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!
I'd quite forgotten Sophie McShera - 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!
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!
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.
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).
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| By accident or design, Sid James turns up in so many good films of the forties and fifties |
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.
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.
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.
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| Barbara about to disfigure Judith Anderson |
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!
