Silent Witness: And Then I Fell In Love (2012 Timothy Prager)

This - directed by Keith Boak - is the hardest watch of the series so far, as it deals with impressionable teenage schoolgirls being seduced through presents and flattery and drugs into becoming unwilling prostitutes for a gang of Pakistani men. And these girls don't seem stupid, but they all seem to come from unhappy home lives.

Begins with two bangs - Nikki witnesses a barefoot girl being run over and helps her; Harry's flat blows up!

Rather successful in that we see the miserable fate of one of the girls imprisoned and desperate to escape cross cut with how it all begins for another couple of girls.

Elyes Gabel is good as the charismatic gang leader, with Faraz Ayub, Ashwin Bolar and thankfully Tony Jayawardena as the slightly thick one who knows they are doing wrong and eventually comes to the rescue (also good; A Street Cat Named Bob). The girls are Emma Amos, Juliet Cowan, Chloe May.

A taciturn detective is Sam Troughton; Sanjeev Bhaskar also features.

To leaven the dark proceedings, Harry moves into Nikki's flat (though doesn't get much more sleep there!)

What is also quite disturbing that although we see all the gang being arrested, we're not convinced there will be enough evidence to convict them all. And this was some years before the Bradford grooming scandal, also.

Roman Holiday (1954 William Wyler)

When Audrey says she's aware of her responsibility and that's why she's come back; had she not been aware of it she may not have returned at all - I was wondering how many times Willie made her say it! Certainly you can see in the climactic press conference at the palace quite how good a director of actors he is.

Audrey would not have been known at all in Rome, which must have been liberating.

Caffe Rocca next to the Pantheon is no longer there. Via Margutta is near the Spanish Steps; Fellini lived there.

East of Eden (1955 Elia Kazan)

John Steinbeck 'Cain and Abel' story adapted by Paul Osborn - the irony being that the 'bad' character is the better one. Strong performance from James Dean, who was Oscar nominated after his death. With Raymond Massey, Julie Harris, Richard Davalos, Burl Ives, Jo Van Fleet and a young Lois Smith (pictured at bar with Dean below). And more ironies in that Dean and Harris make a better couple than her and his brother. And also that Dean is a better businessman than his father. And that he could have had a good relationship with his mother when the others couldn't.

Creatively photographed by Conrad Hall's mentor Ted McCord, using the widescreen well.

Editor Owen Marks is not afraid of the widescreen. Strong score from Leonard Rosenman

It was a Warner Bros film, designed by James Basevi and Malcolm Bert.

La Cérémonie (1995 Claude Chabrol & co-scr)

I wanted to see this as it was reportedly the only adaptation of a Ruth Rendall novel 'A Judgement in Stone' that she approved. (Chabrol adapted it with Caroline Eliacheff), And it's quite shocking.

As usual we're in an isolated house in the country near a small village. (Are any Chabrols set in a city?) A slightly strange lady, Sandrine Bonnaire, is employed as a maid by Jacqueline Bisset to look after her husband (Jean-Pierre Cassel), step daughter (Virginie Ledoyen) and son (Valentin Merlet). The family are quite good to her, really, particularly the daughter, but her path crosses with wilful and rebellious post office worker Isabelle Huppert (a performance of some vigour) who you could argue leads her astray. But they both may have had darker secrets in their pasts. They have funny quirks. Bonnaire keeps saying 'I don't know' to something she should know, like 'Do you like your room?' Huppert seems slightly obsessed in washing her hands.

One interpretation is it's a film about class differences.

The ending - that the murders have accidentally been recorded on tape - is a real doozy, and actually plays out right through to the very end of the credits.

Quite high key lighting by Bernard Zitzermann, incisively edited by Monique Fardoulis.

Murder to opera - is this where Woody took inspiration from?

Bisset's mother was French but she had to learn the language. As far as I can tell she doesn't live in France.

It's quite stunning as well as shocking. Huppert was the only winner of its seven César nominations.

How To Murder Your Wife (1964 released 1965 Richard Quine)

From the off, as Terry Thomas addresses the audience - the men in the audience, as the wives wouldn't want to see this picture and are at home in their kitchens - it's knowingly sending up the old-fashioned attitudes of the bachelors, and ends on a reassuring note - the man needs the woman. "Now's your chance - go in there and finish her off." George Axelrod's the writer.

Lemmon's great as usual - a real one-off - but Terry-Thomas and Verna Lisi are strong in support.

And I would have to say if I was teaching how to score a movie, then this would be a really fun example. For it's not only Neal Hefti's themes that are interesting - there's one for the Brash Brannigan capers, one for Lemmon and Lisi canoodling, an Italian theme just for her, the funeral marches etc. - but it's also the way he arranges the themes as needed to really suit a particular scene or moment.

I was only thinking a couple of days before of Lemmon saying' You no speak-a de English" and I couldn't remember what film it was from!

Half Nelson (2006 Ryan Fleck)

 Like though the credit 'A film by Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden' (she co-wrote and edited).

Yes, see here. Anthony Mackie is as good as Gosling and Epps.

Could have done with the occasional shot - the last one. for example - not being hand held.

Does Gosling say at one point that he's 'been over there' (the war)?

The music's by Broken Social Scene and it was filmed in Brooklyn.

Daniel Ellsberg was a political activist who published the Pentagon Papers in 1971 which revealed the Government's thinking over Vietnam.

The Chatterley Affair (2006 James Hawes)

Written by Andrew Davies, who has represented some of the trial itself - which now seems mad - including a Bishop who claims the book 'sanctifies' sex and a lecturer who describes it as 'Puritanical'. But what Davies has also done is to make up the jury - in particular a couple, who - perhaps because of the shared experience of the book - get it together. They are Rafe Spall and Louise Delamere, played older by Kenneth Cranham and Claire Bloom.

It's funny that the minute Spall goes down on his wife Alyson Coote, she realises he's been having an affair!

The courtroom stuff goes on a bit. 

With Karl Johnson, Pip Torrens, David Tennant, Montserrat Lombard, Gerard Horan, Mary Healey.

The Blue Boy (1994 Paul Murton & scr)

Perhaps influenced by Don't Look Now, this uses water in a creepy way, as couple Emma Thompson and Adrian Dunbar on holiday in Scotland experience mysterious manifestations... yes it's got more in common with Roeg's film  than I realised. Joanna Roth is the other woman, David Horovitch the landlord. Eleanor Bron the gnostic, Phyllida Law appropriately Thompson's mum.

They found the right location. It was quite engaging, thank you.

Stuart Wyld shot it and Peter Hayes cuts it all together sensibly.

The familiar name of Rebecca Eaton is there as Executive Producer for BBC / WGBH Boston.

Silent Witness (2012)

Redhill. Ed Westmore. Andy Hay

Good start. Leo is lying to Janet (Jaye Griffiths), is off on his own drinking. Then finds a crashed car, then a women drops dead in his arms. Once the police and Nikki have arrived, they rashly enter a nearby house and find another victim - and a mysterious figure who runs away.

It links to corruption at Redhill prison where Leo Gregory makes an impression as a truly vile officer. With Juliet Aubrey, Gillian Kearney, Dorian Lough.

Leo behaves totally madly in this, at one point seeing Gregory with a gang with guns but doesn't tell the police (I guess because he realises they will have fled the coop - Westmore underwriting again).

Its conclusion is barely believable, but the next one, Fear, is absolutely mad, and comes over more like a horror film. I don't know what the normally great Appleton and Keeble had been smoking, but this is all about a girl who has dropped dead for no reason, and demonic possession. Yeah.

Good cast though with young Jodie Comer, Adrian Dunbar, Tamsin Outhwaite, Nina Sosanya, Mark Letheren, Tom Ellis (Miranda).

Tall Tales of Silent Witness (2012)

Harry and Nikki had briefly met the participants in Domestic (Richard Davidson / Anthony Byrne) and find there's been a trio of murders in a family home. Neil Maskell is something of a suspect in a complicated and somehow distant tale of intrafamilial doodads. The suspect runs away again.

Then in Paradise Lost (Stephen Davis / Edward Bennett) a disturbed woman seems to be collecting bone parts at the behest of an imprisoned and violent murderer (James Cosmo, Karen Pirie, Nightsleeper. The Durrells). Frankly her son Tobi Bakare (in air conditioning red herring) seems a little odd too (Death in Paradise, Malpractice). And how does all this involve contentious pathologist Pookie Quesnel?

I think Davis is more interested in 'Paradise Lost' than any of us, which is fairly wearisome (perhaps he studied it at Uni or something). Q spots the significance of the old lady in church pretty much straight away.

Highlight: showdown between Nikki and murderer in otherwise bonkers tale.

More Silent Witness (2011-12)

Season 14 finale: The Prodigal. Michael Crompton. Director James Strong.

Basically, a shooting in the Dutch Embassy, police shot and killed, a boy gone missing. Naturally Harry finds the boy and is great with him - as he has always been since that one with the school kids and the death cloud (Season 8's Death by Water). It all fits devilishly together, even down to why a different pathologist (who Harry tutored) is called in.

With Matthew McNulty (After the Flood), Kate Ashfield, Lorcan Cranitch, Sarah Solemani, some Dutch people, Oliver Chris (Trying, Emma.)

Season 15. Death Has No Dominion. Ed Whitmore. Director Andy Hay.

Nikki's Dad has died and she can't process it. Because Leo and Harry have rowed, she is assigned to a murder which everyone assumes involves the mysterious 'Wraith', an attention-seeking madwoman, and into the path of obsessed detective Vincent Regan, who in a mirror story can't process his wife's death.

Without giving anything away, it's even more devilishly clever than the last one!

I loved the subtlety of the sequences where you think the fireman and his family are being stalked and only afterwards realise what has been going on (and only if you think about it) - a nice elusive story detail.

Harry is teamed up with pregnant detective Shelley Conn.

The Best Silent Witnesses

Divided Loyalties. Niall Leonard. Dead woman and baby. Drugs. 'Stukie'.

The World Cruise. Tony McHale. Auschwitz resurfaces.

The Fall Out. Tony McHale. Multiple vehicle pile up. And a spare arm.

Closed Ranks. Tony McHale, Season 6. Leo's wife and daughter are visiting when a case similar to one of his old ones appears.

Answering Fire. Dusty Hughes. Fire in hotel. Dodgy politician.

Choices. Doug Milburn. Harry befriends kid who's involved in night club drive by shooting.

Cargo. Doug Milburn. Boat of illegals capsize. Infectious disease on board, and little missing girl who Nikki just will not give up on.

Body of Work. Rhidian Brook, Season 10. Harry and Nikki are starting to get it on when an old flame of Harry's turns up dead.

Schism. Christian Spurrier. A bit far-fetched, but Nikki is kidnapped.

Hippocratic Oath. Tony McHale. Two bodies in one coffin...

Shadows. Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble. Killing spree at Uni. Season 13.

Bloodline. Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble again. Harry in The Third Man. 

Death Has No Dominion. Ed Whitmore. 'The wraith'!

A Stressload of Silent Witness (2011)

Not so much in the first one, First Casualty, by Oliver Brown and Michael Crompton, directed by Keith Boak. An army lieutenant is clearly showing signs of PTSD, Kieran Bew. Both he and his former colleague's girlfriend are found dead - is it murder? Army colleagues involved are David Ajala (Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue, Starred Up), Darren Morfitt (good as sergeant; he also appears in a Season 20 episode as a DCI!), Theo Barklem-Biggs (Rogue Heroes).

The suspect runs away again, twice...

But it's the next film, written by Dudi Appleton (who also directed) and Jim Keeble, Bloodlines, that really shakes the barley. In an arresting flash forward, Harry is seen running through the streets of Budapest covered in blood. It turns out he's out there to perform an autopsy that has already been cremated - the corrupt nature of the city coming through already; and to visit his new GF, rights campaigner Lili Bordán. There's a jokey feel to the early scenes -

Nikki: What is it, have you shagged everyone in London?
Harry (looking pointedly at her): Not quite.
Nikki: I think you like her, this Ava.. Eva.
Harry: Anna. Yes I do. I've only spent a couple of weekends with her, but yes I do like her. But I love you.

This jokey feel is maintained through to Budapest and even to a meeting with Anna's father, Julian Glover. But then Anna is murdered and Harry's seen the assailant, but in fleeing knowing he's become the No.1 suspect, and suddenly we're in The Third Man territory, where no one can be trusted, and Hitchcock's classic Wrong Man on the run. But then when at the end of episode one Harry is killed (and the look of terror on his face is fabulous) it's like the end of the world... To say more would be a spoiler, but it goes places you wouldn't expect at all.

 

The two writers talk about it here. "Sometimes, it seems, you don't give the audience what they want and they like you for it."

The film does for Hungary's tourist board what Finding Rachel did for Zambia.

Ferenc Elek plays a shabby former idealist, Kata Dobó a junkie prostitute, who both help Harry (both wonderful performances). Mike Kelly's the diplomat, Iván Kamarás the dodgy detective.

Some of its flash forward editing - by Katie Weiland - is in the Boydell Class. She's worked on high profile stuff like Slow Horses, GoT, Big Little Lies, Taboo and two more of these coming up. It was photographed by Tim Fleming.

Walk A Crooked Mile (1948 Gordon Douglas)

Another Edward Small production, for Columbia, saddled with a solemn and redundant voiceover which keeps telling us things which are bleedin' obvious.

FBI agent Dennis O'Keefe teams up with Brit Louis Hayward to stop secret plans being leaked from top nuclear facility - how it's being done is the interesting denouement, but before that happens the couple are almost executed by the murderous gang - saved only by an emigré who has lost her family to Nazis and is willing to sacrifice all for her new Mother country yatter yatter. Raymond Burr is one of the nasties.

Shot in chiaroscuro by George Robinson, a routine Columbia B movie photographer. Written by George Bruce from Bertram Millhauser story. The title is better than the film.

Silent Witness Season 14 (2011)

A Guilty Mind. Timothy Prager. Director Sue Tully.

Three deaths in one night at hospital. Nikki in danger again - no wonder she's referred to a psychotherapist. This one almost ventures into horror film territory and is a little far fetched, though tense and enjoyable. Nikki's flat, round the corner from the Royal Albert Hall, looks rather amazing (and expensive). It's Queen Alexandra's House, SW7, used as female only student accommodation!

And I think it's nearby Onslow Square Gardens where the professor is shot.

The routinely horrible investigating detective is Mark Lewis Jones with Kelly Harrison. Arsher Ali is becoming a regular in the 'cutting room'. With Roy Marsden, Sinead Keenan and Sorcha Cusack.

Lost. Richard Davidson, director Anthony Byrne. Nutty archaeologist Mark Benton uncovers a body which isn't as old as he thinks. Links to the 'Ketamine killings' which Leo investigated back in the eighties, draws him back into world of victim Barbara Flynn and the now imprisoned murderer Sean Baker. Helps crystallise his thinking on adoption.

Tony Pitts (All Creatures, Giri/Haji, Peaky Blinders, Funny Cow, Red Riding) and Christine Tremarco (Adolescence, Clocking Off, The Responder) investigate.

Harry's old pal Charlie Creed-Miles, who funnily enough we earlier saw in (almost) debut in Press Gang, drops his son on him and disappears.

Unfaithfully Yours (1948 Preston Sturges and scr)

Didn't think too much of it when we last saw it 13 years ago; seems much better when reevaluated. Rex Harrison is funny from the off as conductor not wanting to believe anything bad about his wife, glamorous and younger Linda Darnell, but can't help accepting she's had an affair. Over the course of three classical music performances he imagines different outcomes to the news involving murder, forgiveness and accidental suicide. Then when he tries to recreate the murder he finds it's much harder than he's imagined in the funniest scene. "Number please."

Many trademark long takes, inspired use of sound effects, distinctive extreme close-ups. With many Sturges stock company in bit parts. Rudy Vallee, Lionel Stander, Barbara Lawrence, Kurt Kreuger, Edgar Kennedy, Al Bridge, Robert Greig etc.

"So simple a child can use it"

Thunder on the Hill (1951 Douglas Sirk)

A convent opens its gates to flooded villagers - and a young woman who is about to be executed for murdering her brother. But strong willed nun Claudette Colbert doesn't believe she's guilty.

Atmospheric tale of faith and justice, adapted from Charlotte Hastings' play 'Bonaventure' by Oscar Saul and Andrew Salt. Great to see a new Sirk for the first time. Atmospherically designed and filmed (at Universal) - Bernard Herzbrun & Nathan Juran (coincidentally I was half-watching and enjoying his terrible Jack the Giant Killer earlier while cooking) and William H Daniels.

Cast: Ann Blyth, Robert Douglas (doctor), Anne Crawford (his wife), Philip Friend (Fiance), Gladys Cooper, Michael Pate (village idiot), Connie Gilchrist  (whose 'Never throw away newspaper or string" becomes usefully prophetic).

Good music by Hans J Salter, another of Hitler's gifts to the USA.

Sirk doesn't say a lot about it in Halliday's book, other than that he wasn't interested in the religious angle at all. It was his first picture for Universal, and he liked them because they let him work on the material and left him alone to cut.

No Reservations (2007 Scott Hicks)

An utterly predictable remake of  German film, which is fun. Catherine Zeta Jones inherits Abigail Breslin and runs up against new chef Aaron Eckhart. Carol Fuchs adapted Sandra Nettlebeck's original screenplay (which is a much higher rated film on IMDB).

The restaurant is at 22 Beeker Street in the Village.

She looks guilty and sheepish at the same time

Don't bother parking properly

Trois Couleurs Rouge (1994 Krzysztof Kieslowski & co-scr)

There's a moment where Irène Jacob says to Jean-Louis Trintignant "I feel I'm in the middle of something important going on around me" and that's a bit like what watching this film is like. Because the rather beautiful piece of parallel action going on to Jacob's life, involving a neighbour who is studying for a law exam (Jean-Pierre Lorit) and whose girlfriend (Frédérique Feder) cheats on him, is actually the former life of strange reclusive ex Judge Trintignant, who befriends Jacob over a runaway dog.

Has some stunning moments, like the camera dropping from the balcony at the theatre. And interesting sound (the sound from the very opening for example coming in much later - Jean-Clause Laureux).

For the third time a wizened old person tries to get a bottle into the recycling - but this time she is helped. And the finale brings back the characters from the previous two films. It's a most interesting trilogy of films. Written again by Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiwicz with contributions from Agnieszka Holland, Edward Zebrowski and Edward Klosinski.

Photographed by Piotr Sobocinski (Marvin's Room), composed by Zbigniew Preisner, production design Claude Lenoir, editing Jacques Witta. It was nominated for key BAFTAs, Oscars and Césars but didn't win any.

At the very end of the film

Jacob was in Au revoir Les Enfants (1987) and starred in Kieslowski's The Double Life of Véronique in 1991, which also sounds good.

National Velvet (1945 Clarence Brown)

Horse mad Elizabeth Taylor isn't the only mad one in eccentric family governed by Donald Crisp and Anne Revere (who's wonderful and won Oscar), with teenager Angela Lansbury, Juanita Quigley and insect mad Jackie Jenkins, as evidenced by this dialogue:

"I want my insect jar."
"Shut up and stop being disgusting."

Slightly dodgy itinerant Mickey Rooney turns up (then 24) and happens to know a bit about horses, which is lucky when events end up at the Grand National, an excitingly filmed horse race with little back projection.

Familiar faces include Arthur Shields, Dennis Hooey, Aubrey Mather, Arthur Treacher, Reginald Owen.

It's jaunted along by Herbert Stothart's score which references traditional English tunes. Photographed by Leonard Smith. Robert Kern's editing won the Oscar.

'Suffolk' coastline aka Pebble Beach, California

Not sure I'd seen it before; most enjoyable. First in a double bill of Leonard Maltin **** films.