The Lady Vanishes (1938 Alfred Hitchcock)

To round off our most interesting and enjoyable Hitchcock quadruple bill.

Reviewed here.

Family Plot (1976 Alfred Hitchcock)

Immediately gripping but bizarre plot follows two independent storylines involving medium and taxi-driving boyfriend (the great Barbara Harris and Bruce Dern) and kidnappers William Devane and Karen Black.

Film is one of his light-hearted and frothy affairs with a splendid but funny automobile incident in the vein of NBNW and a true Hitchcock moment when a priest enters a cafe with his five young study group charges, only to be joined a minute later by a stunning brunette... And a gripping finale.

Story derives from Victor Canning's The Rainbird Pattern via Ernest Lehman (one of his last). The music's by John Williams (using a synthesizer for colour) and shot by Leonard South.

The film's last shot - and thus Hitchcock's last moment to audience - is Harris winking to us about the con she's just played: I found that extremely fitting.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1955 released '56, Alfred Hitchcock & prod)

We missed him again - he's watching the acrobats in the Marrakech market. Though Herrmann also appears, as the conductor of Arthur Benjamin's Storm Cloud.

Tons of fun viz. Stewart's uncomfortable episode in (beautifully recreated) Moroccan restaurant, stabbing in market, escape from chapel, hilarious episode in taxidermist (reminiscent of Hitch's thrities British period), incredible silent-movie sequence in Albert Hall. And best of all, the hotel guests who don't leave! (Writer John Michael Hayes.)

Good cast as usual, Bernard Miles unrecognisable, Brenda de Banzie (Hobson's Choice), and particularly Yves Brainville as a suspicious police inspector.

Strangers on a Train (1951 Alfred Hitchcock & prod)

From Patricia Highsmith novel, published a year earlier, adapted by Whitfield Cook, written by Raymond Chandler (unsatisfactory, apparently) and Czenzi Ormonde, film unravels like a bad dream in which elegant psychopath Robert Walker attempts to trade murders with Farley Granger. Good cast includes Marion Lorne as mother, Leo G Carroll, Patricia Hitchcock, Ruth Roman, Kasey Rogers (Granger's wife) and Norma Varden (strangulee at dinner party). Walker was dead of an alcohol-drug overdose inside a year.

Shot by Robert Burks and scored by Dmitri Tiomkin. Several outstanding moments including a bizarre fight on an out-of-control merry-go-round which is both funny and frightening at the same time.

Peeping Tom (1960 Michael Powell)

 

The film that all but killed Powell's career is no more violent or shocking than the same year's big hit Psycho, and shares with that film a sympathetic killer, here played by the recently deceased Karl-Heinz Böhm, a seriously nice man who devoted his later years to African charity projects.

In my ignorance I once thought that the gorgeously muted colour palette was borrowed from Cardiff, but it's clearly the work of Otto Heller.

Briskly put together by Noreen Ackland film has some humour but misses Pressburger, who when asked for his opinion claimed never to have seen it, which I find difficult to believe. Anna Massey finds herself on our screens once again; piano score by Brian Easdale

This Happy Breed (1944 David Lean)

Kay Walsh gives one of the great screen performances; Celia Johnson ain't half bad too. Love the story that the latter liked to go home punctually and after making cast and crew cry over reunion scene (one of the great emotional moments in film) upped and casually buggered off.

From this viewing these lines have become embedded in my head:

"Chuck us the crackers Vi."

and

"Go and cherish yourself off home."

Quite why this is one of the best films ever made I can't properly explain.

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea (1976 Lewis John Carlino)

I was always intrigued by the title - from Mishima's novel, adapted by the unprolific Carlino. And I still don't understand it having finally seen the film. But it's just great. First class performances from Sarah Miles and Kris Kristofferson, but just as crucially, from Jonathan Kahn and chilling Earl Rhodes, without whom the film would be devoid of bite.

Absolutely brilliant Panavision photography of Devon locale by Douglas Slocombe, strikingly edited by Tony Gibbs, who gives us the longest dissolves, but cuts scenes like the finale with savage precision.

Two for the Road (1967 Stanley Donen)

What I'd really like to ask Frederic Raphael - and he is still alive, so I could - is: was your original script written in this jumbled up, non-linear way, or did Donen do that? (Since asking that question I bought the published screenplay. It is written exactly in this way, making it one of the best and cleverest screenplays ever.)

This even includes the trick of seeing the different time periods overlap within the same scene, viz. where the newer versions of themselves pass the old ones by on the road. It's very clever, and manages an insightful, trenchant look at a relationship along the way.

Also very funny, not just in Hepburn's ghastly wardrobe, but in lines like "The girls were absolutely potty about you and so - heaven knows - were you" and the shot of lobsters followed by the sunburned couple.

They were certainly happier in the old days.

Claude Dauphin is the client and Nadia Gray his wife, William Daniels and Elenor Bron the offensive Manchesters ("Howie, you're the biggest untapped pocket of natural gas known to man"), Georges Descrières the smooth lover and it's not in fact Jacqueline Bisset's debut (she had already been in The Knack, Casino Royale, Drop Dead Darling  and Cul-de-Sac).

Far too easily dismissed as a star vehicle travelogue romcom, film fully embraces the nouvelle vague and is dazzling, sardonic, tender, loudly funny and unbeatable.

First saw it on TV on 25 July 1977 and grew increasingly to love it over many viewings, including a memorable cinema screening in Paris on 24 October, 1992.

The line that we keep misquoting is in fact "No Ruthie, I didn't. I did not. No. No, I didn't. No."

But where is that hotel?

The One and Only (1978 Carl Reiner)

Henry Winkler (fantastic) and Kim Darby. With Gene Saks, Hervé Villechaize, William Daniels, Polly Holliday. Written with the unmistakeable pen of Steve Gordon, and as funny and wacky as you'd expect ("Haven't we met before? You were taller, and older.")

Shot by Victor J. Kemper (Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Tycoon).

I Walked with a Zombie

It wasn't really hot enough, or quite late enough (10 past 10), to put this on, but its atmosphere is unbeatable...

http://nicksfilmjottings.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/i-walked-with-zombie-1943-jacques.html

21 Jump Street (2012 Phil Lord, Christopher Miller)

Michael Bacall's screenplay is a hardly subtle yet knowing subversion of eighties genre pics with a particularly foul-mouthed black detective stereotype played by Ice Cube, though it becomes rather silly (if that isn't in itself a contradiction) in story of high school dealers of HFS (shown in amusing stages of effects). Watch this Oscar-nominated, Scorsese-acting Jonah Hill fellow. With Brie Larson, David Franco.

Favourite moment though is Channing Tatum diving through a gong.

Fargo (2014)

Ten part TV series, with Coens acting in exec prod roles, is faithful to the tone of the original though totally reinvents the story - as such a great credit to writer Noah Hawley. None of the original crew are involved - Jeff Russo is the composer.

Martin Freeman is as great as ever in subtly shifting role, Billy Bob Thornton electrifying as souless killer, Allison Tolman and Colin Hanks also great as our homespun police officers.

Favourite shot is in episode 9 where camera tracks along a country road, picks up speed and is then joined by a passing truck..  and it's a year later.

Ending is slightly anti-climactic, but satisfying. Love also the irony that it takes the entire series for the police chief to realise he's in the wrong job.

Gideon of Scotland Yard (1958 John Ford)

We accompany tetchy, efficient and cool in a crisis Scotland Yard detective Jack Hawkins as he deals with corruption in the ranks, payroll snatches and murder - the latter two triggered somewhat implausibly by an impoverished artist, with comic relief from former army colleague (and David Niven's great mate) Michael Trubshawe and a salmon (which must have gone off by the end of the day).

Anna Massey debuts aged 21 (we later saw one of her last performances in Lewis in  2007). Cyril Cusack, considering he is top billed support, is in it as little as he is in any film.

Ealing's TEB Clarke comments on a woman who 'went from pro to dopey'... I wonder if that in itself was a censorship issue?

Photographed by the fabulous Freddie Young in a largely location-set London by Western specialist Ford.

The Darjeeling Limited (2007 Wes Anderson)

Whimsical family character study written by Anderson, Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman and populated by the latter, Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody, with Amara Karan, Waris Ahluwalia (snake loving guard), Wallace Wolodarsky, Anjelica Huston and Bill Murray.

Richly photographed as always by Robert Yeoman.

Episode involving drowning of village boy is the unexpected depth at the centre of the film.

You can't help smiling throughout a Wes Anderson film. Also most interestingly shot and staged e.g. succession of bizarre railway carriage compartments at the end.

A Bout de Souffle (1960 Jean-Luc Godard)

The film that irrevocably changed the rules of editing is rarely emulated in style: the numerous cuts within scenes and across times is just as riveting as it must have been when it first appeared. In a way, a blueprint for all Godard's films that followed.

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg star and most weirdly there is a character called 'Laszlo Kovacs'... Raoul Coutard's naturalistic lightning is in its own way as revolutionary as Cecile's Decugis' fabulous cutting (she is credited for Shoot the Pianist but we know she didn't in fact edit it).

Truffaut gave him the idea and wrote the screenplay to help support him getting started, the same way Rivette had encouraged him to make a short (and Resnais to make a long).

Adventureland (2009 Greg Mottola)

Jesse Eisenberg is very good as a diffident young man working in fun park, romancing Kristen Stewart and being led astray by Margarita Levieva (who I guess we recognise from Revenge). Able support from Apatow regulars Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig and Martin Starr, with Ryan Reynolds and obnoxious friend Michael Zegen, who joyously finally gets his.. That Jesse doesn't drop his alky dad in it is a subtle touch.

Also written by Superbad Mottola (a serious film lover - as evidenced by his Top 10 list for Criterion) and very colourfully shot by Terry Stacey.

Anne and Muriel / Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent (1971 François Truffaut)

Emerging from a depression over failed love affairs with Françoise Dorléac (died in car accident) and her sister Catherine Deneuve (rejected him), Truffaut returned to beloved author Henri-Pierre Roché (Jules et Jim) and tried for a novelistic approach to film - which results in a somewhat talky hour-long exposition, rightfully though dwelling on the insufferable weight of moral behaviour which causes Claude to declare love and marriage to Muriel without having even touched her hand.

Nestor Almendros lights the cottage and rural atmosphere realistically, and it makes you reflect on how much more used to the cold were people of these times.

Anyway, we shift up a gear when Claude returns to fin du siècle Paris and starts an affair with suddenly liberated Anne, with those familiar moments of lightning editing, and changes of both scene and scenery (including a leisurely tracking shot from a moving boat) and the introduction of new characters. Then Muriel comes to stay... In the swinging of romantic fortunes between sisters, film makes me think of Woody Allen.

The moment where Almendros catches the latter two lovers against the sun reflecting water on the bow of a ship is a true and beautiful case of 'see it, capture it' (Cartier-Bresson's 'the decisive moment').

The girls are Kika Markham (with whom inevitably Truffaut had the obligatory affair) and Stacey Tendeter and Claude is of course Léaud. This was the 130 minute director's cut. And it's rather good (iris dissolve on 'good').

Good Neighbor Sam (1964 David Swift)

Good to finally see this, copy from Spain, as the US version that I had bought twice was in fact Operation Mad Ball, despite the packaging!

On the cusp of pop art and Sgt Pepper, film is quite wacky, with mad inventions and paintings on top of a sort of sneaky double-affair plot which Hollywood is so good at, involving ad exec Jack Lemmon (with several classic Lemmonisms), wife Dorothy Provine, neighbour Romy Schneider and her ex Mike Connors.

Film is fun but too long though e.g. dinner scene with client Edward G Robinson doesn't add anything, mad drive around San Francisco is well filmed but irrelevant sub-plot. Plus painting over ads could have led to even funnier payoff with agency (if they'd turned out really popular).

Edward Andrews - Lemmon's boss - is familiar to us from Avanti.

Music de Vol, ph. Burnett Guffey, ed Charles Nelson (incredible credits, looks like was long at Columbia).

And the interesting looking hotel is the Bradbury, which crops up in all sorts of films, such as Chinatown, The Artist, (500) Days of Summer, DOA and even Blade Runner!

The Black Windmill (1974 Don Siegel)

Self-controlled MI6 agent Michael Caine attempts to free kidnapped son with boss's diamonds. Donald Pleasance good as his immediate superior, with a great cast comprising Janet Suzman (his ex), Delphine Seyrig (who I stupidly didn't recognise under efficient English accent), John Vernon (baddy), Joss Ackland, Clive Revill, Catherine Schell and even Joyce Carey as a receptionist!

Liked scene where Pleasance is barely interested in kidnap story but more enthused by exploding briefcase; Tony Gibbs' cutting round a table where Pleasance inadvertently describes a target's name as 'Sean Connery'.

Leigh Vance's screenplay doesn't bother to wrap up the plot too well, but who cares? Source novel 'Seven Days to a Killing' is by Clive Egleton. It was shot by Ousama Rawi in Panavision (thus do not watch ITV4's cropped version), the only Iraqi cameraman I'm aware of, who is still working making prestigous TV mini-series. Roy Budd's music is the only non-event.

Dallas Buyers Club (2013 Jean-Marc Vallée)

Matthew McConaughey looking startlingly unlike himself; Jared Leto the drag queen (both won Oscars); Jennifer Garner a doctor; Steve Zahn is the familiar faced cop.

Seems to peter out a bit, like it doesn't have a proper ending.... Like this review....

Vallée (a Canadian, who also made Young Victoria) also briskly edited, assisted by Martin Pensa.

Pollyanna (2003 Sarah Harding)

Oddly, Men Behaving Badly's Simon Nye has adapted Eleanor H. Porter's novel. Initially, I wanted the (somewhat annoying) girl (Georgina Terry) to be bitten by a weasel, but soon succumbed to the gradual thawing of Amanda Burton, Kenneth Cranham and Pam Ferris, abetted by straight-talking maid Kate (Shaun of the Dead) Ashfield and soft chauffeur Tom Ellis (it was nice to see Tom Bell as well, who will always make me think of Out).

One of those soundtracks that tells you what to feel.

The Burning Plain (2008 Guillermo Arriaga & scr)

Iñárritu's scriptwriter Arriaga decides he can do it on his own: judge for yourself. He hasn't made a film since.

I don't think we're supposed to get that Charlize Theron is the older version of Jennifer Lawrence until the story develops: either that or I'm a bit thick. Kim Basinger is the mother, John Corbett (truck driver), José Maria Yazpik (pilot's friend), Joaquim de Almeida (the lover).

Shot by Robert Elswit and edited by Craig Wood. Previously 15/6/10.

Not quite as good as I remembered it.

August: Osage County (2013 John Wells)

Wells is mainly known as a producer of things like ER and The West Wing  and the screenplay is clearly based on a stage play, both by Tracy Letts (a virtual debut). Extremely well acted by Meryl Streep, the exceptional Julia Roberts (both nominated), Sam Shepherd, Margo Martindale (her best performance so far), Chris Cooper, Ewan McGregor, Julianne Nicholson, Juliette Lewis, Dermot Mulroney, Abigail Breslin and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Shot in a palette that reminds me of John A Alonzo by Adriano Goldman (Jane Eyre) and cut by Stephen Mirrione (credits include Clooney and Iñárritu films) with music by Gustavo Santaolalla (clearly a guitarist in origin). Clooney and frequent collaborator Grant Heslov produced.

For Q it's the film of the year.

Don Jon (2013 Joseph Gordon-Levitt & scr)

A risky debut for JGL, playing a porn addicted wiseguy who falls for Scarlett Johanssen (good) but finds a proper relationship with Julianne Moore in somewhat unlikely turn of events. Another depressing slice of modern Americana.

Good scenes with family Tony Danza, Glenne Headley and Brie Larson (the one moment when she opens her mouth is classic - that's what sisters are for!) and wry digs at Catholic Church ("How do you come up with these numbers?").

Austenland (2013 Jerusha Hess)

Yeesh.

"Would people really do stuff like this?" I asked Q.
"People have Star Trek themed weddings" she replied.

Everyone looks uneasy and I blame Jerusha Hess for this (her debut) and also the script which she co-wrote. Keri Russell cannot carry the film. Also with Jennifer Coolidge, JJ Feild etc. Bad accents abound.

Might have been better with more focus on 'backstage' and if the actors really were completely different in life. But then what do I know? I have never written a screenplay.

The Incredible Journey (1963 Fletcher Markle)

OK, it has cheesy moments, and the human actors aren't up to much, but this film is absolutely incredible. I doubt it could be pulled off today. How on earth did they get these animals to appear together so harmoniously, let alone in the amazing cat vs. bear moment, cat vs. lynx (both clearly in same shot up a tree) and dog chasing rabbit episodes?

It all comes from The Living Desert et al. I suppose, but whatever it is, it's sublime. We have to credit the animal trainers Halleck Driscoll, Bill Koehler (also That Darn Cat) and Al Niemela.

If you're not crying in your cups by the end, you're no sort of human.

From the novel by Sheila Burnford, based on her own animals.

The Way to the Stars

No, not a map of Hollywood homes.

See here.

Good show.

The other John Pudney poem quoted is:

Missing

Less said the better.
The bill unpaid, the dead letter.
No roses at the end
Of Smith, my friend.

Last words don't matter,
And there are none to flatter.
Words will not fill the post
Of Smith, the ghost.

For Smith, our brother,
only son of a loving mother,
The ocean lifted, stirred,
Leaving no word.

Green Wing (2004)

Talking of editing, Green Wing is just as exceptionally well executed as it first seemed ten years ago. The use of editing, to constantly change film speeds throughout a scene, is extremely well done ... Dominic Brigstocke and Tristram Shapeero  (both much on TV) directed it, using the backdrop of Basingstoke Hospital and it was edited by Billy Sneddon and Lucien Clayton, who appear to have created this style in the cutting room (it may have been back in creator Victoria Pile's head). Pile tried to pull it (the whole thing) off again, with Campus, but somehow it just didn't work.

It certainly wasn't the first time we'd encountered certain members of this exceptional cast: Tamsin Greig (Black Books), Mark Heap (a Chris Morris alumni: Jam, Brass Eye  and Spaced) and Sarah Alexander (Smack the Pony), though we probably didn't recognise our great Olivia Colman, Stephen Mangan, Julian Rhind-Tutt (the coolest character), Karl Theobald, Paterson Joseph, Oliver Chris and the extraordinarily funny Michelle Gomez who - like Vivian Pickles in Harold and Maude - makes me laugh the moment I see her, usually in expectation of whatever nonsense she's about to perform.

Spring Breakers (2012 Harmony Korine & scr)

Funded it seems by The Sun, featuring an entirely bikini-clad cast of females, Spring Breakers is by far the worst film I'd seen in a long while. Devoid of plot, you keep wishing something would happen (bad guy turns out to be nice, characters develop a back story, quietly religious girl comes back to kick some ass) but there's nothing - we learn nothing about the characters, the three blondes in particular are empty shells who hardly even speak. Film paints most depressing picture of American life as vacuous Spring Breakers (models every one of them) party and ... party.

I am assured, however, that the editing is good. Douglas Crise was assistant on Good Night and Good Luck, 21 Grams, Traffic and Go,  and edited Babel and Arbitrage, but I contend that no matter how many scenes of mixed up action over a different soundtrack, it cannot save a film with no plot, characterisation, incident, humour, surprise... it can only help disguise it. You wonder in fact if he was brought in to 'save' the film, which is of course impossible.

The review 'bikini-clad brilliance' is a clue (from Zoo magazine, whatever that is) not to watch it.

Can't be bothered to report cast names, but hope never to see them again.

Morse

Nearing the end now (1997). Never seen Richard Briers so beastly!

Talking Back (1989 Douglas Day Stewart & scr)

I wondered when this began "how does a film about a debate team get financed?" but then it is America. Actually film isn't uninteresting, charting relationship of new scholarship students Kirk Cameron and Jaime Gertz with playboy scholar (Tim Quill - rather too pretty and smiley) and inspirational teacher Roy Scheider.

Day had small success in the eighties as a writer of The Blue Lagoon and Officer and a Gentlemen.

Anne Coates' editing is smooth and invisible - as it should be - until inspired moment where she cuts an array of orating students to Chuck Berry's Tutti Frutti.

The eighties music is as awful as you'll remember.

Our from-VHS copy was 4x3 but didn't look particularly cropped.

They Call me Trinity / Lo Chiamavano Trinità (1970 Enzo Barboni & scr)

Still not sure how I managed to sneak this on, but unfortunately early pairing of Terence Hill (Mario Girotti) with Bud Spencer (Carlo Pedersoli) isn't as knockabout slapstick and funny as later movies (such as - apparently - the sequel). Plot is in fact quite traditional (from Seven Samurai on) as the couple are drawn into helping peace-loving community against marauding Chinese ... I mean Mexicans, of course.

The music is a far cry from Morricone, but Also Giordani's widescreen photography is good.

Farley Granger is in it, somehow, and our DVD has helpful notes appearing randomly about such trivia.

My Fellow Americans (1996 Peter Segal)

Jack Lemmon, James Garner, Dan Aykroyd, Lauren Bacall, John Heard, Wilford Brimley, Everett McGill, Bradley Whitford (Studio 60). A TV Movie (?) - 4x3 - in which two inimical ex-Presidents find themselves on the run from conspirators in largely fanciful plot. One or two gags... Terrible music, and arbitrary song choices thrown in...