t.mcparland-2 Reviews

Gun Fury (1953)

BULLETS ARE DEMOCRATIC. THEY DON'T ONLY KILL BADMEN

[10 February 2001]

This originally-filmed 3-D pot boiler features a darkly gorgeous Donna Reed partnering an equally handsome Rock Hudson- the latter displaying the macho charisma he hid behind for most of his career. But the thing is, he's good -and so's Donna. They play an engaged couple about to settle in California at the end of the Civil War. Rock has the odd good line 'Bullets are democratic- they don't only kill badmen' -no doubt an orphan from scriptwriter Kathleen George's novel TEN AGAINST CEASAR on which movie was based and a concept which would have found an echo in post-Korean and WWII veteran audiences.

Ex-Confederate Army cronies' embitterment and discontent is the excuse for stagecoach robbery, murder and kidnapping. Ben Warren [Hudson] is left for dead and his fiancé Jennifer Ballard [Reed] snatched under the unlikely pretext that gang leader Frank Slayton [Phil Carey] fancies her. The later elemental suggestion of suppressed carnality is best left as it was -suppressed. Donna Reed, despite torn blouse -is Rock's girl, and she remains so. Doesn't the Phil Carey know how things in Westerns work out? The plot of George's novel, TEN AGAINST CAESAR has been uncomplicated to a degree where an orangutan, given five seconds and a paintbrush, could have written the subsequence and denouement.

But credibility is not what this movie is all about.

It's about how parted Rock and Donna are re-united and triumph over -albeit manufactured -adversity ; it's about searing Arizona desert; the magnificence of 1950 Technicolor Western-making, and perhaps most of all about the making of desolation beautiful. I remember its flat screen release as a kid, was dying to see it but couldn't afford the admission. Had I seen it then I know how I would have reacted - I would have considered it good value and left the cinema, six-gun at the ready, seeking a showdown.

Wilde (1997)

WIDE WILDE OFFAL

[9 February 2001]

Lord Alfred Douglas's ‘love that dare not speak its name,' has become English Literature's most prolix subject, his, Wilde's descendants' and others' writings about ‘what Oscar did' dwarf Wilde's humble literary output. Lord Alfred Douglas alone picked over the corpse through no less than six volumes –the last in 1940.

This Brian Gilbert regurgitation, from bad ‘great-idea' western opening to lisping children's inane responses to being told the greatest fairy tales in the English language, supposedly portrays artistic libertinism through a mere anxst-riven, selfconscious depiction of homosexuality. It is a movie spawned by the worst objectives.

Given the subject's previous bibliography and filmography this abysmal treatment of the Wilde debacle is as unforgivable as forgettable. What's wrong with this portrayal of male homosexuality is what was perceived wrong with the Victorian original: It is aberrant, devoid of human love.It smugly contents itself that mere depiction of 20th century depravity furthers understanding of the 19th century human condition. It does the opposite; it repels. It is no more than a nudge-nudge, wink-wink, indulgent gay peep show with en-famile and other relationships relegated supports for its loveless carnality.

This Wilde is an imposter. Are we really expected to believe that this Wilde wrote anything, let alone THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST in three weeks? Such crucial miscasting renders WILDE a dead-in-the-water turkey. Stephen Fry's, unwitty enounciation of Wildean witticisms lacks charm and sparkle. Fry's a prop, propping up Victorian sets; having a physical- as opposed to emotional- relationship with a pouting, ‘aren't I immature?' Bosie [Jude Law]. Stephen Fry is poseur in a TV sketch directed by TV director Brian Gilbert in a well below par TV sketch of the Peter Finch original. We never hear Wilde's

‘…golden voice, nor mark[ing] him trace Under the common thing the hidden grace And conjure wonder out of emptiness…'

because the cadaver in Wilde's weeds is inherently incapable of reproducing it.

Robbie Ross, Wilde's lifelong friend and literary executor is a mere gay foil to the rarely smiling Lord Alfred Douglas whilst Vanessa Richardson's clever Speranza, Tom Wilkinson's Queensberry and other distinguished British cast members are contextually devalued to sad caricatures.

This movie- let alone failing to conjure anything - is full of emptiness; it is filing clerk's veracity; fact bereft of truth; perverted actuality. To use Queensberry's crudity –this movie ‘poses as a somdomite' -somehow for once sounding poetically apt.

Wilde (1997)

WIDE WILDE OFFAL

[29 January 2001]

English Literature's most prolix subject, others' writings about 'what Oscar did' dwarfing Wilde's humble literary output. Lord Alfred Douglas alone picked over the corpse through no less than six volumes -the last in 1940.

This Brian Gilbert regurgitation, from bad 'great-idea' western opening to lisping children's inane responses to being told the greatest fairy tales in the English language, supposedly portrays artistic libertinism through a mere angst-riven, self-conscious depiction of homosexuality. It is a movie spawned by most odious objectives.

Given the subject's previous bibliography and filmography this abysmal treatment of the Wilde debacle is as unforgivable as forgettable. What's wrong with this portrayal of male homosexuality is what was perceived wrong with the Victorian original: It is aberrant, devoid of human love.It smugly contents itself that mere depiction of 20th century depravity furthers understanding of the 19th century human condition. It does the opposite; it repels. It is no more than a nudge-nudge, wink-wink, indulgent gay peep show with en-famile and other relationships relegated supports for its loveless carnality.

This Wilde is an imposter. Are we really expected to believe that this Wilde wrote anything, let alone THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST in three weeks? Such crucial miscasting renders WILDE a dead-in-the-water turkey. Stephen Fry's, unwitty enunciation of Wildean witticisms lacks charm and sparkle. Fry's a prop, propping up Victorian sets; having a physical- as opposed to emotional- relationship with a pouting, 'aren't I immature?' Bosie [Jude Law]. Stephen Fry is poseur in a TV sketch directed by TV director Brian Gilbert in a well below par TV sketch of the Peter Finch original. We never hear Wilde's

'.golden voice, nor mark[ing] him trace Under the common thing the hidden grace And conjure wonder out of emptiness.'

because the cadaver in Wilde's weeds is inherently incapable of reproducing it.

Robbie Ross, Wilde's lifelong friend and literary executor is a mere gay foil to the rarely smiling Lord Alfred Douglas whilst Vanessa Richardson's clever Speranza, Tom Wilkinson's Queensberry and other distinguished British cast members are contextually devalued to sad caricatures.

This movie- let alone failing to conjure anything - is full of emptiness; it is filing clerk's veracity; fact bereft of truth; perverted actuality. To paraphrase Queensberry's crudity -WILDE 'poses as a somdomite' -somehow for once sounding poetically apt

The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1946)

TIGHTS, FIGHTS & RIGHTS -ALRIGHT?

[29 January 2001]

This is the one where Columbia decided to re-do Warner Brothers' ROBIN HOOD [1938]. But there was a problem. That one ended- like World War II- with Robin vanquishing England's enemies; now boring old peace had broken out again and both Richard the Lionheart and Robin were nearing the colostomy bag stage. Hell -Robin hada been doing sumpin all those years? Heck yes! He had done what every returned American GI did -he procreated! He had a son -Bob Hood [Cornel Wilde] who looked more Czechoslovakian than English but no matter. Same dab hand with a bow a blow and a beauty, same mindless sense of humour -a pea from the pod you might say; except he couldn't be pea green like colostomy-quivering Robin, but grey. Grey Bob was allowed green underwear, though.

So much for his hose -but what about foes? History was singularly unhelpful, because in spite of green Robin & his Geriatrics' heroics the dreaded King John succeeded King Dick and died in his bed. So -what do do? Well. Columbia's script department came up with the despotic Regent [Henry Danielle] who could have been any one of a number shadowy XII century characters, and -straight from an American child-actor catalogue- a boy King [Maurice Tauzin] who had to be prevented from signing anything.

So, Bob with a cause still needed to get his paws on a broad. Enter a bleach blonde cut-price Betty Grable with a voice to die from, Lady Catherine Maitland [Anita Louise] and this technicolor 1940 period Valhalla was complete. This movie is unique for raising awareness of [1] medieval colour blindness -because in spite of having red lips that would halt freeway traffic, and a bombshell hairdon't, Anita Louise manages to pass herself off as the Prioress of Buxton -and [2] the little-known practice of becoming muscular on half female prison rations -which Bob did before putting paid to the evil Regent.

Generally the supporting players, Jill Esmond [Queen Mother] looking older than 38, but back in movies after being deserted with a new-born baby in 1940 by Laurence Olivier for Vivien Leigh, Lloyd Corrigan [Sheriff of Nottingham] and George Macready [Fitz-Herbert], helped make this the kind of movie which made -not only kids but adults- leave the cinema feeling braver, stronger and more righteous.

Hell Below Zero (1954)

Hell Alan Is Above All This!

[23 December 2000]

In all Alan Ladd films when Alan stood up everyone else immediately sat down. Why? Well, my son, he was more of a laddie in stature than even a lad. In those days there were Rules. If, heaven forbid, a leading man hadn't a hairy chest or was vertically challenged, the other male cast members were depilated [Clark Gable MOGAMBO] or either sat, or stood in holes [male & female in all Alan's pictures].

The Rules also stipulated that however macho [Rock Hudson], or articulate [James Dean] a leading man might appear, audiences regarded diminution as effeminate; this nancy distinction Hollywood felt firstly financially and secondly morally bound to cinematically correct. Regardless of history [Napoleon, Churchill] Hollywood knew best: A short man was short of something. At 5'6,' 'Tiny' Ladd seemed too short for a screen career.

A pot boiler like HELL BELOW ZERO is the best measure of an actor- where, as here, the producer was a crook [Cubby Broccoli, later owing Sean Connery a packet- one small talent robbing another], the name support non-existent, and the star makes or breaks. Ladd, a former radio actor, with screen presence and persona to die for, makes in this execrable Hammond Innes drivel.

Made in Britain [favourable currency exchange rates] ostensibly about whaling, it mutates to a British drawing room murder mystery with incomparable Britlish drabness- characters saying 'ken't' for 'can't' etc.

Promoted to skipper of a whaling hell-hole where every crewman is putatively vital, [Joseph Tomelty, ham and equally atrocious playwright, having been thankfully concussed], Ladd has time to go 'investigating,' predictably ending up on the only South Atlantic, Lillian Gish ice floe where breath is not emitted as steam.

But Ladd, on the inevitable downward spiral from SHANE, manages a coolness this refrigerated British turkey doesn't, and elucidates by example among Old Country antecedents that there is another way. One of the few great movie stars in the Hollywood firmament, no one noticed he was small at the time. Because, -Wallbridge - his middle name suggests and his talent confirms, he was a giant in 1950's Lilliput.

Salome (1953)

Thought Theda Bara Was Bare? Gedda Loada Rita!

[15 December 2000]

?Salome's dance is a lascivious affront to public decency -provincial press please copy' hinted the 1953 Hollywood publicity spiel. They dutifully did, and Columbia made millions from affronted punters. Rita Hayworth shot this pot boiler at 35, to settle a debt owed to Harry Cohn by her first husband Orson Wells. Hayworth's experience of marital dalliance [Orson Wells, Aga Kahn, Dick Hames] and alcohol abuse somehow showed. Her sophisticated Salome has none of the presumed coquettishness of the 13 year-year Biblical original. Rita's pouting is that of the American beauty parlor harradin. Stewart Granger [Claudius], begins with dark temples and a gee shucks American accent but thankfully abandons both for his British, grey locked self. Despite Sir Cedric Hardwicke's efforts, his Laskey scripted Tiberius sounded like a turkey impersonation.

In spite of perhaps because of] the unswallowable proposition that Salome stripped for Him so that the Baptist might live, Badel thankfully, ended up headless. The idea that Badel the Baptist be beheaded has rarely been bettered; even the head was a better actor. Pity that the budget didn't stretch to a little more Herodian debauchery; it's so much more fun than Alan Badel's wearisome pedantry or Herodias's hammed collusion. 1953 audiences were unaware that Hayworth's arousal of gay Charles Laughton was about as possible as the arousal of Mrs. Lincoln's curiosity about the denouement of OUR AMERICAN COUSIN at Fords theatre, Washington.

Incredible too, that some of this vacuous calamity was shot on location in Israel. That actuality aside, as the Book of Wisdom should have said, since Hollywood profits ye better always have with you, tiresome Biblical exactitude can be so much improved. Saying at the end of the beatitude recitation that this was the beginning was a euphimism for ?this movie's got everything -and Rita Hayworth!

Kes (1969)

Soars Above Scholarship

[10 December 2000]

The title is Billy Casper's abbreviation for ‘kestrel.' Ken Loach's movie was refused a London premier lest a Southern English audience didn't understand the Northern Barnsley accents. In the end it had to, given the movie's critical success in the UK. Truthfully singular among ‘school movies,' its underlining premise that there are other areas of learning beyond bleak Northern schoolrooms, KES does not promote the lie about transformation of educational barbarian to worthy scholar through the example of a dedicated teacher. It instead awakens somnambulant educators to the reality that the real barbarians are at the other end of the classroom.

In KES's release year, I taught in a Northern school like this. KES accurately depicts both mood, attitude abroad with gritty Northern English realism. In artfully capturing this, Ken Loach's movie moves. Despite its unaffected poignancy, incidental trivialities- as in real life -remain memorable: The sudden spurt of tears from the ‘neat' boy as he is wrongly punished by the odious headmaster, the ‘night out' in a Yorkshire pub, and the outrageous games lesson by the loathsome Mr. Sugden, [Brian Glover].

At the time I was aware of Loach's other TV masterpiece CATHY COME HOME but thankfully unaware of its director. This meant I enjoyed KES with neither prescience nor tyranny of directorial reputation.

The Sound of Music (1965)

The Tills Were Alive in '65

[25 November 2000]

Dragged to see this musical by a girlfriend whom I ultimately didn't marry, it was difficult to swallow the militaristic heel-clicking of what appeared, even in 1965 to be ‘sweet' American stage children. The Austrian location photography somehow accentuated the movie's vulgar origins in American showbiz. Richard Rodgers' repeated following of the tonic with its diminished, for him proved big biz over the years. But even had the cast acted and sang in German, like the proverbial peroxide blond, this one's roots show. The principals' age range conforms to the formulaic American TV series model. Julie Andrews, romance hope of archetypal spinster and plain amateur-operettist wannabe; Christopher Plummer, the available knight in widower's armour; Daniel Truhitte [Rolf] and Charmian Carr [Leisal] the teen interest; and doler of dubious wisdom ‘Climb Every mountain, ford every stream,' Peggy Wood [the Abbess], presumably the geriatric interest. Julie Andrews' ebullience may have helped rescue inanity from insanity but talent could not prevent the intrusiveness of big-gun, 70mm American six-track slickness in the Austrian Tyrol. The soft-pedalled historical baloney about Austrian invasion is nauseating. Austria was annexed not invaded by Nazis. Nazis were welcomed there with open jackboots because Austria was -and still is -full of Nazis. The Von Trapp Family were classicists, long past the doh-re-me stage. Having or not having confidence, solving problems, etc. are American not European predilections. One cannot resist the feeling that by escaping, these movie Von-Trapps did Hitler a favour. Whilst this musical may confirm who the star of MY FAIR LADY should have been, unfortunately Julie Andrews' runaway success ultimately deprived her of clothes and equilibrium, her eventual topless appearance in THE TAMARIND SEED [1974] doing for sexuality what headless chickens do for vegetarians. She never shone again, as perhaps she should have. Pity.

Horror of Dracula (1958)

Stoker's Fire Still Burns

[21 November 2000]

Bram Stoker was neither the first to abbreviate Abraham, nor write books about Transylvanian vampires, but his name and 1897 novel's eponymous movie remain in modern consciousness. This 1958 British production shot on a shoestring at Shepperton remains the definitive and arguably the scariest. Like other great movies based upon mediocre material this one, from blood spattered tomb to horseless carriage judiciously adapts and departs the original as it pleases. Yet without pretension it exhumes of the horror of the undead with Christopher Lee portraying Dracula, decrepit living corpse -in the guise of gentleman -preying after dark, gorging upon innocence. Its subliminal message that all certainties are uncertain. For those who doubt that the grim dignity of death or the naivity of innocence is besmirched by evil posing as probity need look no further than their local war memorial or nearest red light district.

The Left Hand of God (1955)

They're Right- Bogie's Left.

[3 November 2000]

Great movie stars are rarely great actors. But they are people who exude elements of humanity, which we'd like to possess- John Wayne's toughness, Sharon Stone's glamour, Gary Cooper's inner silence, or Michael Douglas's ruthlessness. More unique than acting talent, Humphrey Bogart's element was that of hardened sinner whose inner spark of decency wasn't entirely subsumed. In this Cinemascope/colour movie, where Bogie's late-night drinking and myriad of broken marital relationships was visibly etched upon every facial crevice, the idea that he could pass himself off as a priest was ludicrous. But THE LEFT HAND OF GOD never demands that of him- nor us.

It makes instead, the not impossible proposition that a simple, remote Chinese community traumatised by marauders might presume Bogie to be the 'priest of Christ' they so anxiously await. We the audience, are privy to who Bogey is and still is. His un-Godly skill, which ultimately saves the mission from General Yang's terror, is entirely in character.

The Catholic theology was also dead on. Those whom Bogie absolved, married and buried were spiritually exonerated by the very innocence we moviegoers cannot share about Bogart. The power of the central argument of William Barrett's much dissipated novel, in spite of -or maybe because of, 50's Hollywood formulaic moviemaking- is somehow preserved.

The repetitious references to Bogey as 'the priest of Christ' and the ingenuous children's enigmatic broken-English farewell of 'Oole Kantackee Hom,' also persuade. We know Bogey must leave, and that he is redeemed in spite of himself. Even Bogie doesn't know that. We now also know that this life-scarred, bloodshot, poker-playing sceptic received a fair Hearing- after dying from throat cancer less than two years later on January 14th 1957 -at least from the left Hand Side of his Maker.

Brief Encounter (1945)

Brief Brief For Truth In Economy

[19 October 2000]

David Lean, before he got the idea that he was a great director -and under the artistically economic supervision of Noel Coward, directs a post-war masterpiece. Coward's original brief encounter was homosexual, in Preston, Northern England whilst waiting for a connection in his theatrical days. It was indeed brief, but here transformed into something heterosexual, and unbriefly memorable. The reality of such an encounter between 1946 middle-class Britons would have been as unlikely as the movie's contradictory Southern English accents. But then, movies are not necessarily about the truth. They're about the truth in untruths; the 'ah- but if's? They stand or fall by their ability to storm and overwhelm critical scruples. Few movies we merely tolerate as just okay, or mildly annoying. Mostly we love them or hate them. It may be the ambience of middle-class correctness in austere 1940's Britain which makes this movie believable, but it's the profound aspirations to decency and loyalty it inspires which makes it great.

Fatal Attraction (1987)

Fatal Detraction

[10/10 · 16 October 2000]

The fact that a competent reviewer gave Fatal Attraction a no-no, proves the adage that art, like beauty, is in the eye of the ticket holder. Bow-legged and deliberately-portrayed ominous, Glen Close- and Michael Douglas are bound by adultery. Douglas, professionally and in this movie, a nasty piece of work, is ensnared by his own lust, Close, by her paranoiac self-reflection as an irresistible lover. The title, one would like to believe was ironic. But knowing Hollywood's tortoise-like following of social mores, the movie's kernel belongs to pre-aids days. The word ‘attraction' is a misnomer; there is- nor ever was- anything attractive about adultery- or betrayal. So what makes this movie, with its ludicrous ending, great? Our involvement with the spiritual poverty of its central protagonists? The divergent wholesomeness of Ann Archer and Ellen Hamilton Latzen as the sinned-against middle-class American family? If I knew that, I would be making movies. But in those who have contemplated the memory and ‘what-if?' repercussions of wrongdoing, this movie will strike a profound conscience pang.

Funny Girl (1968)

Unfunny Girls

[10 October 2000]

The adults who respectively told Katherine Hepburn Barbara Streisand that they had talent have a lot to answer for; the world has had to suffer both ever since. Katherine Hepburn had a modicum of talent [Alice Adams 1935], before she professionally began being Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Streisand has none- just disenchanting ugliness, fueled by frame-laden fetid ego and overdone, vacuous singing which makes me envy the deaf. It's not surprising that the two women tied for the 1968 Oscar. In awfulness there's little to choose between the two four- adding the egos]. Katherine Hepburn's odious New England drawling Eleanor of Equtaine did for the French what John Wayne did for the Native American culture and rightfully got laughs in the cinema when I saw it. As richly deserving of a tied-Oscar for bad acting as was Miss Streisand's ‘Ok –I'm not pretty but don'tya think I'm loveable?' act- for her not-so funny Funny girl. They are both awesomely bad at even being themselves- for these must indeed be the disingenuous articles, for only original awfulness could beget such execrableness. You know the real thing one way or another when you see it. Perhaps the critics mistook Eleanor for Fanny and awarded them Oscars for high satire. If that was the case, then the award makes sense.

Johnny Guitar (1954)

No Rock 'n' Roll James Dean- Just Great Guitar

[10/10 · 26 September 2000]

I was 10 when I saw this contemporary, unremarked routine entertainment. But Peggy Lee's theme tune about ‘the one they call Johnny Guitar', and the movie's imagery has remained down the years. The character names, Vienna [sans surname], Emma Small, the Dancin' Kid, Turkey, all add to the ‘big black appassionata' of its drama. The impossible grandeur of Vienna's costumes and the chandeliered saloon, contextualse the one-horse language and universality of this one horse-town. The movie is singular and lonely; like the characters' obsessions with lost life, lost love lost business or lost everything. Sterling Hayden's understated, iron-disciplined acting- out-methodising the grotesque James Dean- is counterbalanced by Gothic Joan Crawford. Her emotional star intensity she lays naked before us to mock but to ultimately to admire. Greatness and talent may be unrelated but Joan, like this western, has indelible and perennial greatness.

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Louis Isn't Missed

[22 September 2000]

The movie that transmogrifies the word ‘trite' to ‘involved'; cornpone to gourmet; that directs itself; that mis-remembers days of youth; that on the Eighth Day God created Margaret O'Brien; that makes you wonder if anyone ever existed that disliked it; the movie that enraptures so artfully even the Louis of the title song isn't missed. Why? Well, because Judy Garland was so preoccupied with the boy next door, Margaret O'Brien with Mr. Braukoff's ‘haunted' house, and the entire Smith family with the grave decision of whether or not to move to New York and miss the 1903 St Louis Fair- nobody noticed. And from 1944 onwards moviegoers have lapped up every sentimental, rouge-lipped moment of it. Outside in the real world Americans fought and died in the Pacific and every other part of the globe. World War II reached a critical point. Soldiers celebrated Christmas on a thousand jeep hoods, in dugouts, jungles, submarines and aircraft. When Judy Garland sang ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.' they knew what she meant. Because every last one of them were raised in a St. Louis in 1903.

Waterloo Bridge (1940)

Bridge Over Troubled Matter.

[21 September 2000]

WATERLOO BRIDGE 1940

This is a 1940 remake of Robert Sherwood's earthy play. Vivien Leigh- hot from Gone With The Wind- has a line about how it takes a war to heighten our senses to value of every minute- a straggling survivor- I suspect- from the original Sherwood script. This movie is simply baloney. Nobody really believes that in ninety minutes Vivien goes from ballerina to prostitute, anymore than they believe Robert Taylor's white-powdered aging. Prostitutes wouldn't ply their trade on Waterloo bridge; it's too windy. But who cares? The whole thing works; Hollywood limbering up to do what Hollywood did best- make magnificent baloney. So magnificently that, like eager adolescents confusing prettiness with substance, 1940 audiences weren't only delighted to be confused, they were desperate to be. Reality hurt too much. In any case, given that man knows zilch about the most important punctuations of his being- conception, birth and death- who needs substance when there's a war on? All we want to do is ponder what if things had been different. Maybe Roy and Myra might have…?

The Out of Towners (1970)

Extraordinary Ordinariness

[20 September 2000]

The complimentary reviews this movie has received here from people without axes to grind, loudly proclaims the perennial appeal of Mr. [Jack Lemon] and Mrs. [Sandy Dennis] Ordinary facing the Piranhas of the Big City. They can't all be wrong surely? Oh yes they can! We've all experienced the embarrassment of watching that ‘fantastic' movie we raved about in our youth, to find that rewatched later it has feet, belly and brains of clay. But in the case of the OUT OF TOWNERS they're right –even if they are wrong. This film is comical Truth whose pace, like modern-big city life it depicts, runs as irritably as Jack Lemon's indigestion; the comedy is the superimpositioning attempts to make sense of nonsense. The perils- from Ohio to New York- are mere excuses for the Paulines- Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary whom we all know because they are Us- seamlessly played by Lemon and Dennis. And surely we are the best judges of Us- aren't we?

Western Union (1941)

Western Union And Great Director = Western Poetry

[18 September 2000]

No one ever really believed that Randolf Scott was a gun toter; he seemed too gentle for that. But the veneer of respectability he gave to his roles helped reinforce the western morality of good superceding evil. Nowhere is this poetry more evident as in Western Union [1941], directed by one of film noir's most gifted geniuses Fritz Lang, here working equally adeptly in colour. The shot of unfinished telegraph lines snaking away into twilight oblivion leaves lasting impressions.

This western prophecies the long professional relationship between producer Nat Holt and Randolf Scott which ran from 1946 and turned out cliché-westerns which weren't cliches at the time, and which, with practice improved till there was a kind of visual poetry about them. This isn't the history of Western Union, the way the western isn't the history of the old west. But it seems to relate a kind of truth, and that's what matters.

Footsteps in the Fog (1955)

Footsteps into legend.

[10/10 · 16 September 2000]

Forget the alliterative title that was meant at the time for American markets. A story by W. W. Jacobs provides one of the unsung triumphs of moviemaking. To call this a 'British' movie is a misnomer. Yes, it was made in Britain. But with American money and direction- Arthur Lubin. This is important, because a studio-made movie, set in Victorian England, to look convincing for Cinemascope photography takes big dollars. Thankfully, advantageous 1950's American-British exchange rates and tax breaks meant moviegoers were the ultimate winners. From the evocative photography, hauntingly memorable Benjamin Frankel score to the starring of the then 'hot' husband-and-wife team Stewart Granger [ruthless Stephen Lowry] and Jean Simmons [the ambitious above-her-station maid Lily Watkins], there's everything right about this movie. The sexual tension between the two is tangible throughout. The plot is Victorian murder, portrayed with period ambience by a distinguished British cast. Like all great movies the plot, though watertight, is not important. The movie is. Its stentorian elegance dwarfs its audience. They just know that this one was, and still is, a biggie. If you haven't seen it yet- lucky you!

Last of the Comanches (1953)

Early Comprehension

[8/10 · 13 September 2000]

I saw this movie at a children's Saturday afternoon matinee performance in Belfast under its then-British title THE SABRE AND THE ARROW. Only a young child, I remember being extremely moved by the juxtapositioning of the Brodrick Crawford seen-it-all Cavalry Sergeant's pragmatism with Johnny Stewart's vulnerablity as Little Knife, the abandoned Comanche boy in the desert. Normally at a children's matinee kids fidget and talk throughout, only cheering or boohing the action sequences. Thus we mostly came away from a western with an impression rather than a comprehension because the noise built to a point where dialogue went unheard. Not so in THE SABRE AND THE ARROW, the children's attention being a tribute to this western's emotional pull in the days when just seeing movies in colour was regarded as a treat. Cinema-only viewing added to the lustre. The dryness of that sun-blanched desert still haunts my senses fifty years on.