The Asphalt Jungle (1950 John Huston & co-scr)

Huston and Ben Maddow adapted W.R. Burnett's novel in an extremely tight and dramatic.. Hang on - I haven't read W.R. Burnett's novel, so how can I say anything? Also Burnett is a screenwriter too. Huston was a fan and adapted his novel for High Sierra. So that's that sorted out.

It's classic Huston thieves falling apart - you can see it so many of his films from The Maltese Falcon on. The film is made that much more taut by the absence of any music - apart from the opening credits and the very last Kentucky sequence.

Interestingly agent Johnny Hyde features in two stories about this film. Rozsa wrote the (little) music - Huston didn't like his first draft at the prelude and insisted on something quieter and more tense. Hyde represented Rozsa and unknown Marilyn Monroe. Hyde asked Miklos to take her to lunch and see what he thought. The composer found her 'charming and uncomplicated - a normal Hollywood girl who wanted to get into pictures'. Hyde also introduced her to Huston, who sensed she was being set up to go through the casting coach process of getting parts (the odious Sam Spiegel was hovering in the wings), and decided to give her a full, colour screen test and cast her in the fledgling role. He thought she was fine but MGM didn't get it and dropped her. (He much later worked with her again on the tragic The Misfits.)

For me it's Sam Jaffe's picture - he was Oscar nominated and won the Best Actor Prize at Venice (Huston mistakes it for the Cannes award). But all cast good, especially Jean Hagen as the smitten and unloved wannabe girlfriend of Sterling Hayden. With the oily Louis Calhern, James Whitmore, John McIntire (police commissioner, many films including Psycho and Honkytonk Man), Marc Lawrence (This Gun For Hire, The Ox-Bow Incident, Cloak and Dagger, Key Largo, Italian films in the 50s and 60s, then much on TV), Barry Kelley, Anthony Caruso, Brad Dexter.

Oscar nominated photography by Hal Rossen.

Life Begins - Seasons 1 - 3 (2004 Mike Bullen)

Alexander Armstrong just walks out on Caroline Quentin without any warning or discussion, leaving her to fend for two kids. Then he starts a new relationship with a woman he works with. What a bastard!

I seem to remember that Mike Bullen himself was divorced and remarried but don't quote me on that.

The 'style' is over-editing, with its 'trademark' device of showing one sequence from three different points of view rapidly cut together. And I don't mean something significant, I mean like someone getting out of bed.

Supporting cast: Claire Skinner. Anne Reid, Frank Finlay, Stuart McQuarrie, Danny Webb, Elliot Henderson-Boyle & Ace Ryan (the kids). Neighbour Elle Haddington and daughter Abby Ford. At travel agency: Paul Thornley, Chloe Howman, Sarah Okeze, Michelle Holmes.

Six part series for ITV.

The Way We Were (1973 Sydney Pollack)

The 1930s. Jewish left wing politicist Barbra Streisand falls for high school jock (and writer) Robert Redford (who Q thins looks too old to be at college - and at 36ish at the time, that's hard to argue with).

Redford and mate Bradford Dillman join the Navy and then fall into Hollywood, but the McCarthy witch hunt rears its ugly head and Redford - who's fought enough intellectual battles by this point - declares himself out (despite the presence of a new baby).

All to Marvin Hamlisch's overwrought interpretations of the theme song, endlessly, often over montages that look like they were filmed with dialogue. What is supervising editor Margaret Booth doing? Is she trying to 'save the film'? Did it only do well at the box office on the strength of the Streisand / Redford pairing? (I certainly remember the film magazines I used to see at the time being full of Redford articles, glossy photos and poster pull-outs.)

It can't help feeling that it doesn't really leave much of an impressions. IT's a wee bit exhausting and feels full of nothing.  Time Out's reviewer thought that Redford's performance was the more interesting, in its seeds of self-destruction anticipating the not terribly well rated Great Gatsby the following year.

Photographed by Harry Stradling Jr. in Panavision.

Redford asleep already and we haven't even made it to the credits scene

With: Lois Chiles ('other woman'), Patrick O'Neal, Viveca Lindfors (fellow Hollywood radical), Murray Hamilton, Herb Edelman. (Yes, the scenes in the radio station don't really do anything - what's her job?? - except for not writing.)

Part of the nostalgia boom of the 1970s that unwittingly may have come from Peter Bogdanovich's Last Picture Show, which spawned Sommer of 42 and the lik e- a nostalgia boom that also took in The Godfather, let's not forget, but somehow sat uneasily against America's more progressive films like those of Hal Ashby and Bob Rafelson. Interesting in that there's  a very, very long dissolve on Barbra at one point that hadn't been done until Peter did it first in TLPS.

Old Acquaintance (1943 Vincent Sherman)

Talk about one-way relationships! Hopkins does nothing but take, sulk, rage and be petty and childish - no wonder the final toast is just to old 'acquaintances' rather than friends. The daughter is quite nicely written (by John van Druten and Lenore Coffee) as being a bit Hopkins but luckily a lot of Bette.

She, by the way, is Dolores Moran (also To Have and Have Not) - she would only have been about seventeen. Didn't have much of a film career (controlling husband).

Also, what I would really have liked to have known was - how did Kit's play turn out? And her second book? I get why she's sidelined - in career terms she's not nearly as important as Millie - no, of course not. Well, I want to know.

Sol Polito's camerawork is suitably polished and Franz Waxman's score is beautiful.

The Fall Guy (2024 David Leitch)

A silly, enjoyable film, barely written by Drew Pearce, with something of the goofy flavour of The Nice Guys (possibly introduced by Ryan as exec producer).

Enjoyable chase scene intercut with Emily Blunt and Hannah Waddingham - who seem to be improvising, not altogether successfully? - don't really work - also excessive action finale, Blunt beating up alien Gosling. 

Overall though fun and wonderful in the light it shines on the stunt professionals (not forgetting canine versions) - nicely caught in end credits scene. And madness of big budget Hollywood bollocks.

Some notable long takes. DP Jonathan Sela, editor Elisabet Ronaldsdóttir.

The Sting (1973 George Roy Hill)

Finally - David Ward's Oscar winning con game / revenge saga. Newman takes something of a back seat to Redford - who excels. Note how in interrogation scene with the FBI, (Oscar winning) editor William Reynolds leaves Redford in that long shot, silent, looking down, thinking - classy. The twists and turns are so good that you're left right until the very last iris dissolve thinking - shit! Is something bad going to happen. Which is as much a testament to director Hill - who also won Oscar.

Go on then - the others were for Film, Art direction Henry ('Bummy') Bumstead, later Eastwood collaborator - and James Payne, costumes Edith Head, and score Marvin Hamlisch. Robert Surtees (camera) and Redford were nominated. (Redford never won the acting Oscar - his win was for directing  Ordinary People.) For some odd reason it didn't win any BAFTAs, through they had awarded the best actor award to Redford in 1971.

Good support from Harold Gould, plus Robert Shaw, Eileen Brennan, Ray Walston, John Heffernan, Dana Elcar (FBI), Dimitra Arliss, Robert Earl Jones (James's dad).

The Newsreader - Season 3 (2025 Creator Michael Lucas)

Should be called The NewsreaderS as both Anna Torv and Sam Reid - who are both equally in a mess - serve in that role.

Emotional...

... wired.

William McInnes plays probably the most vile (fictional) man on TV at the moment. We keep wishing that in one of his volcanic explosions that he'll have a heart attack!

Meanwhile our sports bloke Stephen Peacocke realises he may not be a racist but he's done nothing to stop it either - to the consternation of his Korean wife Michelle Lim Davidson.

Marg Downey continues to be passively-aggressively annoying and her unstable daughter Philippa Northeast is starting an unwise relationship with Reid.

After Reid melts down in public, well - you wouldn't believe where it leaves us...

The Gone - Seasons 1 & 2 (2024-5)

Let's play 'Who's the author'? The credits say it was based on an idea by Simone Nathan and Karl Kohrab, which was developed by Michael Bennett, Yvonne Donohoe and Anna McPartlin and then written by Bennett and McPartlin.

Whatever, I'd say it was the worst recorded or mixed series I think I've encountered so far. It doesn't help that the accents of Richard Flood (Irish) and Acushla-Tara Kupe (Kiwi) (both unknowns to us) aren't particularly ear-friendly but they just don't come over at all well, making it a struggle to follow the minutiae of the plot, which involves the disappearance of a young couple and their connections to a. an Irish crime family and b. local Maoris.

Also Kupe is struggling with reconciliation with her extended family, uncle Wayne Hapi and aunt Vanessa Rare, who keep lapsing into Maori at the drop of a hat, and the mystery of the disappearance of her mother when she was young.

The identity of the murderer and the raison d'être, are somewhat far-fetched.

In the mix is stubborn Irish journalist Carolyn Bracken, who's initially a pain in the arse, but then stumbles across the Big Secret that leads us into Season Two... And then her disappearance begins Season Two - which gets us closer to the Goat Murderer, but leaves us with a totally unrequired cliff-hanger. Thanks a lot!

The Descendants (2011 Alexander Payne & co-scr)

I still don't know what the story was - I Presume that Nat Faxon and Jim Rash did the original adaptation of Kaui Hart Hemmings' novel, then Payne too it over and solely reworked it his way. Despite the often fabulous dialogue / voiceover / monologues - it's a film in which the most delicate and moving things happen in silence - Amara being told her Mum is dying, the goodbyes at her hospital and that last glowing two minute take where the family settle on the sofa...

The use of Hawaiian music throughout is a definite asset.

Back at Downton (2010 Julian Gosford, I mean Fellowes)

Begins 1912. Oh Mr Carson, how could you have been in vaudeville! And Lady Mary - entertaining a man in your bed chamber! Giving pantomime baddies Barrow and Mrs Hughes ammunition! (What the hell is their motivation for being so horrible? Is that ever explained?)

I'd quite forgotten Jessica Brown Findlay - the third sister. And that Rose Leslie was in it at the beginning, arousing the ire of the staff by wanting to be a secretary - gasp!

Some of the Season 2 (WWI) plotting's getting a bit far fetched - the chauffeur was going to pour muck over a visiting General? The scarred man claiming he's the cousin? Mrs Bates' murder? (It's like - let's make Anna and John Bates the loveliest couple - and then let's shower them with shit each time they are almost happy.)

Daisy (Sophie McShera) inheriting farm? Unfinished storylines. Barrow vulnerable for a second, sacked without reference - suddenly is the under-butler? What the fuck is going on? He gets cousin in and only starts scheming again. This nastiness seeps through the whole thing. And yes, let's have Anna raped, Bates murderous - for fuck's fuck's sake! Leave them alone. This continues into season six. I'm afraid I don't think it's very good long form writing.

Edith and her baby - never was there are more tortuous storyline (that seems like it belongs in Victorian melodrama). (I feel sorry for Laura Carmichael whose character is always neglected or suffering).

Frenemies Maggie Smith and Penelope Wilton good. Lord Grantham and Carson both blow hot and cold - exhausting (Hugh Bonneville and Jim Carter). Grantham scrapping with Richard E Grant in her Lady's bedchamber? What bollocks!

And yet - it was a shame when it was all over! Like an annoying friend who you miss when they leave. It finishes in a shameless glut of feel-goodness.

A River Runs Through It (1992 Robert Redford)

Robert Redford died yesterday, 16th September, aged 89. Q picked this well, one of his delicate family studies, his third as director, very well acted - some evidence that actors can make great film directors (Eastwood, Allen, Welles). I'm glad to say we'd been on something of a retrospective in the last couple of years, with films like The Horse Whisperer, The Natural, Sneakers, Quiz Show, Barefoot in the Park, Our Souls at Night, The Company You Keep and Ordinary People.

My favourites: Butch Cassidy, Three Days of the Condor, The Horse Whisperer. The one I most want to watch again: The Sting.

Preacher Tom Skerritt brings up sons (one of whom is Joseph Gordon-Leavitt in his debut) sensibly and with an obsession with fly fishing. Benda Blethyn is mom. The boys grow up to be more sensible academic Craig Sheffer and wilder journalist Brad Pitt. The former falls for Emily Lloyd.

The sensational photography by Philippe Rousselot won the Oscar.

Richard Friedenberg adapted Norman Maclean's story.

I remember Redford in interview once saying that a regrettable by-product of being famous was that he could no longer go anywhere in public. He had the consolation of being a nature lover and being able to relax in that environment, but still...

His biggest achievement, though, was almost certainly the Sundance Festival / Institute.

The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955 Richard Fleischer)

Likely then one of Joan Collins' first American films. Based on the true 1906 White-Thaw murder case, adapted for the screen by Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch for Fox.

Married architect Ray Milland tries but cannot keep his hands off young Collins but eventually sends her away to finishing school, where multi-millionaire psycho Farley Granger moves in and (somehow) sweeps her off her feet - all in Milton Krasner's gloriously unshadowy CinemaScope Technicolor. Then an audacious in cold blood murder, with witnesses aplenty. But then I thought I'd remembered a scene that then wan't in it, of Collins revealing a repressed memory - it was clearly I who had the memory problem - a false memory.

With Glenda Farrell (Collins' mother), Cornelia Otis Skinner, Luther Adler (Granger's defense). 

Displays that amusing lack of cutting evident in early CinemaScope pictures. As a film it was only OK.

I Fought the Law (2025 Jamie Crichton)

Based on Anna Ming's own memoir 'For the Love of Julie', which follows her tireless appeals against the man who murdered her daughter, eventually prompting the change in the Double Jeopardy law.

Worthy story, well held together by Sheridan Smith; another in ITV's long line of true crime dramas.

Sheridan with the real Anna Ming

The Lady Vanishes (1938 Alfred Hitchcock)

Naunton and Wayne - 1938 - 'England's on the brink' - but they're talking about the cricket! Very prescient joke.

A classic screen partnership is born

One of Hitch's earlier 'living nightmares'. (My term.)

Great late line from Whitty: 'What an unpleasant journey'!

Prizzi's Honor (1985 John Huston)

William Hickey (somewhat aged, noted for his acting tuition at the HB Studio in Greenwich Village) then led us to this, which we hadn't seen for so long that the paint had dried. He's the Don of a family that extends to John Randolph and his son hitman Jack Nicholson, and includes Robert Loggia, Lee Richardson and Anjelica Huston.

Q got it absolutely right - Nicholson did a Brando in The Godfather by stuffing tissue into his upper lip, copying the Italians he'd observed who didn't move their upper lips. Though quite frail Huston knew what he was doing, reminding Nicholson that he should be as thick as he seems, and filming very long takes, particularly between him and Kathleen Turner, and directing Anjelica (then dating Jack) to her Oscar. Indeed, Anjelica sets the whole plot into action by pitting her father (Richardson) again Family beloved Nicholson.

Stanley Tucci's in there somewhere.

The story is from Richard (The Manchurian Candidate) Condon, adapted by he and Janet Roach. Alex North provided a suitably Italian score and classic Hollywood Warner Bros.' editor Rudi Fehr (Dial M For Murder, I, Confess, also Huston's Key Largo) came out of retirement - well, he'd already come out of retirement, actually, Mr. McGilligan, for One From the Heart in 1981 - to cut it. Andrej Bartkowiak (Falling Down, A Good Man in Africa, Terms of Endearment, The Verdict) shot it.

It's a class act of gallows' humour with a good dose of Mafia / honor.

Operation Mad Ball (1957 Richard Quine)

The first of six film collaborations between director Quine and star Jack Lemmon at Columbia, ending with the sublime How To Murder Your Wife, begins with an army comedy which has nothing to do with the TV hit show Hogan's Heroes. (The others were My Sister Eileen, It Happened to Jane, The Notorious Landlady and Bell, Book and Candle, three of which also teamed Lemmon with Ernie Kovacs).

Lemmon absolutely fits the bill as the go-to organizer of a dance between soldiers and (female) nurse officers, with his own eye on Kathryn Grant (also Anatomy of a Murder), abetted by Kovacs but ultimately supported by Arthur O'Connell. Mickey Rooney has a fun cameo. With Dick York, James Darren, Jeanne Manet and an uncredited William Hickey.

Written by Arthur Carter (from his unproduced play), Jed Harris and Blake Edwards. Photographed by Charles Lawton, edited by Charles Nelson, music by Charles Durning. It's quietly amusing.

Cowboy (1958 Delmer Daves)

Highly successful, realistic account of life as cowboy, as hotel clerk Jack Lemmon decides to join Glenn Ford on cattle trail. Based on Frank Harris's questionable autobiographical book 'My Reminiscences as a Cowboy', adapted by Edmund H North and (uncredited) Dalton Trumbo. Loved the stuff about the horse 'having a brain the size as a walnut' and not being a cowboy's best friend at all.

Good earlyish (Some Like It Hot was the year after) role for Lemmon as man who becomes tougher over the trail. With Anna Kashfi, Dick York, Brian Donlevy, Richard Jaeckel.

Splendidly photographed (night scenes especially) by Charles Lawton, edited by William Lyon and Al Clark, music by George Duning, for Columbia.

Rope (1948 Alfred Hitchcock)

Lots of good background info here. Stewart, in his first film for Hitch, is wonderful, as the teacher who gradually sniffs out what is going on. Hitch preempts Birdman, 1917 and Adolescence with his continuous take film. It's the scenes with props you look out for - opening champagne, lighting candles - if any of these things go wrong you ruin the whole ten minute take. Ten? I thought it was twenty? Clearly some of the cover-ups were subtler than I realised (maybe the one cut - to Stewart - is one of them?) You could watch it for the subtly changing backdrop alone.

John Dall, Farley Granger, Edith Evanson (housekeeper), Douglas Dick, Joan Chandler, Cedric Hardwicke and Constance Collier.

'Mouvement perpetuel' by Poulenc is the slightly maddeningly appropriate piano music which Farley Granger is clearly not playing. I've definitely heard it in a black and white film as well, not so long ago...

Not Hitch. His shape appears somewhat enigmatically as a flashing neon sign later??

Art: Milton Avery 'Girl in White Dress' (1943)

Art: Fidelio Ponce de Léon 'Five Women' (1941) sold from Hitchcock collection at Sotheby's 1991

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961 Stanley Kramer)

A solid, worthwhile film, for us of most interest for another totally committed performance from Spencer Tracy, who I read performed his final summation in one entire take, running the full length of the ten minute camera reel. He nailed it, from memory, in that first take, to thunderous applause from the cast and crew.

Do I like Kramer? I'm not really sure.

On screen for the most time are Richard Widmark (prosecution) and Maximillian Schell, who won the Oscar for his almost-Nazi performance. Burt Lancaster is the almost sympathetic judge on trial. Good, telling appearances from Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich (who was on set distributing Danishes!) and Judy Garland. Monty was a mess, drinking on set and on dope. Spencer - himself understanding only too well the pernicious effects of alcohol - told him to play his scene to him, and he did. According to Richard Widmark 'He played it to Spence, and it came out great'. And Kramer added 'Spencer was the greatest reactor in the business.'

The Nazis are Torben Mayer, Martin Brandt and Werner Klemperer.

Abby Mann won the writing Oscar, from his own original TV drama in 1959 (in which Schell acted).

Sam Leavitt shot it with smooth operating by Charles Wheeler and good use of a zoom lens working at different speeds.

UA were understandably nervous about it. 

Anatomy of a Murder (1959 Otto Preminger)

Let's say that Bernie Gribble or whatever his name is did rape Lee Remick - her flirting and clothing is no excuse - we're in The Accused territory, early on - and that must have happened for any of it to make sense, then Ben Gazzara (brilliant) literally does go over to his bar and execute him in cold blood. It's quite straightforward. And the 'dissociative reasoning' defence is just bullshit.

So why does lawyer James Stewart defend him? Though the film runs 2 hours 40, we don't find out.

Stewart makes a big show of it when Scott is blocking his view of the witness, but every time either of them gets really close to the witness in the box they're... blocking the other's view.

A Columbia release. Oscar nominated for film, Stewart, Arthur O'Connell, George C Scott, writer Wendell Mayes, cinematographer Sam Leavitt (in hard black and white tones) and editor Louis Loeffler, who edited seventeen (most) of Preminger's pictures from Margin for Error (1943) on - Laura was a year later, Bonjour Tristesse being one exception. Won none of them. (Ben Hur was the slam dunk that year.)

The Hit (1984 Stephen Frears)

An original screenplay from Peter Price opens with gangster Terence Stamp ratting on his colleagues, then picks up with him in Spain ten years later. John Hurt and Tim Roth have been sent to take him to Paris, where he'll meet his maker, but things go blackly comic, leaving a very obvious trail for the police (Fernando Rey) to follow. Laura del Sol is the spunky Spaniard they stupidly take along with them.

It's a lovely tribute to Terence Stamp, who died August 17. He's quite reconciled about dying, has a sort of Zen approach - though he could have escaped more than once. It felt like he hadn't been around much - the only later film of significance you really remember is The Limey, but he had been steadily working - though I don't think he'd object if I called this body of work 'mixed'. I guess he's best known for early appearances in Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), also Billy Budd, The Collector, Poor Cow, The Mind of Mr Soames and Superman.

John Hurt is impassive (I've always had a special fondness for him, ever since I first saw - ? Midnight Express), Tim Roth as the gradually more friendly inexperienced punk.

It was edited by Professor Mick Audsley and photographed by Mike Molloy (also The Shout), produced by Jeremy Thomas. Stylistically it makes good use of the deserty Spanish locations - often in very wide shot - and has interesting blocking of actors. It's one of those - y'know - existential thriller road movies!

Two Things We Bailed On

The first was sadly Dan Fogelman's new high-concept drama. Paradise has Sterling K Brown as the ex President's senior security officer who through two flashbacks we learn has saved the P's life, but who he also blames for the death of his wife. Then the Big Reveal - the idyllic suburban town they're in is buried in a mountain, some terrible cataclysm having affected the Earth. Oh great - more dystopia. And to paraphrase Q, 'That's when I tilted my hat and said Goodbye, Mr. Fogelman'.

The BBC presents a drama in which super-successful Eve Myles picks up cleaner Gabrielle Creevy and starts to fill her head with grandiose ideas. When Creevy uses her new boss's house to entertain a pick-up, I immediately thought 'Oh. It's one of those.' You know, totally unbelievable. The pick-up turns violent (as you do?) and she accidentally kills him just as her boss returns. That one episode is quite enough, which is a shame, as both Myles and Creevy are quite watchable.

Father Brown / The Detective (1954 Robert Hamer & co-scr)

Adapted from G.K. Chesterson, with Thelma Schnee. I had forgotten it was Hamer. And Georges Auric. I would in fact watch any film that had either name in its credits. The DP is Harry Waxman, who also shot Hamer's The Long Memory.

Thief Peter Finch finally realises there's no pleasure in stealing rare works of art if only he can see them - so minister Alec Guinness wins in the end (let's say, with the help of Joan Greenwood).

By accident or design, Sid James turns up in so many good films of the forties and fifties

Dancing on the Edge (2013 Stephen Poliakoff & scr)

It had been a while. 1933. Black jazz musician Chiwetel Ejiofor is injured and needs to get out of the country, seeks help from journalist Matthew Goode - but why? We flash back to 1931 to find out. Like in a William Boyd, you can't help but feel something sinister is going on underneath. Despite this being TV for adults, it's actually a simple murder story, with jazz and Power trappings, commentary on the powerful ruling class who can get away with anything they like - ah, how things have changed! - the rise of Fascism, the draconian immigration laws, the early music journalists. And, though nicely quite underplayed - racism. The scenes of on-the-run Ejiofor - a black man in DJ in middle class bowling green 30s England - he sticks out like a sore thumb. 

Great cast also comprises: Angel Coulby and Wunmi Mosaku (the singers, who are actually singing - Wunmi's voice in particular is incredible), Janet Montgomery, Anthony Head, Joanna Vanderham, John Goodman, Tom Hughes, Jenna (then Jenna-Louise) Coleman, Mel Smith, Caroline Quentin - and that glamorous older Lady - was she familiar? - it's only Jacqueline Bisset!

Lovely photography from Ashely Rowe (Starter for Ten, Calendar Girls), edited by Chris Wyatt (Living, Supernova, Ammonite, The Falling, '71), production design Grant Montgomery (Sanditon, Tolkein, The Limehouse Golem, Peaky Blinders, Death Comes to Pemberley, Worried About the Boy) finding a number of existing locations - the ballroom's in Birmingham, music Adrian Johnston, who also wrote the lyrics. and who has scored most of Poliakoff's work since Shooting the Past in 1999.

Not as many collaborations as I thought: Summer of Rockets also shot by Rowe, Close to the Enemy featured Rowe, Wyatt and Johnston.

Good interview with Poliakoff here.

His trademark long shot down a corridor after Coulby has been assaulted is definitely noticeable.

It was inspired by research for The Lost Prince when Poliakoff read that the Duke of Windsor hung around with the Duke Ellington Band.

Doctor in the House (1954 Ralph Thomas)

A rather sweet film, miles away from the crude hi-jinks the series became, properly underscored with the difficulties of being a medical student and the hurdles of qualifying (note at the end those that still have not got through).

Dirk Bogarde is top billed though Kenneth More won the Best Actor BAFTA. (Really? He won over John Mills in Hobson's Choice, David Niven in Carrington V.C., and Robert Donat in Lease of Life.) With Muriel Pavlow, Donald Sinden, Kay Kendall, James Robertson Justice, Donald Houston, Geoffrey Keen (Dean), George Coulouris. And with cameos: Joan Sims, Shirley Eaton, Joan Hickson, Amy Veness, Richard Wattis and writer Nicholas Phipps himself as a magistrate.

'St. Swithins' is played by University College London's main building in Gower Street, Bloomsbury, photographed by Ernest Steward.

The Furies (1950 Anthony Mann)

What's going on here? The Furies are Roman mythological goddesses of vengeance. Well that fits insofar as Barbara Stanwyck is the strong-willed daughter (of strong-willed rancher Walter Huston) who seeks revenge when daddy backtracks on promise to leave her his ranch 'The Furies', having hooked up with Judith Anderson (who drinks the disgusting sounding combination of cognac with orange juice!). Although why you would name your ranch that is another matter (it's a bit silly).

Stanwyck also has a hot-cold thing going for mercenary and emotionless Wendell Corey, but her heart is with a Mexican (Gilbert Roland) whose family has lived on the estate for ages. There's a very dramatically faulty sequence where Huston's men lay siege to Roland's family's castle (which, frankly, looks unassailable) but they surrender... and then Huston has him hanged for theft of a horse (which he succumbs to without a word or a struggle??) What a cunt! And of course this is going to position his daughter hotly against him also.

And the in the end, she ruins him, but then goes into partnership with him! And marries Corey! But Roland's mother (oh - that was Beulah Bondi) kills him - good! 

I can't help the feeling that this all probably plays better after a few sherberts.

Charles Schnee adapted a novel by Niven Busch. both names we know. And having just been enjoying Mann's films noir like T-Men, Border Incident and Raw Deal, we were somewhat disappointed. Though we like the cast, which also includes Thomas Gomez. It was Huston's last - he died later that year.

Photographed by Victor Milner and scored by Franz Waxman for Paramount, produced by Hal Wallis.

Barbara about to disfigure Judith Anderson

Mrs Dalloway (1997 Marleen Gorris)

We watched an introductory film by Eileen Atkins, who said she was sent such rubbish she might as well adapt Virginia Woolf's novel herself, but 'couldn't find a part' for her. And having looked at a summary of the novel's plot, I'd say she did a bloody good job.

Gorris had just won an Oscar for her film Antonia. Eileen's husband decided to produce it but ran out of money, and the whole project was taken over by a new funder, without their involvement. When they saw the finished film, they hated it. But wind forward a few years, The Hours was premiered at Guildford and they agreed to screen Mrs Dalloway along with, with a Q&A with Eileen, and seeing it again, she and her husband loved it!

Mrs Dalloway (who has recently suffered from some sort of unexplained 'illness') prepares for a party to be given that evening, cross cut against her romantic past. In conjunction a shell shocked soldier spends a day in the park before being committed. He kills himself and Mrs Dalloway hears about it at the party and feels for him. It doesn't sound much, but it's really good.

And with this great cast it should be. Vanessa Redgrave and Natasha McElhone as her younger self, Michael Kitchen, Alan Cox, Rupert Graves, Amelia Bullmore, Lena Headey, John Standing, Sarah Badel, Robert Hardy, Phyllis Calvert.

Handsomely set and photographed by Sue Gibson, good music from Ilona Sekacz. Clapper loader Joe Wright is not that one, but does show I pay attention to credits!