Vacation From Marriage (1945 Alexander Korda)

The MGM Story: "A much publicized merger of MGM British and Alexander Korda's London Films had been announced with a stunning schedule (starting with War and Peace directed by Orson Welles, starring him and Merle Oberon). None were made excepting Perfect Strangers / Vacation From Marriage.. It was Donat's last for MGM, Miss Kerr's first: she followed Greer Garson's example in playing opposite him before beginning a long Hollywood career. Clemence Dane and Anthony Pelissier won Oscars for their original about a couple who joined the navy, saw the world, and couldn't face returning to their humdrum marriage."

Their growth, apart from each other, is well caught, particularly in scene where Kerr has bravely faced a quick sea journey under fire with calm resolution. But it's when they reunite that they behave somewhat foolishly. Enjoyable nonetheless, with Roland Culver and (particularly) Glynis Johns in strong support.

Also features lots of uncredited performances from people like Bill Owen, Edward Rigby, Ivor Barnard, Muriel George and Roger Moore.

Photographed by Georges Perinal.

Living in Oblivion (1995 Tom DiCillo & scr)

Most enjoyable and satisfactory indie effort about the making of a film. Unlike other versions (State and Main, Sweet Liberty, Mistress etc etc) it is just about the actual film shoot - and dreams that bounce off it. Steve Buscemi is great as the stressed director, Catherine Keener the under-pressure star. With Dermot Mulroney, Danielle von Zerneck, James Le Gros, Rica Martens, Peter Dinklage (great as unnecessary dream appendage), Rica Martens (mother).

Didn't recognise a single name behind camera. DeCillo was a cinematographer on Jim Jarmusch films. His next film, Box of Moonlight, with John Turturro, Keener again and Sam Rockwell, sounds Jarmuschy. Also made a well rated Doors documentary When You're Strange in 2009. Since then mainly a director of TV though also made the five years in the making documentary Down in Shadowland observing people on the NYC subway. An interesting fellow!

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938 Michael Curtiz)

Q correctly identified William Tracy from The Shop Around the Corner as the young Pat O'Brien, who grows up to be the local vicar, whilst James Cagney took the criminal path.

Robert M Haas is the art director credited responsible for the great inner city set, which reminded me of Once Upon a Time in America. Cagney returns to his roots (did grow up in similar circumstances) and becomes an inspiration to the Dead End Kids. Ann Sheridan looks awfully young - she was about 23. Had been in many minor roles before this. Drops out of the story rather. Bogie also looking young.

Sol Polito shot it, Max Steiner scored (orchestrated by Friedhofer as usual). Great montage sequence no doubt the work of  a combination of James Leicester / Siegel / Burks. Owen Marks edited, Perc Westmore on makeup.

Cagney gives it his all in shootout ending.

Manhattan (1979 Woody Allen & co-scr)

 

Stars

Un-Hollywoody lighting

This City Is Ours (2025 Stephen Butchard)

It wasn't just the music (Rael Jones, surely inspired by Mokadelic?) that was making me think of Gomorrah - the whole crime / cocaine / family / betrayal thing is also something they have in common. (Old songs used effectively also.)

It seems wildly implausible e.g. that James Nelson-Joyce would bump off crime family head Sean Bean on their Spanish holiday villa, or that rejected son Jack McMullen would try to bump him off and then change his mind. But it's still an exciting ride. The son is the biggest moron alive - keeps making worse and worse mistakes culminating in gripping and clever final episode, which definitely leaves the way open for season two.

With Hannah Onslow, Mike Noble ('Banksey'), Julie Graham, Laura Aikman, Leanne Best, Kevin Harvey (Bobby), Saoirse Monica-Jackson, Bobby Schofield, Daniel Cerqueira

Eight episodes for BBC. Filmed in Liverpool and Malaga. Butchard wrote Five Daughters, Good Cop. Not sure the title's that great.

The Last Hurrah (1958 John Ford & prod)

Spence had worked with Ford before back in the thirties (Up the River, 1930) but though Ford was keen to have him again in Frank Nugent's screenplay from Edwin O'Connor's novel, Tracy was reluctant. But after several salary increases he finally agreed. It was a happy shooting experience with Ford - knowing the actor would get tired in the afternoons - calling the shooting day to a close deliberately early.

Tracy is of course perfect as the slightly rascally senior politician seeking one more run at Mayor. No problem at all that Tracy and Ford were both fans of first takes, but we've got literally scenes full of actors all who have to be on their game. They are: Jeffrey Hunter, Dianne Foster, Pat O'Brien, Basil Radford, Donald Crisp, James Gleason, Edward Brophy, John Carradine, Basil Ruysdael, Ricardo Cortez, Wallace Ford, Frank McHugh, Carleton Young, FRank Albertson, Bob Sweeney, William Leslie, Anna Lee, Jane Darwell, Arthur Walsh (son).

P.B. The Last Hurrah also deals with defeat.
J.F. What do you call it - 'the glory in defeat'? Right. OK. I liked that picture very much. It was a good character study. And Tracy was a wonderful guy to work with.

Wasn't sure at first but gradually creeps on you right to the poignant ending. (I could hear Ford grumpimg about too much music everywhere.)

Photographed by Charles Lawton. Columbia.

Arthur and George (2015 Scr Ed Whitmore)

He adapted Julian Barnes' novel. Stuart Orme directed. Martin Clunes energetically plays Conan Doyle who gets involved in a rural criminal case where solicitor Arsher Ali has served jail time for mutilating horses - he's obviously innocent as the local police are obviously prejudiced. But the original true story then wanders into fiction, for example involving  a major criminal that Ali has met in prison and a delinquent teenager - quite a Doyle-ish plot, really.

We never do discover why Ali sleeps in the same toom as his father (Art Malik), which is annoying.

With Charles Edwards (The Crown), Hattie Morohan, Emma Fielding, Conleth Hill as racist sergeant.

Photographed in the extreme diffusion style by Suzie Lavelle. Music by Rob Lane. Reasonably diverting in three 45 minute episodes for ITV.

The Untouchables (1987 Brian de Palma)

An atypical script from David Mamet (no clever use of language, for example).

Entertaining gangster flick, fluidly made with notable shootout over a baby and a pram in Union Station.

Supporting Kevin Costner are Sean Connery (winning Oscar but losing BAFTA Supporting Actor as won for The Name of the Rose), Charles Martin Smith (American Graffiti) and Andy Garcia. de Niro is a memorable Al Capone. With Patricia Clarkson.

Music by Ennio Morricone. Photographed by Stephen Burum. Edited by Jerry Greenberg and Bill Pankow. Art direction by William Elliott with Patrizia von Brandenstein as 'visual consultant'.

Film features a lot of historical Chicago ceilings

Tumbledown (1988 Richard Eyre)

Colin Firth is fantastic playing Lt. Robert Lawrence, who really did get shot in the head in the Falklands and through anger and care made it to the other side. It's a great screenplay by Charles Wood, who has written other things about military life including the anti-war Charge of the Light Brigade. (Is that all? Maybe he's less interested in the military than I thought.) It's in flashback so we can see how Lawrence is now and flicks back to the war and his recovery. He's not a particularly likeable character; nor is his pal Paul Rhys; in fact the woman they visit (not quite sure who she was ) describes them as 'angry killers'.

The various voices heard - officers, soldiers, friends, family, carers, the media - are well caught.

His father is David Calder - I knew I knew him. Lots on TV, notably as Bramwell. Mother is Barbara Leigh-Hunt from Frenzy.

Photographed by Andrew Dunn. Edited by Ken Pearce, music by Richard Hartley. Something of a controversy on its release as a 'Sunday Premiere' on the BBC. Won Baftas for Best Single Drama, for Dunn, and Shaunna Harrison for make-up.

Eyre is a well-known theatre director responsible also for films such as Notes on a Scandal, Allelujah and Iris.

The Shining (1980 Stanley Kubrick & co-scr)

Yes, I know rather too much about this film than I ought to.

It's the music that makes it.

An adumbration / variation of the maze?

Production design Roy Walker

DP John Alcott had several camera operators and steadicam operators, one of whom is Garett Brown. Larry Smith is the gaffer.

The Palm Beach Story (1942 Preston Sturges & scr)

"I'll take a Prairie Oyster too. Make mine on the half shell." What is a Prairie Oyster? It's a hangover cure, made with raw egg, Worcestershire sauce and a hot sauce, with optional tomato juice / alcohol. 

It's lovely to see Sturges' stock company of supporting actors all over the place.

"Tomorrow let's go to Fort Myers. There's nothing there, but the drive might be nice."

Victor Milner won an Oscar for photographing Claudette in the 1934 Cleopatra. Don't believe me?

Mr. Lucky (1943 H.C. Potter)

For those who think Grant is the same in everything, they might want to check out this most interesting film, in which he plays a gambler who's out to fleece a war charity. Along with the smooth Grant is the steely and tough Grant, and when he describes his childhood of poverty he might well be talking about himself.

The turning point comes in a marvellous scene in church, where he's read a letter from a Greek mother who's facing the reality of war. The priest, Vladimir Sokoloff, is uncredited.

Good cast includes Laraine Day (Foreign Correspondent), Charles Bickford, Gladys Cooper, Alan Carney, Paul Stewart, Henry Stephenson, Florence Bates.

Artfully photographed by George Barnes and designed by William Cameron Menzies. Potter's direction features some interesting touches. Written by Milton Holmes and Adrian Scott. A big hit for RKO.

Fleishman Is In Trouble (2022 Taffy Brodesser-Akner)

And so is everyone, as it turns out - Mrs. Fleishman and his two old friends. It's based on Taffy's 2019 novel. 

Fleishman - Jesse Eisenberg - is recently divorced and we flash back to how the relationship with Claire Danes unravelled. And we also get to know how his friends Lizzy Caplan and Adam Brodie have been getting on. And although Danes seems like a horrible person, we learn it's not all her fault.. And whilst our sympathies lay entirely with Eisenberg at the outset, by the end we're not even sure we like him so much... So it's a nuanced, adult character study, very good and interesting.

The kids are Meara Mahoney Gross (who makes a wonderful transition from vile to sweet) and Maxim Swinton.

And has quite a roster of talent involved, with Susannah Grant an executive producer, and other producer / directors including Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine, The Battle of the Sexes) who directed three episodes, Alice Wu (The Half Of It), and Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (The Nanny Diaries) who made four. All the cast are exceptional.

Eight episodes for FX. I didn't mind the upside-down New York, it certainly said 'disorientation' very clearly, but the best use of this was when Danes is upside-down in bed and it's like she could fall at any minute.

Girl, Interrupted (1999 James Mangold & co-scr)

Based on a novel  - excuse me, no - a memoir - by Susannah Kaysen, which is perhaps why it feels so real. 1967. A young woman has attempted suicide and thus commits herself to psychiatric hospital, where she meets a dangerous and destructive woman, who is not a nice character at all. 

Winona Ryder is fabulous in the lead role - a career best performance. Angelina Jolie won the Oscar for her supporting role but isn't as impressive, somehow. With Clea DuVall, Brittany Murphy, Elisabeth Moss, Jared Leto, Jeffrey Tambor, Whoopi Goldberg (a lovely, quiet performance), Vanessa Redgrave, Bruce Altman, Mary Kay Place.

Photographed by Jack N Green, edited by Kevin Tent, production designer Richard Hoover. Mangold wrote it with Anna Hamilton Phelan and Lisa Loomer. He's best known for Walk the Line and the new Dylan movie A Complete Unknown.

Runners (1983 Charles Sturridge)

A somehow deeply unsettling TV movie, an early screenplay from Stephen Poliakoff. An eleven year old girl goes missing. Two years later her father, James Fox, who's searching for her in London finds her... But. She's enigmatic, uncommunicative, edgy, can barely talk to him, keeps putting him off. What's going on? Then he tracks her down but she keeps trying to escape, like a wild animal.

And we don't really get a satisfactory explanation for all this, but I guess what Poliakoff is tapping in to is that some people just cannot bear to be in the world they're in.

Amazing that the father isn't arrested after he's seen manhandling and gagging this obviously underage girl.

While this is going on he chums up with a woman who has lost her son, Jane Asher. They encounter all sorts of types in a grubby looking London, photographed by Howard Atherton.

James Fox is fantastic as the father, and Kate Hardie holds her own as the young girl. An early Channel 4 film, music by George Fenton. Waldo Roeg is a second assistant director.

The Claim (2000 Michael Winterbottom)

Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce (several other Winterbottoms, and Goodbye Christopher Robin), inspired by 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' by Thomas Hardy.

Seems to me something akin to McCabe and Mrs Miller, with its very specific time and place - the snowy Sierras in California, 1867. And also provoked thoughts of Eureka. 

Greedy prospector Peter Mullan sold his girlfriend and child when young in exchange for a gold claim - now grown up he encounters them again, as Nastassja Kinski and Sarah Polley. Meanwhile a surveyor for a train company comes through, Wes Bentley, who crosses paths with Mullan, his girlfriend Milla Jovovich and Polley. Also features Julian Richings and Shirley Henderson.

Despite its literary origins something different and interesting. Gorgeously filmed in widescreen by Alwin Küchler, edited by Trevor Waite, designed by Ken Rempel and Mark Tildesley, music by Michael Nyman.

Winterbottom has had an erratic career. His series The Trip is one of the highlights.

Dope Girls (2025 Alex Warren, Polly Stenham)

Julianne Nicholson, Umi Myers, Ellidh Fisher, Eliza Scanlen (copper), Geraldine James, Ian Bonar (copper), Jordan Kouamé.

A sort of Killing Eve punched up period drama with experimental music, ironic captions and bold production design and costumes, sometimes suffering from symbolism overload.

A woman comes out of WWI with experience but no job, sees the nightclub world could make money for her and her daughter, enlists help of illegitimate daughter. Inspired by the non-fiction 'Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground' by Marek Kohn.

We didn't get past episode 1.

Nobody Wants This (2024 Erin Foster)

Blogger Kristen Bell falls for Rabbi Adam Brody, cueing shiksa jokes and the like. Nice long tracking shots of the couple like Preston Sturges would do it. Entertaining and good. But only 10 x 25 minutes.

With Justine Lupe (Succession, The MMM), Timothy Simons & Jackie Tohn, Tovah Feldshuh (mother), Stephen Tobolowsky.

"She has to go."

We haven't seen much of Brody (who co-produced) lately, though he was in American Fiction, The Kid Detective and Promising Young Woman (briefly). We of course know Bell best for The Good Place and Bad Moms.