Missing British films

Where are the following?

I Start Counting (Jenny Agutter 1969) - rereleased a couple of years ago but no sign on DVD.

Unman Wittering and Zigo (1971) - dangerous goings-on at public school. With David Hemmings, shot by Geoffrey Unsworth

The Class of Miss MacMichael (Glenda Jackson, Oliver Reed, 1979).

Three Into Two Won't Go (Judy Geeson 1969).

My Lover My Son (1970 Romy Schneider, Dennis Waterman).

Baxter! (1973, Sally Thomsett, directed by Lionel Jeffries. With Patricia Neal, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Britt Ekland & Paul Eddington). Update: OK this is now available and well worth watching.

Made (1972) - Carol White, Roy Harper.

Running Scared (1972) Directed by David Hemmings.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001 Chris Columbus)

It was ITV's fault. First they showed Holiday on the Buses, then we came in on the comically young-looking trio of Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson and decided we had to revisit the film / series, which is great fun and boasts a stellar line up including Robbie Coltrane, Richard Harris, Maggie Smith ("I knew that Jean Brodie accent would come in handy again"), Alan Rickman (hilariously camp - the pantomime bad guy), Ian Hart, Richard Griffiths, Zoe Wanamaker (terrific, but she reportedly priced herself out of any more), Julie Walters, John Hurt etc. I was thinking "Warwick Davis missed out here", but of course he is not only a goblin but Professor Flitwick as well (did he get paid twice?) Of the youngsters, Tom Felton as Draco is the most assured (possibly because it's easier to act the bad guy?)

Chris Columbus no doubt got the job on the back of Home Alone - "you know, he's good with kids!" Though as film snobs like me will have it, the job should have gone to the director of the third and best film (Azkeban) Alfonso Cuaron, who's good with kids, magic and startling imagery.

Some of the effects in the Quidditch game and around the Cloak of Invisibility are really not much better than they were in King Kong and The Invisible Man in the thirties. Great attention to detail and sets:

John Williams' score is peerless. John Seale shot it. Adapted by Steve Kloves, fortunately without changing any of the story or characters.

Film is like a Charles Dickens reinterpretation of one of those boarding school kids' books. Also features a damned fine looking cat:

I like the name Nicholas Flamel, and may start using it.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991 Jonathan Demme)

Anthony Hopkins (AA) Jodie Foster (AA) Scott Glenn, Anthony Heald (doctor).

Scr Ted Tally (AA) (who wrote the previous year's White Palace) met author Thomas Harris socially, read the novel and thought "Not only is this really clever but the audience are going to love it". He decided to focus the story on Clarice Starling (see here).

Jonathan Demme says it's better to confuse the audience for a couple of minutes than bore them for ten seconds - clearly evident in scenes where we're misdirected in a Hitchcocky manner (the film's best moments). Demme also won Oscar and there's more evidence of his straight on shooting style with much of the film in close up and not much in the way of establishing shots: note the wonderful interchange between the two leads firstly perfectly through bars, then closer and closer until we're all in extreme close up:

Jodie apparently recently said about it "None of us were that good before and none of us were ever that good again". Of her own career this may sadly be true, though Demme went on to make the splendid Philadelphia and Hopkins subsequently received three Oscar nominations (one for Remains of the Day).

Demme is again in partnership with Craig McKay (editing; nominated) and Tak Fujimoto (camera) - Howard Shore's music is underwhelming. Has the distinction of being one of only three films to have won the top five Oscars (the others being It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), though in the UK it lost out to the now less well-known The Commitments.

I like the way Demme casts former mentor Roger Corman in his films.

Holiday on the Buses (1973 Bryan Izzard)

Reg Varney, Bob Grant, Stephen Lewis, Wilford Brimley.

It was like watching a car crash - something made us keep looking. But we were witnessing the death of the British film industry.

Disguised film about screwing, with nudge nudge factor. Two large Martinis help.

Commissario Montalbano (2013)

Is this latest series of Uncle Monty (as I have started calling it for no good reason) getting predictable, I had been thinking? Always two seemingly unconnected stories that are always connected, always the damsel in distress who isn't what she seems, the pantomime behaviour of Catarella, unfinished meals etc. Then the third episode kicks in, with its rather more serious tale of Mafia 'suicide' and political intervention. Montalbano despairs of his country in which a senior politician has said "We must learn to live with the mafia" (whether this is true I couldn't corroborate) to the extent that it has put him off his lunch: both the prandial and political aspects of this are series firsts, as the show has always slightly skirted around direct mafia criticism or focus.

The drama still benefits enormously from Franco Piersanti's marvellously evocative and moody score - some of it I think new for this season - which is unlike anything else on television ever.

The Odd Couple (1968 Gene Saks)

A well familiar collection of great one-liners (unmistakably a filmed play, by Neil Simon) performed by a talented cast, Matthau and Lemmon making an unforgettable pairing.

"He has so many credit cards that if anything happens to Felix, America lights up."
"Now it's garbage."
"I've got brown sandwiches and I've got green sandwiches"
"You'll be the first one I call." etc.

The card players whose names we always forget: (l to r) John Fiedler, Herb(ert) Edelman,  Larry Haines, David Sheiner.

 The Coo Coo Pigeon sisters: Carole Shelley (the redhead) and Monica Evans.

Bizarrely the third film today featuring a suicide attempt. It must have been Suicide Sunday.

The Artist (2011 Michel Hazanavicius & scr)

What's to say about The Artist? It's amazing how a black and white, silent film in 4x3 could be so popular. It does remind us how big silents were, and with a full orchestral backing and dinner dress, quite like going to the opera! I'd forgetten it's quite sad (the plot really is A Star is Born).

Scene where Dujardin and Bejo repeat takes and fall in love is utterly beautiful. Then entire sequence that reinterprets Herrmann's Vertigo score is wonderfully cinematic, leading right up to the climactic joke.

Now I'm more familiar with it I can see there are little faults - the dream scene in which we hear sound is brilliant but actually slightly confuses the film's conceit, McDowell's is a non-part, there's an error of editing in the staircase scene (which looks from the side like a set from M) for example - but who cares when dazzled with Hazanavicius' wit and skill (he's also co-editing) and Uggy's Palm Dog winning performance.

Why are there three monkeys just identifiable but out of focus behind Dujardin in his apartment? Because they return, in striking close up, in the scene where he discovers Bejo has all his belongings - a neat (symbolic) touch.

Splendid wall to wall music (most noticeable when absent) by Ludovic Bourse.

The Brits loved it more than the American Academy, giving Hazanavicius the best writing award as well as director (and Guillaume Schiffman the BAFTA for filming it) for which he credited them on their perspicacity. His drama The Search filming now. His OSS117 films with Dujardin are also very funny and well worth seeing.

Would make a great companion piece to The Aviator, which uses early colour in a very striking way.

The Lost Weekend (1945 Billy Wilder)

Powerful, brilliantly written (by Wilder and Charles Brackett) look at failing alcoholic writer (source novel by Charles R Jackson, himself an alcoholic and addict).

Ray Milland great as drunk, Jane Wyman his girl, Howard da Silva makes an impression as the barman, Phillip Terry is the brother, and Frank Faylen a slightly sinister nurse.

Examples of great writing:

"One's too many and a hundred's not enough."
"We have quite a supply of milk."
All the pawnbrokers are shut because it's Yom Kippur - even the Irish ones (so they in turn can all be closed on St Patrick's Day also).
Doris Dowling (Gloria): "I waited half the night like it was the first date I ever had."

And directing:

The bathroom mirror.
The bottle hanging out of the window.
The bottle that's in the ceiling lamp.

And lighting:

Rain patterns over walls in end sequence (John Seitz).

Oscar wins (film, actor, director, screenplay) and nominations (Doane Harrison, Seitz, Rózsa). Best film at Cannes.

A Guide for the Married Man (1967 Gene Kelly)

Perfectly adequately described here. It's not really a film, more a collection of sketches. It must have been the last thing Jayne Mansfield was in (she is of course the lady with Terry-Thomas who can't find her bra).

Theme song written by Johnny Williams and Leslie Bricusse and performed by The Turtles could almost be Dodgy in the making.

Legendary editor Dorothy Spencer (Foreign Correspondent, To Be or Not to Be) cut it.

This Must Be the Place (2011 Paolo Sorrentino & scr)

Either Sorrentino or any producers who actually bothered to watch the rushes should have been fired for allowing Penn to play the lead with such fey, camp weakness which seriously undermines the whole film - you can barely make out what he's saying and looks distractingly as bad as The Cure's Robert Smith. Sorrentino is also trying far too hard to be arty, which is a shame as indie has its moments. The story is ostensibly about tracking down an ageing Nazi who humiliated Penn's estranged father.

Luca Bigazzi's lighting looks more appropriate for a serious thriller like his own Romanzo Criminale:

Also with Frances McDormand, Judd Hirsch, Harry Dean Stanton.

The VIPs (1963 Anthony Asquith)

Various passengers awaiting a flight to New York from London Airport have problems when fog delays departure. Neat premise, written by Terence Rattigan, centres on rather dull tale of husband Richard Burton and unfaithful wife Elizabeth Taylor and lover Louis Jourdan; more interesting are businessman Rod Taylor (actually playing an Australian for a change!) and devoted secretary Maggie Smith (not her debut - that was in 1955); befuddled aristocrat Margaret Rutherford (winning her Oscar); and film director Orson Welles, who keeps kissing his accountant, and girlfriend Elsa Martinelli.

Ground staff includes Richard Wattis (who's oddly dubbed when he reveals the name of an African passenger he's about to greet at the end), David Frost, Michael Hordern, Dennis Price, Ronald Fraser, Lance Percival and Joan Benham (Upstairs Downstairs).

Made for MGM. Shot by Jack Hildyard with Gerry Fisher operating. Music of a superior quality by Miklos Rosza.

Best line from Rutherford: "I shall clearly arrive in Florida in an advanced state of drug addiction".

Up At the Villa (1999, released 2000, Philip Haas)

Terrible title, though it is the original title, so take it up with Somerset Maugham.

Film may be husband and wife affair with Belinda Haas adapting original story and editing and Philip directing. I have looked at several web pages to understand their relationship but no one is obliging. They made Angels and Insects.

1930s Florence. Um, Kristin Scott Thomas (not a horrible bitch for a change) is intending to marry safe James Fox and become wife to Consul of Bengal or somewhere, then on one eventful night meets louche American Sean Penn and disenfranchised Austrian Jeremy Davies and The Story takes over.

She is a most unfortunate character, so I was pleased that she managed to take control of the situation, which reminds me of the same author's The Letter.

Film feels a little flat and is overlit in the night scenes (Maurizio Calvesi); music by Pino Donaggio. With Anne Bancroft, Derek Jacobi, Massimo Ghini and that guy who was in Porridge (in a non-role - in fact there are rather a few non-roles).

The Yellow Rolls Royce (1964 Anthony Asquith)

Reteaming of Asquith with Rattigan (The Way to the Stars, The Browning Version and The Winslow Boy). The latter is at it again with three tender-tragic stories of lost love, using a 1930 Rolls Royce Sedanca de Ville as a linking device (which makes me wonder when the stories are set - episode two seems to be the twenties?)

Rex Harrison buys car for wife Jeanne Moreau, unaware she's having an affair with Edmund Purdom, with Ascot races as backdrop. With Michael Hordern and Lance Percival in the car showroom, Moira Lister as gossip, Gregoire Aslan an ambassador and Roland Culver the butler.

"With the phone on the left, of course!"

Gangster's moll Shirley Maclaine is wooed by hustler Alain Delon as they travel through Italy. Chauffeur Art Carney (good) has to intervene to protect her from George C. Scott. (Not sure where they end up in the story but it's clearly Positano).

And finally American society lady Ingrid Bergman (great) ends up getting mixed up with Yugoslavian partisans led by Omar Sharif. She doesn't actually end up carrying a gun, but almost! With Joyce Grenfell and Carlo Croccolo as the driver.

Filmed partly on sets (e.g. blue lagoon) and partly on location. Usual plush MGM values shot by Jack Hildyard in Metrocolor and Panavision, with Gerry Fisher as an operator. The music and theme song are by Riz Ortolani. I found it all rather touching and affecting, much more than just a cobbling together of stories.

The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005 Judd Apatow)

See here

Superbad (2007 Greg Mottola)

Written by Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg.

Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and Christopher Mintz-Plasse attempt to buy booze and make out with girls in almost off-puttingly crude film. The best bits are with McLovin and the police (Seth Rogan and Bill Hader).

Actually has more than a little in common with American Graffiti

Also with Martha MacIsaac and Emma Stone.

Shot by Russ Alsobrook. Good 70s soul soundtrack.

The Deep Blue Sea (2011 Terence Davies)

Adapted by Davies from Terence Rattigan's play but looking unmistakably like one of the director's earlier films, with its slow deliberate pace, beautiful attention to period detail, and people singing.

Rachel Weisz (superb) leaves husband Simon Russell Beale for no-good Tom Hiddlestone: drama ensues. Ann Mitchell makes an impression as the landlady ("You don't know what love is..."), Barbara Jefford as the mother and Karl Johnson as a sort of doctor.

Beautifully photographed by Florian Hoffmeister; music by Barber.

Rattigan seemed to write quite a bit about affairs and unhappy relationships and it appears his father was serially unfaithful to his mother...

The Pledge (2001 Sean Penn)

Retired cop pledges to track down child murderer.

After noticing Chris Menges' natural lighting and Jay Cassidy's notable editing style, I got lost in the acting - Penn is obviously a great actors' director. Nicholson gives an outstanding performance which  was overlooked by the awards panels - it wasn't one of his nine Oscar nominations or three wins, but should have been. Penn - perhaps referencing M in the balloon moment - is no slouch either at cranking up inexorable tension (it's like being magnetised to a bad dream) as various possible murderers threaten the life of his girlfriend's daughter, who he knowingly uses as bait and thus blows his whole future relationship.

The French knew a good thing though and nominated Penn for the Palme D'Or.

Great cast: Aaron Eckhardt, Sam Shepherd, Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Mirren, Harry Dean Stanton, Benicio del Toro (doing a Terry Gilliam!), Patricia Clarkson, Mickey Rourke; and Robin Wright and Pauline Roberts as the mother and daughter.

Based on the novel by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt and written by Jerzy and Mary-Olsen Kromolowski. 

Knocked Up (2007 Judd Apatow & scr)

Rather sweet film will be one of our best-loved comedies for years to come, and much needed after The Trench. Slacker Seth Rogan impregnates Katherine Heigel (really good) and lives with the consequences. Amazing cast includes Harold Ramis, Jonah Hill, Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, the Apatow girls, Jay Baruchel, Martin Starr and Carlyne Li, and all the bit parts are equally funny e.g. Kristen Wiig as hostile producer, Ken Jeong as obstetrician, Bill Hader et al. Extended cut does feel too long though.

The Trench (1999 William Boyd & scr)

Screened appropriately enough on Remembrance Sunday, Boyd's lesson of life in the trenches on the eve of the Battle of the Somme is quietly powerful, like being punched hard in the gut without you knowing it. Featuring Paul Nicholls, Daniel Craig, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Danny Dyer, James D'Arcy, Cillian Murphy, Ben Whishaw.

Boyd on set: his only film as a director

Julian Rhind-Tutt and Daniel Craig making impressions as alky officer and teetotaller sergeant.

Photographed by Tony Pierce-Roberts, music by Evelyn Glennie and Greg Malcangi - their simple effective rising chord sequence is creepy (this isn't nearly a good enough descriptor: the rising repeated pattern conveys inexorability and is unsettling, and it also seems to convey to me something almost medieval and religious, like a simple psalm or something beyond my knowledge) - and edited by husband and wife team Jim Clark (who was called off to cut Bond) and Laurence Méry-Clark. Personally I thought the decision to shoot purely inside the trench was a good one. And may I rebut the IMDB reviewers who claim the trench is too dry and tidy with this from Jim Clark's Dream Repairman: "Will maintained that research had proved that the trenches on the Somme in the summer of 1916 were dry as a bone and in immaculate condition. No-man's-land was a lush unmown meadow full of wildlife without a puddle to be seen, and Will was determined to undermine the clichéd view of the trenches as knee deep in mud."

The moment when a captured German soldier thanks the troops for a cigarette and is led away and they unanimously chime "See yer later" is funny and heart-breaking at the same time.

This, for Boyd, is where the twentieth century actually begun; he's keen to share this War with us (and indeed references moments from his own novel The New Confessions in a couple of places). Did he smile grimly as he plotted the final fate of his protagonists?

For me though it was Julian Rhind-Tutt's officer who stayed with me for days after it was all over.

Postscript 18 Jan 2014. Indeed, it's one of those films that doesn't leave you. The best kind.

Married to the Mob (1988 Jonathan Demme)

Written by Barry Strugatz and Mark Burns, Alec Baldwin again appears as a hit man who is himself whacked, leaving widow Michelle Pfeiffer (good) to fend off mob boss Dean Stockwell and jealous wife Mercedes Ruehl.

Michelle Pfeiffer with reggae artist Sister Carol East

Matthew Modine and a very young-looking Oliver Platt are the good guys.

It's a lot of fun and rather well made. Tak Fujimoto is again on camera and the titles are by Pablo Ferro.

To Rome with Love (2012 Woody Allen & scr)

Parents Woody Allen and Judy Davis come to meet daughter Alison Pill's fiancée's family, and find shower singing opera star Fabio Armiliato (a real tenor). Alessandro Tiberi and Alessandra Mastronardi are newlyweds who become separated - he has the good fortune to bump into Penelope Cruz while she experiences first a romantic film star and then - in a fabulous plot twist - a romantic burglar.

Alessandra Mastronardi (from the TV series of Romanzo Criminale)

Penelope Cruz bumps into some of her clients

Architect Jesse Eisenberg falls for Ellen Page whilst Alec Baldwin acts as an ironic chorus:

And Roberto Benigni is bewildered when he suddenly becomes famous for being famous.

Added up it's one of his funniest recent films, shot in a gorgeous hue by Darius Khondji.

Uncle Buck (1989 John Hughes & scr)

My favourite Candy and Hughes film, perhaps because it's the least sentimental; certain lines are oddly memorable ("I seem to be eating a lot of cheese lately").

Jean Louisa Kelly, now mainly on TV "We need boys so they can grow up and turn into shadows."

Macauley Culkin and Gaby Hoffmann are the other kids, Elaine Bromka mom, with Amy Madigan (what sort of name is Chenice?) and Laurie Metcalfe .

I wonder what impelled Hughes to write about teenagers so much?

Philadelphia (1993 Jonathan Demme)

Tom Hanks won Oscar and writer Ron Nyswaner was nominated but it was a stiff competition year (Schindler's List). Unfairly overlooked was Demme, who's direction is outstanding - almost all the key dialogue scenes are shot centred and almost to camera, like this:

The effect is very intense. He also uses other good tricks, like the courtroom inquisition in which Mary Steenburgen (proving how good she is in tough role) is filmed at a tilt, or the Puccini scene from overhead, in which the light changes dramatically:

(Tak Fujimoto is on camera.) Denzel Washington is also good as a conflicted lawyer, Jason Robards as Hanks' former mentor, Robert Ridgely (another partner) and Joanne Woodward.

After a long period of semi-retirement Demme is back now directing new features. Good, because all his films are quirky and distinctive. Maybe we should try his Manchurian Candidate and revive Married to the Mob?

I wonder whether the ending, with the home movie clips, was just a little too much?

Celebrity (1998 Woody Allen & scr)

One of the more obscure Woody Allens, stunningly shot in sharp back and white by Sven Nykvist, with Kenneth Branagh doing perhaps a too good impression of Woody himself as a journalist who's recently dumped Judy Davis (brilliant), one of those Allen characters who finds her life somehow improving.

Brilliant round table shot of Branagh flirting with Winona Ryder. Also great montage in episode where he gets swept up by Charlize Theron's entourage. And great self-referential line "He's one of those assholes who shoots all his movies in black and white."

With Michael Lerner and Debra Messing in hilarious cosmetic surgery scene, Joe Mantegna, Famke Janssen, Leonardo di Caprio, Hank Azaria, Melanie Griffith and Adrian Grenier in non-speaking part.

Hotel (1967 Richard Quine)

My, we do love Rod Taylor, even though - or perhaps because - he is always the same character (The Mercenaries being a notable exception). Here he's reliable Pete, Manager of the St Gregory Hotel, New Orleans, under father figure Melvyn Douglas. He has to contend with erring Peers Michael Rennie and Merle Oberon, hotel detective Richard Conte, thief Karl Malden, hotel acquisitor Kevin McCarthy and his girlfriend Catherine Spaak (below).

Adapted from Arthur Hailey novel by Wendell Hayes; shot by Charles Lang. Has such a catchy, easy-going score by Johnny Keating it has the effect of making you feel you were sat in the hotel bar, enjoying the comings and the goings.

Merle Oberon, a distant relation of Shelley Conn

Rod with Carmen McRae. "The drinks are on the house!"

Plotwise I feel it would have been cool for the hotel to have used the thief in some useful capacity; and that a last-minute rescuer of the hotel could have appeared (cf. Michael J Fox The Concierge). And thus film could be quite usefully remade?