Tag: film reviews

The Lost World

A couple of weeks ago, a well-thumbed copy of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic 1912 novel The Lost World caught my eye on a bookshelf. Having read and enjoyed at one time or another similar tales of adventure by the likes of Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs, I took it down and indulged myself. I’ve had great pleasure in reading the majority of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories so therefore I felt certain I was going to enjoy this too. And enjoy it I did. The mix of Victorian characters, exotic adventure and prehistoric fantasy all written with that turn-of-the-century eloquence made it an eminently pleasurable page-turner.

Naturally, upon completion it led me to check out the original filmed version of the story which in turn led me to a comparison with a contemporary one. The first, directed by Harry Hoyt, was made in 1925 and the date of this alone is impressive, not least because this was still the silent era of cinema. One can almost imagine those early studio bosses scratching their heads and wondering how on earth do you take prehistoric beasts off of the page and bring them to life before a paying audience.

The answer was, of course, stop motion special effects and this was the first feature film to use such a technique courtesy of, in this instance, Willis O’Brien. O’Brien was a pioneer of this style of special effects and would become responsible for some of the best-known images in the history of cinema, his best known work perhaps being the greatest monster movie of them all, King Kong (1933). For audiences of the time, it must have been incredible to see dinosaurs moving about on screen when all they had ever seen of them before were drawings on a page. The film itself is significant for this reason and overall it’s worth a viewing not just to see how far cinema has come since those early days but also to see how creative these filmmakers were with the resources they then had.

In the film, Wallace Beery plays the brusque Professor Challenger who leads a group of British explorers into the Amazon in order to prove to the world that a land of prehistoric creatures exists on an isolated plateau. The South American jungle is depicted by set pieces of rainforest and river with the occasional snake dangling from a tree and one or two cutaways to stock footage of a snarling jaguar. The prehistoric plateau is more of the same but with models of distant smoking volcanos and of dinosaurs roaming around or fighting in that uniquely disjointed way that is stop motion animation. One panoramic scene of dozens of dinosaurs fleeing an erupting volcano was created on a tabletop that was 150 ft long by 75 ft wide!

By today’s standards it is, of course, laughably crude but then in this digital age where everything from men made out of liquid metal to flying vampires can be brought to life so convincingly, we’ve all become a little immune to the impossible.

The second adaptation of this story I watched was the 2001 BBC TV movie starring Bob Hoskins as Professor Challenger and boy! what a difference 75 years make. This version was obviously always going to be more accessible and with the special effects taken care of by the same team that produced the hugely popular Walking with Dinosaurs series (indeed, some creatures were used for both programmes), it was far more watchable and more entertaining entirely.

But is it as important a film as the earlier one? No, definitely not because as artistry in film goes, it is no better than average. In 1998 the Library of Congress selected the 1925 film for preservation in the US National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”, something that the BBC version will never be deemed. Perhaps one of the reasons it is less significant is that we all recognise the creatures to be computer generated, after all, ever since Steven Spielberg made Jurassic Park in ’93 (a film that will surely gain inclusion to the registry at some point), we’ve got used to seeing them this way. And let’s face it, they look about as real as we’d ever want them to

Let’s just suppose for a moment that Spielberg had dreamed up a hoax (perhaps a ‘market experiment’ would be a better term) sometime before the 93′ release of Jurassic Park and that hoax involved a crackpot professor with an outlandish story. This professor made headlines because he wanted to tell the world about some fantastic trip he had just returned from and he then proceeded to show the world footage of prehistoric beasts he had reputedly taken while there, footage which was actually pioneering computer-generated imagery of dinosaurs Spielberg had recently perfected. Would the world have been fooled? After all, we’d never seen anything like it before had we? Isn’t it just possible we would have reacted in the same way as Sam Neil’s Dr. Grant and his party when first encountering the Brachiosaurus in the movie – i.e. pinch me, I must be dreaming.

It’s hard to imagine now but in 1922, Arthur Conan Doyle showed a test reel of Willis O’Brien’s work to a meeting of The Society of American Magicians, one of whom was none other than Harry Houdini. The footage – which Doyle craftily refused to discuss the origins of – depicted a Stegosaurus, a family of Triceratops and an attack by an Allosaurus. The next day, the New York Times ran a front page article saying, “(Conan Doyle’s) monsters of the ancient world, or of the new world which he has discovered in the ether, were extraordinarily lifelike. If fakes, they were masterpieces”. You get my drift? If those magicians were fooled by something they’d never seen before, couldn’t we be? Or has the coming of the digital age, where any visual representation is possible and incredibly lifelike, robbed us of that mystique of the unknown? UFOs, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster – even if (for the sake of this argument) it were genuine, would even the clearest of film footage convince us nowadays?

There’s no denying special effects evolved enormously between The Lost World of 1922 and Jurassic Park of 1993 and in terms of lifelikeness these two examples are at opposing ends of the visual spectrum. But my God! didn’t it take a long time to get from one end to the other? The stop motion technique was refined and better filmed perhaps with the passing of decades (Ray Harryhausen will forever be a favourite of many) but it took 70 years for any groundbreaking improvement. And then, BAM! with the help of computers, suddenly we’re seeing monsters that don’t twitch when they move, suddenly we’re seeing dinosaurs that actually breath, that flow with their movements, that look, for want of a better adjective, REAL. And all this creativity and invention simply to make our visual experiences more lifelike and thrilling.

But where is the future? Most special effects are virtual reality now – that is, what we see on screen is virtually real – but it can never be ‘really’ real because it’s on screen and consequently not reality so again, I ask, where is the future? Where do filmmakers go from here? Let’s all be honest now and admit that apart from involuntarily ducking your head out of the way of some apparent incoming object, 3D doesn’t really add that much to the cinematic experience yet. Haptic technology such as that found in flight simulators and certain video games which simulate motion to the user by applying forces and vibrations is quite exciting but whether it will ever have a place in cinema is debatable. And yet there’s bound to be a continued progression – it’s simply the way of things. But who can see the road ahead?

Personally, ever since Jean Luc Picard and his crew occupied the bridge of the Enterprise in Star Trek The Next Generation, I’ve been looking forward to the arrival of the Holodeck. Surely, that’s the future right there. A room projecting an optical reality all around us in which we can interact with simulated people and objects and move around on a virtual treadmill. That’s got to be fun. Sadly though, if that’s going to take another 70 years to become fact, I’ll never know because I’d have gone the way of the dinosaurs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Results of ‘Skyfall’

Well, well, well. Look who came back from the dead with a vengeance! James Bond, a franchise that lasted years in the world of cinema, seen highs, seen very lows, proves once and for all that the world’s favourite spy is not about to keel over and retire like Bruce Willis in Red. No, there is no exit strategy, no pension plan and certainly no plans to escape in a remote beach and drink and fuck to oblivion. This Bond will always report for duty and, to the joy of every fan, Daniel Craig returns from the dead to do his job and do it well!

If you read my previous post, you know what my expectations were. I was waiting for violence, fast-paced action, genre focus and a villain you can shake in front of. I expected a remorseless Bond and an even more remorseless killer on his trail with the charisma to charm and terrify an audience at the same time. I expected realism in characters such as Q and humanity in characters such as M. Were my expectations met? You betcha they bloody were!

There is no doubt that this movie has been a completely different project from the start. After four years of budget issues, scripts and production failures, this Bond has become the most publicised chapter of the British Spy since Casino Royale. As I sat in the theatre and the adverts came on, I knew this was not a regular Bond film. Heineken, Nokia Lumia, perfume, cars, Sony Vio, Omega, all products you see in the movie, advertised non-stop for at least 15 minutes and at some point I was sinking in my seat in despair. What had this franchise become if it sold out so much to major companies? But then again, no franchise that has lasted 50 years can run on its own. It needs money and unfortunately had to swallow its legendary pride and try to support what would become its most celebrated chapter yet.

Sam Mendes took up the challenge of directing and pushed to make this Bond the most memorable one yet and it shows in his work. For a man who has American Beauty, Jarhead and Revolutionary Road in his curriculum, he made this film very much his own. One of my expectations, especially coming from Mendes, was the fact that such a talented director could turn this Bond into a film with heart. It is quite obvious that most Bond films have the action, have the girls, have the drinks but some have just lacked the key characteristics of most spy and film-noir movies. The use of shadows, music and camera focus, all these things have been lacking since Roger Moore, with a few exceptions in the early Brosnan era, so Mendes, a man who manages to play with genre in magnificent ways, brought back the shadows to suit the spy. His way of filming has never been seen in Bond before as he shot magnificent set pieces but never took his camera away from Bond. The place has to be owned by the man, not the other way around. His use of shadows and light is truly gripping, culminating in a final scene when a massive fire in the background seems to reflect the mood for every surrounding character, in one way or another. The sets are sublime either way and one of them, the surprise of the film, is just breathtaking and bigger than life. However, as big as it is, Bond still owns the ground he walks on, only by sheer force of presence and Mendes makes damn sure of that. The director has said in interviews that he put all his efforts into this film and because of that, he does not want to do another. I say that he has done his job in a fantastic way and that he left the director’s chair with enough material to make more Bond films for the next 10 years at least. For that, well done Mr. Mendes.

Now, without too many spoilers, I would like to get into the content of Skyfall. I had many questions as I walked into the cinema. The eternal ‘what’s Skyfall?’ question, followed by the intrigue surrounding Javier Bardem’s villain and the ever rising question of M’s past in MI6. Well, needless to say, all questions were answered and no further questions were raised. The entire movie is completely separate to the previous two, kickstarting the franchise in the most nostalgic way possible. In this film, if you are like me, a huge fan of 007, you will laugh and you will not believe your eyes. Old friends are back, friends thought dead since the 90s, new friends arrive and look ready to follow Craig to the next adventure and Bond looks like his old self again. As a friend said, ‘This film was written by the ultimate fan-boy’ and even though I hate to agree, he has a point. This is an hommage to Ian Flemming’s work and goddamnit, its just beautiful to see.

Craig and Dame Judy Dench hold the reins of this movie more than any other character and it’s about time M got a voice and a gun to shout and shoot her opinions away. Dench, playing M since Goldeneye, did not just play a sour, old woman that hates men. She portrays M as strong because she battles against invisible demons everyday and Bond seems to be the only one by her side who sees them and fights with her. In Skyfall, M’s demons are no longer invisible and they are the most terrifying yet. We finally see M crumbling under her past and struggling to keep a hold of her work before it is take away from her. Dench and Craig have shared incredible chemistry onscreen ever since he got the role and they seem to maintain a mother-son relationship in this chapter that becomes the heart of this film. Dench’s M will remain one of the most memorable characters that grew in darkness, awakened by the ballsiest woman ever to grace the screen within this boy’s world. There ain’t nothin’ like that Dame!

Since Alec Trevelyan in Goldeneye, MI6 has not experienced evil from the inside but this time evil has come seeking revenge, in the form of Silva, a ghost, like Bond, who wants to materialise again to kill the person who made him the monster he is now. Javier Bardem is no stranger to villain roles, one of them got him an Oscar! With the most appalling haircut in the history of cinema, he scared entire audiences with his role as Anton Chigurh and now he is back to make us shake in our boots. His performance fully lived up to my expectations! The poise, the charisma, the traumatic background story, the mannerisms and that smile, on the corner of his mouth, just made him hands down one of my favorite Bond villains. There is one scene in this film, approximately in the end, where Silva walks forward, a trail of utter destruction left behind him, yet he just does not notice it like we do. To him, this is not destruction but only a means to an end and his end-goal is much more important to him than Bond, MI6 or even his own life. This purpose is made grand and even justifiable at times, as Bardem gives logic and sense to this demented man. He makes him sound and look like a martyr and till the end, that’s what audiences will see him as. A martyr and a victim, tormented by the people he most loved.

As mentioned in my previous post, the Bond girls in this movie are not vital in any way. Naomi Harris’ Eve does not start the plot by shooting Bond, it was M who gave the order. The same goes for Berenice Marlohe’s Severine so it is quite obvious that the only Bond girl in this film is M herself. With the most screen time and the call to action, M is the one woman who can team up with Bond and stand up to him like a man. Truly a wonderful turn to the role of M and a duet that does not cease to amaze. Ben Wishaw, the man that has been in the shadows of cinema, waiting, participating in mostly independent films like Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, I’m Not There and Bright Star, took Q and made him cool again. Since the late Desmond Llewelyn, there has not been a Q (let’s all collectively forget John Cleese and his buffoonish portrayal) since Die Another Day. Now, then new, young and kinda cocky Q is about to get seriously techy with 007. Since the Quartermaster needs to keep up with the latest gadgets to give to agents (return the equipment in one piece, my ass!), it is only natural that this generation’s Q looks and sounds like a nerd. Ben Wishaw made that nerd the most interesting new character in the movie, along with Ralph Fiennes, who seems to look angrier and angrier as he gets old. His role is minimal but vital and he provides intrigue within MI6 and the lasting question of whether he can be trusted or not. But then again, the spy genre wouldn’t be very good if questions didn’t arise every couple of minutes to keep audiences on their toes.

Finally let’s talk Craig. The man who returns from the dead and looks like absolute shit. Well, we get to see a lot more of our legendary spy and just like I expected, he is broken down and made to look closer at his friends and his superiors. Draped with lies and deceit, his life is still a mystery to the audience and M might just have something to do with it. Craig lets the audience in on secrets that even Flemming might not have thought of, and that is to the credit of the scriptwriters and Craig himself, who goes much further into his character than his predecessors. He gives a stellar performance, even though his lines seem to be way too cheesy at times, thus ruining the mood in certain scenes. In a way, he tries to emulate other Bonds again, something he rightly chose not to do, so hopefully this is not going to become a habit. This movie has cemented him as one of the best Bonds in the movies and hopefully the next outing will not take four years! We fans do not want to wait that long after such an ending!

Has this film exceeded my expectations? Nope, it answered them and that is rare in a film nowadays. Everything I could hope for was there, amazed me and now I cannot wait for this franchise to continue. Even if Craig decides to leave Bond, he will always be remembered as the man who gave it new life and a new image that fits our generation and for that we all have to, at least, show him gratitude. As my last comment, I would like to leave you with this clue (SPOILER ALERT): The credits and the song? Linked to the film in a major way!! Enjoy the show!

Film Review: Out of the Past

While it may be true that for some of us, Mamma Mia! or There’s Something About Mary is the best film of all time (Are you sure?), it’s likely that any film aficionado with an eye for quality will draw up a reasonably predictable list of movies that has a certain resemblance to another’s. Of course, there may be the odd obscure title included in there somewhere on account of some personally preferred artistic or inventive merit but generally the same titles will crop up again and again. These lists, and there are countless of them online, are a great way to create a ‘watch-list’.

It wasn’t one of these lists that brought me to watch Out of the Past but rather a moment of web surfing that brought to my laptop screen a poster of Robert Mitchum nonchalantly lighting a cigarette while a demure Jane Greer inspects his ears for wax. The truth is, I’d never heard of this film before but having enjoyed noir-ish revelations with The Killers and Double Indemnity, both of which I watched for the first time a couple of months ago, I felt confident that I was about to view another classic. It came as no surprise to subsequently see all three of these films feature in high positions on numerous lists of best ‘noir’ films ever.

Robert Mitchum plays Jeff Bailey, owner of a gas station in a small out-of-the-way Californian town. His romancing local girl Ann Miller (Virginia Huston) is not viewed well by her parents who are mistrustful of him and sure enough, when a tough guy turns up at his gas station, it becomes apparent that Jeff has a past. This henchman, Joe Stephanos (Paul Valentine) informs Jeff that his boss, Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) wants to see him and after some glorious dialogue, Jeff reluctantly agrees to the meeting. That night, after picking Ann up for the drive to Whit’s lakeside retreat, he tells her all about his past.

The next section of the film is told in flashback with Jeff narrating the story of his mysterious past as a private investigator. Together with his partner Jack Fisher (Steve Brodie), he was hired by Whit to find his girlfriend Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) whom he claimed had shot him and run off with $40,000 of his dough. Using his investigative talents, Jeff traced Kathie to Acapulco but on meeting her, fell for her charms and her pleads of innocence and decided not to hand her over to Whit, who would likely have punished her for something she claimed she didn’t do. Instead, the two headed north to San Francisco where they attempted to live together as inconspicuously as possible, out of sight and reach of Whit and his henchman. But (isn’t there always a but?), one day they were spotted by Jeff’s old partner, Fisher, who demanded a heavy payoff for his silence. A fight broke out between the two men, which Kathie brought to a sudden end when she shot Fisher dead. She then drove away, leaving poor old Jeff to cover up her crime. In doing so, he came across her bankbook which had an entry for a $40,000 deposit.

Back now to the present where Jeff and Ann arrive at Whit’s home. Before turning the car around to drive back to town, Ann forgives Jeff for his past and hopes he will return safely to her once his meeting with Whit is over. Jeff is surprised to see that Kathie is back together with Whit, who for his part, displays genuine delight in seeing Jeff again and wants to hire him for one more job in order to make things even between them. The job entails breaking into Whit’s lawyer’s office to steal documents that include income tax records proving Whit guilty of tax fraud, a fraud which his lawyer is using to blackmail him. Jeff refuses the job, suspecting a set-up, but Whit insists and so after trying to warn the lawyer, Jeff returns to the man’s office to find him dead. Now Jeff’s job is to locate the documents, which also include an affidavit from Kathie swearing Jeff was the one who killed Fisher, as well as to prove that he is innocent of the killing of the lawyer but with a henchman on his tail and a femme fatale who switches allegiance more times than Lady Gaga changes outfits, he needs to use all his street-smarts to stay alive. It’s all mildly convoluted, as the best crime dramas are, but well worth paying attention to.

Released in 1947, Out of the Past was directed by Jacques Tourneur, a man perhaps better known for low-budget horror films such as Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie, rather than hard boiled crime films but he had a great team around him, many of whom had already worked together for RKO on numerous pictures. The film was adapted by Daniel Mainwaring (under the pseudonym Geoffrey Homes) from his novel Build My Gallows High with uncredited revisions by Frank Fenton and James M. Cain. This point is clearly evident from the superb dialogue so typical of the genre but here somehow a little less contrived and more natural. Don’t forget, James M. Cain was the genius behind, among others, Double Indemnity.

The role of gumshoe fitted Mitchum as comfortably as the raincoat and fedora he wore much of the time and it’s easy to see why he would later go on to portray Philip Marlowe. He breezes through this film with a cool self-assurance and a likability that make you (almost) overlook his potential for violence. Jane Greer’s femme fatale, with her baby face and deceitful eyes, smoulders, like the best of them and Kirk Douglas plays the gangster with controlled intensity – sure, he seems charming enough but you wouldn’t want to be around when he looses his temper.

For a film noir, the locations are worth noting too. Yes, we get the usual nighttime cityscapes and atmospherically lit bar rooms and office interiors, trademarks of the genre, but we also get out into the wide open Californian countryside as well as sunny Acapulco. The way cameraman Nicholas Musuraca captures this variety of locations lifts the film well and truly out of the murky pool where a high number of the genre languor.

In 1991, the film was included in the US National Film Registry as being deemed, “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”. Also, it will doubtless come as no surprise to learn that it features highly in many of the American Film Institute’s 100 Years of cinema lists. For me, it’s a recent discovery I’m very thankful for and yet another reminder that the ’40s was an awesome decade for movies. It’s one that has aged extremely well and one that will encourage me to continue scanning the Internet and the lists of films people consider the best ever made.

 

 

 

 

 

Film Review: The Night That Panicked America

The recent spectacle of a meteor shower tracing fiery trails across many parts of the UK’s night skies brought to my mind another group of meteors crashing into Earth in that wonderful H.G.Wells story, ‘The War of The Worlds’. This in turn induced me to seek out and listen to the original radio broadcast from 1938 (isn’t the Internet an amazing resource?), when Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre on the Air created history with their dramatisation of the story.

Now, I’m sure the majority of us have seen either the 2005 Spielberg blockbuster starring Tom Cruise or the much cooler (in my opinion) 1953 movie featuring Gene Barry. Of course, it goes without saying that neither film compares to Herbert George’s 1898 novel – for me, one of the most significant science fiction stories ever written – however, the earlier film benefits from being simpler and less overblown but no less impressive visually. It also tapped into that whole ‘red (communist) scare’ thing that was gripping America at the time of its release.

To really allow the genius of Wells’ writing to stir up your imagination though, turn off the TV, switch off your phone and lay back in a darkened room and listen to the radio broadcast that went out on CBS on the eve of Halloween almost seventy five years ago. It was such a spellbinding play that of the approximate six million who tuned in to the broadcast, over a million believed it to be a true Martian invasion and many of them actually fled from their homes in hysterical abandonment. And this brings me rather neatly to the film I’m recommending this time round – The Night That Panicked America.

Made in 1975 for the ABC Television Network this TV movie, starring Vic Morrow, Tom Bosley and Paul Shenar, recounts in docudrama style the broadcast from the point of view of Orson Welles (Shenar) and his Mercury Theatre associates as well as from several fictional groups of listeners from varying locations and social classes who all believed the broadcast to be a real Martian invasion.

The depiction of the broadcast itself makes this film worth watching just to see how radio professionals put together a show – actors in front of mics reading lines from pages of script while foley artists use the tools of their trade (and often some clever improvisation) to create the sounds to bring the story alive. To witness each and every one of them coming in right on cue is a pure joy. And once the broadcast is under way, then we get to see the poor, misguided listeners, the believers, those who had missed the broadcast’s opening line announcing the evening’s dramatisation of a novel. If they had heard this, they would have realised it was not real news bulletins they were listening to. There’s no doubt that the ‘on-the-spot’ reporting style of the radio play helped convince many that an invasion was actually happening and together with fact that in 1938, Americans were living in an atmosphere of tension and anxiety as Adolf Hitler steered the world towards its second global conflict, the play’s frightening premise simply fuelled the paranoia that was already running high in the country’s stream of consciousness. Indeed, some listeners thought the invaders were the Germans on a vanguard attack.

While this TV movie may exaggerate some of the panic (for entertainment’s sake, you understand), it’s not difficult to imagine just how wildly people might have reacted on that night. Remember, this was a time when news wasn’t as instant as it is today and with the radio being the only source of finding out what was going on in the wider world, hearing (never mind seeing) was believing. So, when we see a pair of farmers arm themselves with shotguns and head out into the surrounding countryside in search of the invaders and a wealthy household flee their dinner party with the family silver we can pretty much understand their actions even though we know they’re mistaken.

Another note of consequence – the Mercury Theatre on the Air was an unsponsored show at the time, and therefore there were no advertisement breaks during the play. The audience would have heard an uninterrupted report of a Martian invasion in real time with no clue that they were listening to a work of fiction. Naturally, it wasn’t long before the CBS studio started receiving calls from concerned listeners but the switchboard operators simply couldn’t believe that people thought that what they were hearing was real.

In the days following the broadcast, CBS was on the receiving end of a fair amount of flack over the incident with several newspapers and public figures describing the play’s ‘news-bulletin format’ as cruelly deceptive. The network was sued by many listeners claiming ‘mental anguish’ and ‘personal injury’ but all suits were dismissed save for one – a man from Massachusetts claimed for a pair of shoes he had bought to escape the Martians. Orson Welles apparently insisted the man be paid.

All in all then, this is an interesting little film made all the more remarkable for being a true story. The fact that the story revolves around one of the greatest sci-fi tales ever written, makes it, while not quite a classic, most definitely worth watching.

 

 

 

Film Review: Black Narcissus

Throughout the 1940s and ’50s, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger produced numerous films of note, many of them rivalling anything that came out of Hollywood. Their collaborations began in 1939 with the First World War thriller The Spy in Black, which Powell directed and Pressburger wrote the screenplay for. A couple of years later they co-founded their production company The Archers and made One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942). The two would go on to share a writer-director-producer credit until the partnership ended in 1957 and along the way they gave us such classics as A Matter of Life and Death (1946), The Red Shoes (1948) and The Battle of the River Plate (1956).

Arguably their most memorable offering was Black Narcissus (1947), a wonderful psychological drama set within a convent in an isolated Himalayan valley. The stunning Technicolor photography alone is enough to imprint this movie forever on your mind and if you’ve never seen, I urge you to do so at your nearest convenience. The use of matte paintings and scale models has rarely been used with such skill and majesty and despite the fact that the landscape is clearly fake, it is lit and coloured so magnificently, that it’s all the more awesome for being so. Costumes too, seem to take on a symbolic relevance and whether it’s the godliness of white robes, the devilishness of a red dress or the honesty and frankness of being semi-naked, there’s a depth to be found in every detail we see.

The plot revolves around a group of nuns – lead by the Sister Superior Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) – who are sent to the abandoned Palace of Mopu, near Darjeeling in the Himalayas to establish a school and hospital in order to help civilise the local community. Their mountainside convent is a former harem complete with sensual mosaics and images on its walls, and making it habitable is the nuns’ first hurdle to overcome. Sister Clodagh is forced to accept the help of local British agent Dean (David Farrar) to achieve this and Dean immediately makes a hurdle of himself but in a different way. His deep-voice and hairy-chested masculinity affects the nuns to varying degrees and seems to remind several of them that they are, after all, women and as if that wasn’t enough, Jean Simmons, in a very early role, has a memorable part as a mischievous local dancing girl, who with her flowing silks and flirtatious demeanour, presents a stark contrast to the nuns’ chaste way of life.

Dean warns Clodagh from the outset that the palace is no place for a convent and later credits the high altitude as capable of playing havoc with one’s senses. It’s not long before the isolation and the atmosphere unsettles the nuns while Dean’s bullish machismo begins to affect Sister Clodagh and Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron). Clodagh finds herself dwelling on the failed romance that drove her into the Sisterhood several years prior while Ruth becomes pathologically jealous of Clodagh’s growing friendship with Dean. The climate, the mystique of the local culture and the nuns’ own fallibility all play a part in this story and each of these adds to the tension as it rises like the mountainous peaks that surround them.

If this might sound less than exciting, do not be fooled. This film is a masterpiece. Full of psychological suspense and sexual desire Black Narcissus is, in Michael Powell’s own view, the most erotic film he ever made. “It is all done by suggestion,” he said, “but eroticism is in every frame and image from beginning to end. It is a film full of wonderful performances and passion just below the surface, which finally, at the end of the film, erupts.”

The climax is a riveting pastiche of music and image on a truly epic scale with no dialogue, just a mesmerising operatic symphony of sound that will turn your knuckles white. An interesting note here is that the music for this scene was scored before the scene was shot which meant the actors’ motivations and movements were choreographed to the music just as they would be on a stage. Truly, truly wonderful stuff.

The film collected two Academy Awards at the 1958 Oscar’s ceremony for Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction. Deborah Kerr won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for her portrayal of Sister Clodagh.  It holds number 44 in the British Film Institute’s greatest British films of the 20th century and number 16 in Time Out’s 100 best British films list.

The 65 years that have passed since the film’s release hasn’t diminished its impact. The haunting beauty of the painted landscapes and backdrops and the film’s vivid colour simply adds to its lasting appeal. To see it once, is to never forget it.

 

 

 

The Best Bond?

In his new book entitled Bond On Bond, Sir Roger Moore says that not only is Daniel Craig the best actor to play the world’s greatest fictional spy but that he also has the best build of any Bond to boot. Is he right? Is he wrong? Does it matter? Do we care? We are talking about an actor and an imaginary character after all and the nights will continue to draw in and our taxes won’t change depending on our verdict.

Of course, there is no real answer to the question because, like a ‘best’ meal or a ‘best’ holiday destination, everyone has a favourite based on their own individual tastes. One person’s Lobster Thermidore will be another’s cheeseburger and curly fries. Paradise for some would be relaxing on an island in the Indian Ocean while for others it would be trekking across the American northwest. It’s all relative you see. Likewise, can it truly be said that John Wayne’s portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in True Grit was better than that of Richard Burton’s King Henry VIII in Anne of the Thousand Days? Wayne did win the Academy Award that year, after all. Or was it simply two great artists doing what they do extremely well but being pointlessly compared to one another in a competition where only one can triumph?

Surely then, this is the same pointless comparison for the six actors who have so far played Bond. Each one different, each one bringing something new to the role, each one interpreting the role in their own way from their own prospective. While it’s true that some of the films are better than others, generally a result of a more rounded script, can the better films be accredited solely to the actor in the lead role? Probably not. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is one of the strongest stories in Fleming’s series of novels but was made with a relatively inexperienced actor in the lead role and a fast-paced editing style, making for a slightly wooden Bond and a different looking movie overall. But in spite of this, with a script that leaned more towards plot than full on action while keeping remarkably true to the original story, it remains one of the more intelligent films in the franchise and a firm favourite with fans.

For me, Connery defined the role. He was tall, dark and brutally handsome. His Bond oozed masculinity, had an intrepid sense of fun and an over-stimulated libido, things that quickly became trademarks of the character. Under Cambridge alumnus Terence Young’s direction, Connery was able to portray a man who had had a university education at, among others, Eton (albeit cut short by unruly behaviour) as well as having enjoyed European adventures during his formative years. Connery’s Bond was well educated, had a certain continental exuberance and a graceful British refinement. His wardrobe was simple yet stylish, tailored perfectly to his athletic physique with an elegance no subsequent Bond has managed yet. Certainly Brosnan and Craig are well-decked out in their expensive tuxedos and assorted outfits but by comparison they are starched and look over-dressed. A case perhaps of the wardrobe department trying too hard.

There was a glamour that surrounded the character in those early ’60s films, something exotic that is no longer there. Remember, this was a time when a large majority of us had probably never been abroad (save for those servicemen and women who were stationed overseas during and after WWII) and so Jamaica, Turkey, etc would have been incredibly exciting locales to cinema-goers. Today, a much greater number of us have travelled abroad, experienced far-flung destinations like those places visited by 007 and consequently a part of the mystique of this man’s world has been removed. The same could be said of the exotic car associated with the character as well because the chances of seeing a DB5 (of which just over a thousand were built) around in the mid ’60s was much lower than catching sight of a Vanquish today. Indeed, I’ve no doubt a huge proportion of the younger (and not so younger) generation have probably even driven a Vanquish, if only via a PlayStation console. The mystery, the intrigue of the world that this most secret of men inhabits is all but gone.

The majority of us would likely admit to preferring the James Bond actor that we grew up watching. It’s that age when our minds are most fertile and impressionable and nostalgia often affects a strong influence too. Roger Moore was Bond when I grew up and as much as I enjoyed his 007 (The Spy Who Loved Me being my personal favourite of his) he never threatened to replace Connery’s face in my mind as I re-read Fleming’s novels. I loved Moore’s acting though, it was glib and humorous and highly entertaining (as it was in all he did save perhaps The Man Who Haunted Himself, which I recommend anyone to see) but his Bond didn’t seem as dangerous as Connery’s, or as real. And suddenly we get to the heart of the matter. Realism. Sure, the novels are fiction, we all know that, but they were written by a man who worked for British Naval Intelligence, a man who experienced the world of espionage and managed to translate that experience onto the pages of his novels via his writing style.  And those first two movies, Dr No and From Russia With Love, were respectfully true to the writing, hence, they retained a certain realism. Particularly From Russia With Love, which involves a somewhat low key plot that concerns the acquisition of a decoding machine and the revenge assassination of Bond. Simple stuff by today’s standards but no less entertaining and thrilling for it. As for action, the fight between Bond and Grant in the train compartment is surely one of the best choreographed punch-ups in movie history. Connery and Shaw really do struggle with each other as they smash into the wooden doors and wardrobes. And they make it look so real. By contrast, today’s Bond seems to bulldoze his way over his enemies like a Terminator, showing no emotion and barely any effort as he leaves broken necks in his wake. The editing and pace of modern movies is such that a choreographed fight is less of a scene and more of a splicing together of lots of different moves.

Something else that came to define Bond’s screen character (if not his literary one) was the dry wit, the humour, the witty one-liners. Connery started it, Moore expanded it, Dalton removed it, Brosnan resurrected it and now, Craig has totally overlooked it. But wait a minute, isn’t this humour an integral part of 007’s screen persona? Take that away and you removed a part of the man. We have come to expect Bond to deliver some daft tongue-in-cheek remark after despatching a bad guy from a rooftop. However, let’s not assume that these witticisms are easy to deliver, for it takes a certain ability, a certain (dare I say it) X-factor that an actor either has or doesn’t have and some, perhaps even most, actors just don’t have it. Sometimes a joke can be seen a mile off and come across as simply too obvious, as it did on numerous occasions in the Brosnan films. Yes, they make you chuckle but they come across as having been carefully placed into proceedings by a scriptwriter rather than a flippant off-the-cuff remark by the character himself, something Connery and Moore did so well.

When Timothy Dalton took over the reins in 1987, he said he wanted to take 007 back to the books and the grittiness of Fleming’s writing. He did this and his portrayal was a great departure from Moore’s, which was perhaps no bad thing at the time, when the series was losing momentum but he took a step too far and made Bond dull, boring, sensible, unsexy. The story lines of his two films were not necessarily at fault but in his portrayal of Bond, he lacked that certain something that made him at once deadly and yet likeable and charming.

Like Dalton, Brosnan lacked that undefinable quality to be a great James Bond although he did at least bring the fun back to the series. But by this time the films were nothing more than globe-trotting blockbusters with little of the essence of the novels in evidence, save an Aston Martin and a dry Martini. The story lines were fantastic and the stunts totally unreal simply because the cinema-going public had grown used to all of Hollywood’s heroes escaping from enormous explosions with their shirt tails on fire while riding a high-powered motorcycle one handed through a plate glass window. Nowadays, the cinematic world is full of Jason Bournes and Frank Martins, riveting audiences to their seats with high octane action. So, is James Bond still unique among contemporary movie characters?

Casino Royale was a great film and according to polls, one of the most popular Bond films to date. Again though, do we credit the lead actor with this success or the screenplay, which was pretty darn close to the original story? Daniel Craig certainly redefined the role to fit him as an actor but if we are going to attempt a pointless comparison with the previous five actors, then I think it’s a little premature to label him the best Bond ever. For my money, he completely lacks the charm, the wit and the elegance of Fleming’s creation and as I said earlier, he tends to trample his enemies like a Terminator. He’s more of a well-dressed thug than a suave secret agent and despite his tuxedo, he exudes the qualities of a man who’d prefer a beer than a Martini. Yes, he may have set female pulses racing around the world with his emergence from the ocean in a scene precariously reminiscent of Hally Berry in her orange bikini from Die Another Day, but he’s made the character a lot less likeable and consequently, less fun to watch. The films themselves have become too big, too spectacular, too fantastic and because of this, the stunts and the story lines become ever more unbelievable. How wonderful it would be for the producers to return to Fleming’s roots and give us an intelligent espionage thriller once more instead of another saving-the-world mega blockbuster that is nothing more that a series of death-defying stunts strung together by an unbelievable story line.

So, is Sir Roger merely fanning the flames of the series after the relative disappointment of Quantum Of Solace or does he have a point? Is Daniel Craig a better actor than those who preceded him in the role and does he have the best build of any of them? Being the only one to come in under six feet, he’s certainly the shortest and stockiest but the best? Personally, I think Daniel Craig needs to lighten up a little and let us see that he’s enjoying the role of the world’s coolest secret agent before he gets anywhere near Connery’s portrayal. But that’s just my opinion. And we all have one.

Skyfall will doubtless make millions of dollars and ensure that Bond returns once more but at the end of day, the difference between today’s Bond films and the early ones will be explicated by the historians. Critics and fans alike already view Dr. No, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger as ‘classic’, genre-defining moments of cinema. The rest of the titles in the series, well, however much we love them, they are less likely to garner such acclaim and will probably be spoken about in the same way as the majority of rip-roaring blockbusters that Hollywood churns out.