banzie. She plots her way out of the family home with all the fiery toned energy of her own father and twice as much deception.
The film is notable mostly for its superb performances. Laughton especially had not been this good since the 1930s. He’s superb, commanding every inch of the screen and every letter of script. An immense performance of controlled bitterness and loping pathos. We know people like Henry Hobson, full of ideas, full of gin, full of bull, empty of love, life and the essentials of living. It isn’t even money that motivates him, so much as reputation, even as his own begins to sour. Blinded by the past, he doesn’t anticipate the future or its affect on him. Circumstances, not intentions, reign over him, and Laughton, all blubber and balderdash, occupies this stately, dying breed as tight and thick as a bannerman’s glove.
Meanwhile, if Laughton can create controlled outrage, director Lean, tied to an extremely amusing script based on a successful stage play, has to restrict his palate. So, he models for his characters a series of cringing working class interiors and dingy landscapes, some of which recall his Dickensian masterpieces Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. For instance, the setting for Willie and Maggie’s courtship is a rutted canal towpath, Manchester’s factories belching in the distance – “I walked here once,” says Mills’s Willie Mossop, as if it’s the most romantic spot in the world. The little shop he and Maggie open is in a destitute basement, no better than the cellar workhouse where he plies his lot at Hobson’s. Naturally, the street Hobson lives on is pockmarked with puddles and muddied by potholes. Obstacles for drunken walks. And it rains. A lot.
While the story is slight, we are not here for the story. We are here to witness a master at work: Laughton bestrides the film, all bluster and indignation, his powerful voice and only-when-necessary actions suggesting the latent boiling anger which resides inside him. Hobson in fact knows his ailments, but draws a curtain of authoritarian domesticity over them, striking out verbally at all who criticise and praise. His tongue only meets its match in Maggie’s rough, tough, unblemished copy-cat attitudes. You wonder how he raised such delicate second and third daughters. Although their complaints have an equal merit, it is the delivery that matters for Alice and Vicky’s characters share Hobson’s louche behaviours. The patriarch’s complaint that he was a hen-pecked husband is not unnoticed by his familiar cronies in the Moonrakers public house; for he has grown to be a hen-pecked father to his eldest off-spring. Maggie pulls all the strings and when he laughs at her intention to be married, she demonstrates not only what she will gain, but what he will lose.
Masterfully photographed by Jack Hilyard in beautiful black-and-white, expertly designed, thoroughly entertaining and heart-warming, Hobson’s Choice was deservedly voted Best Film at the fledgling BAFTA’s of 1955, although it sank without a trace in America. Watching this reminds us of how good a filmmaker Lean could be, especially in the confines of the lower classes. There’s nothing wrong with his later, bigger, pictures, but many of them seem to be missing a heart, choosing instead to focus on the head or even the soul, and so confusing intellect with entertainment.
Brilliant.
Especially brilliant: Charles Laughton.
He has that natural charisma, that indescribable 'it' factor.
SNATCH is indeed great but, as you said, it's more of an ensemble film. I don't really consider it a proper Statham film...same with LOCK STOCK.
SPY is another one where he's great but it's not a true Statham film...he's there to support Melissa McCarthy.
He has a lot of good ones and many bad ones. For some reason, THE MECHANIC has remained his most rewatchable action film for me.
SUNSET BLVD (1950)
Billy Wilder’s undisguised attack on the Hollywood Dream is aided by a suitably garish performance from silent movie legend Gloria Swanson, who makes her screen comeback a decade after dropping out of the public consciousness. Swanson repeated the feat after this sterling success, instead turning away from film to radio, stage and television for her dollars. In Sunset Blvd, Miss Swanson plays Norma Desmond, a deranged and dependant ex-movie star, who entices hard-up writer Joe Gilles [Willaim Holden] to become her companion in exchange for rewriting an appalling film script and accepting her dollars, wardrobe and aging body. The latter is only occasionally directly alluded to, although we know exactly what is happening here, as does Joe the first time he ascends Norma’s gloriously ghoulish staircase and enters her bedroom. The fade away as Norma embraces Joe’s neck, teeth glinting in the last light of the table lamp, has all the hallmarks of Universal’s Dracula cycle, and Norma Desmond is a true manipulative monster of drama, albeit one who elicits sympathy, at least until the movie’s climax. And even here, Wilder and co-writer Charles Brackett wring every ounce of audience compassion for the decline and fall of movie stars by having her lucidly proclaiming her insanity – acting for the cameras as if directed by Cecil B. De Mille when she is in fact walking to a police wagon charged with murder.
It has to be said that while the film is strong on dialogue and look, and features a quartet of brilliantly observed characters central to its story, the narrative bricks are fairly unimpressive and it is only in the film’s final stark reel that we detect the moral intent of director and writer, punishing both major protagonists for the ultimate human failures of lust, greed and, most scaringly, narcissism. Indeed, Norma’s whole mansion is decorated with pictures of her as a young woman; she spends weeks attempting to beautify herself – for the cameras, she says, but really it is for Joe. For Norma knows she can’t compete with the delicious girl-next-door charm of script editor Betty Schaffer [Nancy Olsen, never better]. Like a waiting hangman, her servant Max von Mayerling, has seen the story unfold before – first, when he was married to Norma and she deserted him for a younger fresher model – and there are no surprises for him, only a sighing realisation that his devotion has alienated Norma from both society and reality. Erich von Stronheim is superb as the blank faced, careful watchman, whose every move anticipates his mistress’ whim. That he should become an ally to Joe is not initially apparent; that he should coax his heart’s desire to her doom demonstrates his turn of conscience, although it is performed with sagging shoulders.
Brilliantly designed as if Sunset Blvd is a gothic opera, photographed as if it is a crime noir, acted like a Tennessee Williams deep-south pot-boiler, scripted as a disguised satire of fame, yet devoid of almost all laughter and sensitivity, the film marks a turning point for American cinema, one feels, when mainstream entertainment ceased to always mean enjoyment and frequently becomes significant social comment. The latter always existed, but never dressed up in headline movies of this manner. Sunset Blvd was out Oscared by All About Eve, a much more biting satire on the demands and fickleness of fame, and you can see why. Sunset is not an enjoyable experience. The story is very simple, but it is extravagantly told, both in look and manner.
Swanson doesn’t have to improve much on the performances of her ‘silent days’ when expression was more important than vocal tone and phrase, Norma Desmond is that kind of caricature, so there is an element of unreality about proceedings that disguise both the tawdry and the preposterousness narrative. All About Eve, by nature of its wit and complexity, feels more human, more real, and ends on a note of recognition which is indefinite, repeatable, almost natural. Norma Desmond’s mental breakdown, while realistic, closes the curtain on her life as if this is how all old screen stars meet their end, in sorrowful headline grabbing, stuttering, embarrassment.
Towards the mid-point of the movie, Norma Desmond mutters to herself that “All stars are ageless” and this is her singular viewpoint. By the end, Billy Wilder, through the cameras of Von Stroheim’s Max Mayerling, reinforces it. Yet, that surely isn’t the point, for as we know, stars are not ageless and Norma has effectively signed her own death-warrant. Joe Gilles’s rejection of Betty doesn’t exactly cheer us either: he sets himself up as a moral compass for her, while abandoning the circumstantial crutch both he and Norma require to function as adults. He’s about as cynical a hero as you can get. Anti-hero, maybe.
Sunset Blvd is well-worth a watch, strong in what I mentioned, but it isn’t a very satisfying experience. Admirable, refined and observed sum it up well.
I saw that a few months ago on the same channel.
1) Swanson surely must have been the model for Disney's Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmations about a decade later.
2) Sunset Boulevard sometimes seems a dry run for Some Like It Hot - the down-at-heel guy having to place himself in an inappropriate romantic situation with a millionaire to get himself out of hock. It even contains the midnight smooch with the famous foxtrot anthem used in Billy Wilder's later film, also filmed in black and white.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I saw a bit of The Sound of Music, a Christmas and Easter staple, it seems to be rationed and owned by the BBC. I like this because a) It's a long movie, that like other seasonal staples such as Where Eagles Dare and Some Like It Hot, benefit from not having ad breaks. b) Also, they don't get flogged to death the way other films are, that said I don't know why they keep showing The Ipcress File all the time on the Beeb.
The opening is terrific late 70s Bond movie stuff, you get your money's worth right there, three knock-out songs, four if you include the credits with its lovely shots of Austria, not always seen in the film itself. The other one straight after the credits might almost have come from John Barry's The Lion in Winter, which hasn't 't been on telly much lately.
Straight after the credits the onscreen blurb talks of the 'golden days of the 1930s in Austria' or some such thing, with a sepia-gold tinted shot of Salzburg which doesn't last, the next establishing shot of the abbey is the usual cinematography, perhaps it was originally intended to go straight into the dark interior of the abbey which would be a natural segue.
I find the comic byplay between Plummer and Andrews to be a joy, it's just brilliantly done. I am sort of squirming in my seat with it, it's so good. But it does a number on us, because in her earlier establishing scenes Fraulein Maria is meant to be this ingenue, almost a dolt, while in the next scenes she manages to out manipulate the von Trapp kids very easily and has the measure of young Lisl and her paramour Rolfe at once. This is a standard bit of narrative film fun - the apparent idiot we like and sympathise with who, it turns out we find, is not such a dolt at all, and we see it in things like Clark Kent/Superman or The Scarlet Pimpernel and so on.
Young Kurt looks like one of the Wint and Kidd characters, I can't remember which is which of those.
But we turned over to The Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines - the thing about The Sound of Music is it's a bit much, it's a three-course meal when sometimes you want to just snack. I find myself welling up even in the credits, it's sort of pavlovian really after all the decades. I do find Captain von Trapp's moral stand a bit wearying on what is possibly the 200th viewing, I can't fault it, it's just sometimes you don't have the energy for it. Flying Machines has some great contraptions and it's nice to see the old faces again - Eric Sykes, Terry-Thomas, Willie Rushston, Flora Robson etc - even if none of them seem to have been given that much to do, on a larger screen than I'd have had from Radio Rentals back in the 1970s, it's enjoyable to look at. It does seem one of those films, like the later Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Thoroughly Modern Milie or even OHMSS - that take a heck of a while to get going. James Fox and Sarah Miles still going out of that lot, not sure if there are any others?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I always loved that Plummer famously hated THE SOUND OF MUSIC. I think he called it sentimental rubbish.
VIRGIN WITCH (1972)
Disowned by its stars, sisters Ann and Vicki Michelle, Virgin Witch is a cheap but effective horror skin flick which encompasses both the folk horror subgenre and the burgeoning soft-core erotica scene. Naked bodies – mostly female – are on ample show. So too are a couple of bizarre witch’s initiation rites that, told in epic mime, at least have the benefit of leaving the dialogues up to an audience’s imagination, that’s if they can tear their minds away from Ann Michelle’s nudity long enough to notice.
Virgin Witch (sometime advertised as The Virgin Witch) had a rough ride with the censor, but I can’t imagine why, except possibly the scenes of deflowering which are on the repulsive side by their very nature. Put all that aside, the film at least attempts to be sinister and supernatural. We learn early on that Christine (Ann Michelle) is rather special: she can see in the dark and later demonstrates second sight. This serves her well when an interview for a modelling job turns into an excuse for model agent Sybil to strip her and get tantalisingly close by measuring her vital statistics [wrongly as it happens, obviously actress Patricia Haynes has never been fitted for a brassiere before]. “Your tremendously tiny,” she says as the two women’s eyes interlock with undisguised sexual tension. [She is not, by the way, talking about Christine's breasts.] You feel the girl knew this was on the cards from the moment she was asked to disrobe; her demeanour was so wanting, unquestioning. At this point we are uncertain who is bedevilling whom and the play is enacted over and over, as Sybil’s lesbian overtures are rejected by the beguiling Christine. She prefers the more obvious attentions of photographer Peter.
Her sister Betty, meanwhile, is the reluctant half of the pair, more taken with flyboy Johnny, who picks the two hitchhikers up as they struggle towards London. Later he chases after them when he learns that Sybil’s modelling agency is a front for a centre of satanic ritual and sexual exploitation. It isn't clear which one bothered him most. Christine, under the tutelage of Wiccan priest Dr Gerald Amberley, has taken the initiation rite and her psychic powers have grown stronger and more menacing. She persuades her sister and Johnny to join the witch's coven – but will they succumb to her wiles…?
A decent if bargain basement cast tries really hard to make Virgin Witch a worthwhile experience and to be fair, they mostly succeed. Director Ray Austin, who spent most of his time working as a stuntman on The Saint and stuff like that, injects plenty of fizz and zip and the photography has a bright arcing feel to it. The climax is suitably manic, robust and bathed in red and black. Like the culmination of many a folk horror, the end is left unexplained and open to interpretations. Suffice to say, one thing Virgin Witches misses, which makes it somewhat unique, is excessive and bloody murder.
Overall, despite being very low-grade, Virgin Witch is rather enjoyable; crass, yes, but then many horror films were in those days. Its sheer delirium gives it top marks even if the screenplay is clichéd beyond cliché. The early scenes of cod-comedy are fairly dreadful, but once the dread kicks in the action and the menace is well-handled and certainly intriguing. Ann Michelle – who now openly detests the movie – is startlingly good in this. I was reminded of the rasping intent of Madeleine Collinson from Hammer’s similar Twins of Evil, released the previous year. Miss Michelle certainly adds an icy, demure and deadly disposition to her calmness and rapine intent.
I’m gonna give Virgin Witch a thumbs up, because it is so unusual and so grind house shitty it deserves to be better known to more than just fans of obscure British horror movies. It was one of the last movies made by the independent company Tigon Film Production and follows up their better known Witchfinder General, Blood on Satan’s Claw and The Sorcerers. It is certainly better and more innovative than some of the Amicus or even Hammer products of the time.
Very good.
Dodgy advertsing...
Joker (2019).
As with Home Alone (1990) at Christmas, I read the shooting script of the movie before watching the movie itself, in a long while. More or less, the shooting script has pretty much all the scenes in the movie. Sure, some lines are cut, and scenes are filmed uniquely from the presentation in the screenplay. The one scene that was known to be improvised is Arthur's random cleaning out his fridge and hiding in it. Joaquin Phoenix thought it added to the randomness of Arthur. As someone said on a forum from somewhere, the screenplay is the definition of "show, don't tell." Lots of vague descriptions of little actions, not just for the characters. In the version that I have, there is an interview Q & A with Todd Philips, as there is a lot of information about how it came to be. It's worth purchasing for the Q & A alone.
As for the movie itself, it's still a favorite of mine. While I wish there were some characters from the comics in it, (namely Dr Hugo Strange, The Ventriloquist and the Toyman), it works with its generally original characters. I feel that it is one of the best Robert De Niro performances since Jackie Brown. Murray Franklin was generally just doing his job, although he should have asked Arthur to use the videoclips from his standup. He might have lived to tell the tale. An underrated actor in the movie is Leigh Gill as Gary, Arthur's short and mistreated (but nice) coworker. He is enjoyable, as one of the two nice people in the movie (the other being the Arkham Clerk played by Brian Tyree Henry). The showdown at Murray Franklin's show is worth watching the whole movie for. As for Thomas Wayne, it was a bit of a change to what people are used to. There was a lot of dark humor in the foreshadowing in terms of his being called a hero, when his son Bruce will become the ultimate hero. Jessica Chastain said it best about Joaquin Phoenix and his performance: It's one of the best pieces of acting that I've seen. I think the same here. Switching emotions at a random moment is tough to do when acting, and Phoenix does it beautifully. He earned his awards sweep. While I don't hate Folie a Deux, I do feel that it was a missed opportunity, in particular with the lack of comic book characters listed above, making it a musical, and Lady Gaga being underused as Harley Quinn. Honestly and ironically, I think Joker 2019 would be a great stage play. Hopefully that will happen one day, as comic book characters deserve to be shown on stage as very much. Also, I hope Clayface takes some (but not a lot) of influence from this movie. More comic book villain characters (namely from DC) are welcome. Joker was relevant for its time and it still is. It's message for me is be kind, you don't know what personal problems and battles someone else is dealing with. Highly recommended, in particular with these tough times.
Here's a link to buy the version that I have.
https://www.amazon.com/Joker-Official-Script-Insight-Editions/dp/1647228913/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1CGOMK3U3J4RD&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Box7H0Xl0eknMMKoCGs2sPFUuKb_1eOC4MVTwCxIFGEszTNC1lrcWzM9sGFM3SJo0ftiWLtynqt_71cPlfDfA1iqAPPEwBgdXcaRa4VQWqBq89Rb1UUxPR6EmVL4fM4N9-aGLZLWw0mvQImq327638Z_RmBWQ6UyMWOcqiznRlotQnpLUrtg20y46WPumimza1wiyiWdboW-N0TROZcoBDVZ5M_-lF7IzUdYuE0Jjyk.MP4pj-nZ6zmIVqmmBAXz4f0y-507lkogD04mE09MIDw&dib_tag=se&keywords=joker+screenplay&qid=1775444848&s=books&sprefix=joker+screenplay,stripbooks,193&sr=1-1
RIO BRAVO (1959)
Howard Hawks’s affectionate western. Sherrif John T. Chance and his deputies Dude, Stumpy and Colorado protect their town and the jail from the marauding Nathan Burdett, a cattle baron who is trying to usurp the rule of law for the law of the gun. Old-fashioned, amusing, gripping, beautifully staged and excellently played. The outcome won’t surprise anyone. Getting there, as with any Hawks film, is all the fun
John Wayne, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan and Ricky Nelson are the heroes. Angie Dickinson has all the best lines as Wayne’s woman, a showgirl card-sharp who virtually stumbles into his arms and stays there. The villains don’t really matter; they are numerous and nasty. If anything, the film feels slightly dated, encumbered as it is by the overreaching humour, some of which doesn’t work, and the stylised chapter-by-chapter scene-by-scene narrative technique which gives the characters a lot of things to say but don’t move the plot forward. Most of the best scenes have nothing to do with the Burdett Brothers at all, they are to do with relationships and reputations, how you build them and destroy them.
Well photographed and costumed, with Wayne in his signature outfit; a Dimitri Tiomkin score keeps the background happy. One gets the feeling it was as much fun to make as the actors make it look on the screen.
Very good indeed. Rio Bravo was so good Hawks had the temerity to remake it twice in the next ten years, both movies with the Duke in the saddle.
I read somewhere, don't know how true it is, that Elvis was offered the Ricky Nelson part and was keen to do it but the Colonel asked for too much money plus top billing over John Wayne (!) and Dean Martin.
Not sure about that. I think he may have been in the army. But it was certainly true of True Grit. I agree the Ricky Nelson role would have suited Elvis, as would the James Caan version in El Dorado.
THE CLIMAX (1944)
In 1943 Universal had a hit with their second version of “The Phantom Of The Opera”. Unlike the first from about 20 years prior, this one had colour and sound. Claude Rains made a good Phantom (although the make-up when his face is finally revealed disappoints, especially compared to Lon Chaney in the older film) but was overshadowed by the singing of Nelson Eddy and Susanna Foster who received much more screen time – as a critic said, “too much opera, not enough Phantom”.
It was a big production and Universal wanted to use the expensive sets and costumes again. After some thought of making a sequel (“Son Of The Phantom” or “Return Of The Phantom” were considered) they decided on a follow up rather than a direct sequel. Susanna Foster returns in pretty much the same part and Boris Karloff replaced Rains doing the horror stuff.
They wanted more of the same and that’s what they got. Far too much faux-opera (not even real opera), beautiful costumes and scenery (most of which had been seen in “Phantom” the year before), and a leaden pace guaranteed not to keep the interest.
Karloff is in his first colour movie here and is his usual reliable self. Ms Foster is called on to look pretty and sing really high notes, both of which she does well. I’ve watched it once (it was part of a set) and won’t again.
GOSFORD PARK (2001)
Excellent satire on the 1930s British class system disguised as a star-studded upstairs-downstairs murder mystery set in a country house. Robert Altman directs. Julian Fellowes writes. Other than a hopelessly miscast Ryan Phillippe and an over-the-top Stephen Fry, there isn’t a single bad performance on view. Production values universally good. Charlie Chan in London it is not.
That Summer!
Talking Pictures TV secured a rare showing for this 1979 movie notable for starring a young Ray Winstone. He plays a guy let out of young offenders prison who heads to Torquay to try his luck in a swimming contest there.
It's odd because Winstone was in Quadrophenia that year but here he still seems a bit short and tubby, in the other film as a rocker he's a tall, swaggering presence, you can't just say its acting. Maybe this movie was shot a year earlier and Winstone shot up in the interim.
It's low key enjoyable stuff, like those old social media accounts with pictures of times gone by that sometimes come with a dodgy agenda but looks can be deceiving; if England were to get rid of first and second generation immigrants we'd all go back to hating each other, or the Scots or the Irish, or the Welsh, or the posh, with a vengeance, and as is depicted here, a trio of Scots prove to be young Ray's enemies.
Fun to spot occasional actors - the pub landlord was the bully who threatened Godber's parole in the final episodes of Porridge, while the bossy hotel housekeeper I only twigged from the end credits was Stephanie Cole. The film is a bit marred by having Winstone's local pal with a similar look and build to Winstone himself. Plenty of hits of the day on the soundtrack, it's all a bit Minder, though after a while you sort of wonder what the point of it is - it's pleasing enough in a pass your time sort of way.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
AIRPORT (1970)
Airport started the 70’s disaster movie cycle off in fine style, a star-studded exercise which on-and-off for a decade replaced the epic movie genre for spectacle, fine music and long cast lists. George Seaton was a surprising writer-director to take on Arthur Hailey’s doorstep bestseller. He created a phenomenon of sorts. The soap opera style domestic goings-on prove more interesting in acting circles than the over indulgent ‘disaster’.
A bomb is smuggled on Dean Martin’s 707 jet plane, explodes with some viciousness and endangers crew and passengers. The nearest runway, at Burt Lancaster’s snowbound Lincoln Airport, is blocked by another 707 which George Kennedy is trying to free by pure brute force. It seems to take an age but the timeline is a bare few hours, time enough though for romance to blossom, divorces to begin and Helen Hayes to win an Oscar as a serial stowaway. Airport is frequently a lot of fun.
Lancaster is very good, although he’s mostly filling in; Jean Seberg too is a good foil as his P.A. Dean Martin demonstrates he can act when he needs to – the memories of Matt Helm are no more – although it might have helped believability if he had occasionally removed his uniform jacket. Jacqueline Bisset looks lovely as the stewardess he loves. A sharp script that is lumbered with what are now considered genre cliches keeps things moving, although it does drag occasionally. It’s a bit Grand Hotel meets The VIPs hence tension isn’t nearly as high as you might want it. Still, the film looks decent and has a mighty music score of much success, courtesy of Alfred Newman, his last composition of a very long career. The explosion itself is a moment of brilliance, although a few seconds can’t save the entire project which ultimately isn’t lapped with enough suspense. Pity.
Airport was preceded by good-looking well-cast experiments like Krakatoa and Hellfighters, which also used ‘disaster’ as a background to multiple domestic or political / societal upheavals. Several sequels followed, as well as the outstanding articles of the disaster genre The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure. Time hasn’t been kind to Airport, chiefly because a very funny film called Airplane ruthlessly mocked the genre (and others) and made the serious-faced goings on of the source material seem ridiculous. They didn’t think so in 1970. Airport was a huge hit, very well regarded in its time and accumulating an astonishing nine Academy Award nominations, mostly in the technical categories.
AIRPORT 1975 (1974)
A sequel that doesn’t do very much other than diminish the original. If Airport at least tried to be sensible and drew us in with a series of neat vignettes about its central characters, the 1975 vintage deletes all that in favour of more ‘thrills’. In fairness, the disaster happens half way through in this one, and we spend the remainder wondering how stewardess Karen Black is going to pilot a 747 to safety. The original garnered most of its intrigue in the two hours before the explosion. Here, the condensing doesn’t really work. The characters, including a marvellously offhand Gloria Swanson playing a marvellously offhand Gloria Swanson, don’t have enough screen time to interest us. And there are too many of them, as if the writers concocted two dozen different scenarios and picked the best seven sins to concentrate on, including a singing nun, a dying child and a trio of drunken businessmen. I use the term ‘best’ ill-advisedly. Charlton Heston saves the day in a suitably macho manner. In fairness, the last fifteen minutes are well made, very tense and brilliantly photographed. It’s what came before that hurts.
The cast list is huge and features many stars young and old (mostly old). Of interest to TV viewers would be Erik Estrada, playing a young navigator, and an almost unrecognisable Sharon Gless as the hotpot stewardess he fancies. These two would go on to star in CHiPs and Cagney and Lacey respectively.
AIRPORT ’77 (1977)
A third stab at aeronautical disaster, Universal Studios’ Airport ’77 was a worldwide hit, although when you compare it today to what later came in 1977 [The Spy Who Loved Me, Close Encounters, Star Wars] it looks remarkably flat and old-fashioned. This time out, the usual relationship troubles are enlivened by a bickering Christopher Lee and Lee Grant, playing a marine diver and his alcoholic wife. James Stewart is a Howard Hughes type who owns an airline and is freighting to a new museum his collection of priceless impressionist paintings. Jack Lemmon is the pilot entrusted with the deed. Unfortunately, his first officer is a hoodlum who wants to steal the art for profit. The plan goes seriously awry when the hi-jacked low-flying luxury 747 strikes an oil rig and sinks to the bottom of a shallow sea. Among the panicking exclusive passengers is Olivia de Havilland, along with Stewart one of the very last of the Golden Era of Hollywood still making movies at the time. The action is slick, rather wet, and very fast. You may not believe the rescue as presented, but the science is proven and the tactics used to raise the sunken plane were, at the time, accepted U.S. Navy procedures. The movie is much better than 1975, chiefly because the human relationships are better presented. It’s still pretty much standard fare though.
The movie was so successful, when it was shown on television, an extra 70mins of footage originally edited out was added back in to stretch the runtime to a monumental 3hours.
Note:
Executives liked the Oscar nominated sound stage so much [a cut-up replica of a two-tiered 747 inclusive of a first class piano lounge and a main cabin chock full of sleeping berths] they had it cut up and the mid-section was used for an audience participation exhibition at Universal Studios Tours. Audience members were filmed taking part in the mock show. The audience would then watch a play back of the footage intercut with scenes from the real movie. I saw this performed in 1980, but not having seen the film, or even being aware of it, I had no idea why the exhibit should be so popular. Oh, little fool me.
AIRPORT 80: THE CONCORDE (1979)
The film that killed this disaster movie franchise probably wasn’t the comedy Airplane, but this desultory affair which features one of the stupidest scenes in movie history when George Kennedy fires a flare pistol out of the cockpit window of a Mach 1 travelling Concorde jet plane. I think there are others equally as silly (loop-the-loop anyone?), but I can’t be bothered to check IMDB to find out.
Not really a disaster movie so much as a thriller in the skies to do with terrorists and missiles, the plot really doesn’t make any sense. A huge cast prance about not doing very much. The eventual ‘disaster’ has the plane landing on a snowy mountainside. I am not sure that was possible either.
The movie did, in fact, make a lot of money worldwide, but it is a fairly ham-fisted attempt at suspense. Then came Airplane and disaster movies [almost] forevermore bit the dust.
Titanic, and icebergs, eventually, came calling…
I enjoyed all of those at the time - they looked spectacular on the big screen - and then, as you say, "Airplane" came calling and no rewatches on TV could be done.
(Except for the much earlier "Zero Hour", of course, which was the predecessor of all this, and should be watched on one of @CoolHandBond's double bills with "Airplane")
And don’t forget Zero Hour was based on the television play Flight Into Danger by (yes, you guessed it) Airport author Arthur Hailey.
I like the Airport movies and watch them occasionally, the Airplane connection doesn’t bother me, in fact joining up the dots between the two is rather fun 😁