Category Archives: Film, TV, and Theatre

Film, TV, and Theatre

Bette Davis in Now, Voyager (1942)

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Now, Voy­ager is a 1942 Amer­i­can movie Bette Davis, Paul Hen­reid, and Claude Rains, and direct­ed by Irv­ing Rap­per. The screen­play by Casey Robin­son is based on the 1941 nov­el of the same name by Olive Hig­gins Prouty, who bor­rowed her title from the Walt Whit­man poem The Untold Want:

The untold want by life and land ne’er grant­ed,
Now, voy­ager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

Walt Whit­man, being one of America’s nation­al trea­sures, is oft-quot­ed on screen and in music: O Cap­tain! My Cap­tain in Dead Poets Soci­ety springs to mind, and more recent­ly Bob Dylan’s I Con­tain Mul­ti­tudes is a line bor­rowed from Song of Myself. “Now, voy­ager, sail thou forth, to seek and find” fits the sto­ry­line well, as we’ll see.

Now, Voy­ager movie poster

Char­lotte Vale (Bette Davis) is a shy, neu­rot­ic and over­weight young woman who is in thrall to her dom­i­neer­ing har­ri­dan of a moth­er (Gladys Coop­er). The ver­bal and emo­tion­al abuse dished out to her daugh­ter has cre­at­ed a woman on the verge of a ner­vous break­down. Indeed, fear­ing just that, Charlotte’s sis­ter-in-law Lisa intro­duces her to psy­chi­a­trist Dr Jaquith (Claude Rains), and Char­lotte spends some time in his san­i­tar­i­um. This proves to be a turn­ing point, and away from her moth­er’s clutch­es, Char­lotte blos­soms, los­es weight and gets her­self a whole new wardrobe. Both Lisa and Dr Jaquith encour­age Char­lotte not to go home yet but to instead go on a cruise.

Char­lotte agrees, and although ini­tial­ly too shy to mix with the oth­er pas­sen­gers on the ship, she meets and becomes friend­ly with Jer­ry Dur­rance (Paul Hen­reid), a mar­ried man trav­el­ing on busi­ness. Jer­ry is sym­pa­thet­ic to Charlotte’s new-found but still inchoate con­fi­dence and opens up about his own young daugh­ter Tina and her strug­gles with shy­ness. Char­lotte learns that it is only Jer­ry’s devo­tion to his daugh­ter that keeps him from divorc­ing his wife, who is a manip­u­la­tive and jeal­ous woman. On an excur­sion from the ship in Rio de Janeiro, Char­lotte and Jer­ry are strand­ed on Sug­ar­loaf Moun­tain. They miss the ship and spend five days togeth­er before Char­lotte flies to Buenos Aires to rejoin the cruise. Although it is clear they have fall­en in love, they decide not to see each oth­er again.

When she dis­em­barks from the ship, Char­lot­te’s fam­i­ly is stunned by the dra­mat­ic changes in her. The for­mer­ly qui­et and shy Char­lotte is inun­dat­ed with fond farewells from fel­low pas­sen­gers. Back home, her moth­er tries to brow­beat her daugh­ter all over again, but this time Char­lotte remains res­olute, empow­ered by her expe­ri­ences aboard the ship and the mem­o­ry of Jer­ry’s love. This time, she can fight back and when lat­er she deliv­ers some home truths, Mrs Vale, per­haps robbed of her rai­son d’être as effec­tive vira­go, dies of a heart attack. Guilty and dis­traught, Char­lotte returns to the san­i­tar­i­um but is quick­ly divert­ed from her relapse by meet­ing Jerry’s daugh­ter Tina and tak­ing her under her wing.

When Tina’s con­di­tion improves, Dr Jaquith allows Char­lotte to take Tina to live with her at her home to Boston, on the con­di­tion that her rela­tion­ship with Jer­ry remains pla­ton­ic. Jer­ry is delight­ed to see the improve­ment in his daugh­ter, but the love he and Char­lotte share must seem­ing­ly remain in check. Char­lotte tells Jer­ry that she sees Tina as her way of being close to him. When Jer­ry asks her if she is hap­py, she deliv­ers the clas­sic line at the very end of the movie: “Oh, Jer­ry, don’t let’s ask for the Moon. We have the stars.”

Bette Davis “Before and after” in Now, Voy­ager

Film, TV, and Theatre

William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675)

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There has always been bawdy humour. The Miller’s Tale, in Geof­frey Chaucer’s late 14th cen­tu­ry mas­ter­piece, The Can­ter­bury Tales, is replete with sex­u­al innu­en­do and crude behav­iour. More recent­ly, we can think about the clas­sic saucy sea­side post­cards of the ear­ly to mid-20th cen­tu­ry fea­tur­ing heav­ing bosoms, hen­pecked hus­bands and dou­ble enten­dres aplen­ty. Think too of the Car­ry On films of the 60s and 70s and the Con­fes­sions of a Win­dow Clean­er fran­chise (fun­ni­ly enough, Robin Asquith, who played the lead role in the Con­fes­sions films, also appeared in a 1972 “erot­ic com­e­dy” ver­sion of The Can­ter­bury Tales, con­tain­ing abun­dant nudi­ty, sex and slap­stick; he evi­dent­ly knew his oeu­vre).

Anoth­er age in his­to­ry that was known for its explo­sion of bawdy humour was the Restora­tion peri­od. The Restora­tion, of course, was the 1660 rein­state­ment of the Stu­art monar­chy, after ten years of Cromwell’s Com­mon­wealth of Eng­land which was char­ac­terised by a Puri­tan cul­ture that amongst oth­er things banned Christ­mas and the the­atre. Buz­zkill, much. The Restora­tion trig­gered an out­pour­ing of cre­ativ­i­ty in the arts and a Renais­sance in Eng­lish dra­ma through­out the late 17th and ear­ly 18th cen­turies. Enter Restora­tion Com­e­dy, and talk about a reac­tion to Puri­tanism: it went quite spec­tac­u­lar­ly the oth­er way, with the new King Charles II active­ly encour­ag­ing sex­u­al­ly explic­it lan­guage in plays.

The the­atres were packed and there was no short­age of play­wrights to keep them that way for a few years (the peak of Restora­tion com­e­dy per se was real­ly only the 1670s and again in the 1690s): promi­nent fig­ures includ­ed John Dry­den, George Etherege, William Dav­enant, Thomas Kil­li­grew, and William Wycher­ley. Wycherley’s com­e­dy The Coun­try Wife (1675) is a case in point. Con­tro­ver­sial for its sex­u­al explic­it­ness even in its own time, the title con­tains a lewd pun with regard to the first syl­la­ble of “coun­try”. Even in our own times, this word rarely makes in on-screen.

The play turns on two indel­i­cate plot devices: a seducer’s ploy of fak­ing impo­tence to safe­ly have clan­des­tine affairs with mar­ried women, and the arrival in Lon­don of an inex­pe­ri­enced young “coun­try wife”, with her dis­cov­ery of the joys of town life, ooh-err mis­sus. The scan­dalous decep­tion and the frank lan­guage have for much of the play’s his­to­ry kept it off the stage and out of print. It was only in 1924 that the play was staged once more; inter­est­ing­ly, itself a year and peri­od that fol­lowed a peri­od of depri­va­tion, name­ly the Great War, which under­stand­ably led to a sense of dev­il-may-care enjoy­ment of free­doms. Although clear­ly a peri­od piece, The Coun­try Wife has been acclaimed for its lin­guis­tic ener­gy and sharp social satire.

The Coun­try Wife fron­tispiece
William Wycher­ley
Film, TV, and Theatre

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep (1946)

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I’m a big fan of film noir, but what exact­ly is film noir? Well, it’s a genre or style, and it was coined in the twen­ties by French film crit­ics describ­ing Hol­ly­wood movies that they saw as dark and pes­simistic, hence “black cin­e­ma” or “film noir”. Film noir movies tend to be thrillers or detec­tive movies with cer­tain com­mon ele­ments such as an anti-hero pro­tag­o­nist, a femme fatale (there go the French again), some tight, snap­py dia­logue, high-con­trast cin­e­matog­ra­phy, and a gen­er­al sense of dis­il­lu­sion­ment or cyn­i­cism (as opposed to the ide­al­ism and hap­py end­ings of many an ear­ly Hol­ly­wood movie). What bet­ter exam­ple of film noir is there than Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep? (Clue: there prob­a­bly isn’t one).

Adapt­ed from Ray­mond Chandler’s 1939 nov­el about black­mail and mur­der, we have Humphrey Bog­a­rt as the anti-hero, pri­vate detec­tive Philip Mar­lowe, and Lau­ren Bacall as the smoul­der­ing seduc­tress, Vivian Rut­ledge. Tight dia­logue comes cour­tesy of William Faulkn­er (as an aside, Faulkn­er is bet­ter known as one of America’s great­est nov­el­ists – see The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Absa­lom, Absa­lom!) who co-wrote the screen­play. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy comes from the great auteur Howard Hawks (Bring­ing Up Baby, To Have and Have Not, Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes, Rio Bra­vo et al).

The Big Sleep was released by Warn­er Bros on 31st August 1946, and was such a com­mer­cial suc­cess that two more “Bogie and Bacall” films were quick­ly made: Dark Pas­sage (1947) and Key Largo (1948). The sex­u­al chem­istry between the new­ly-mar­ried Bog­a­rt and Bacall is famous­ly elec­tric, and the over­all atmos­phere is sul­try and sump­tu­ous. I have watched it at least twice and whilst I nev­er real­ly fig­ured out what’s going on in its con­fus­ing plot, I nev­er real­ly cared, as I wasn’t there for the plot. I was there for Bogie and Bacall. Let’s watch Mar­lowe and Vivian’s first meet­ing, in which the ver­bal joust­ing sets the tem­per­a­ture for the rest of the movie.

Film, TV, and Theatre

Charles Laughton’s The Night Of The Hunter (1955)

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The Night of the Hunter is an Amer­i­can thriller direct­ed in 1955 by Charles Laughton (his first and only direc­to­r­i­al fea­ture) and star­ring Robert Mitchum, Shel­ley Win­ters and Lil­lian Gish. I streamed this from the Inter­net Archive site recent­ly, and what a movie it is! Mitchum excels as creepy ser­i­al killer cum self-styled preach­er-man Har­ry Pow­ell who, whilst doing some bird, catch­es wind from Death Row con­vict Ben Harp­er about a hid­den stash of mon­ey, some­where in the fam­i­ly home of Harper’s wife and two young chil­dren.

Upon release from the pen­i­ten­tiary, Pow­ell high­tails it down to the small vil­lage in the Ohio Riv­er val­ley of West Vir­ginia, where he invei­gles him­self into the com­mu­ni­ty there. He uses his tat­tooed knuck­les LOVE and HATE to tell reli­gious para­bles and hide the fact that he’s a jail­bird and a wrong ‘un. He also pro­ceeds to woo and wed Harper’s wid­ow Willa (Shel­ley Win­ters). Whilst Pow­ell has won Willa’s and the town’s trust, who assume him to be a good and pious man, young John Harp­er, on the oth­er hand, is instinc­tive­ly sus­pi­cious of the new­com­er. Nonethe­less, under Powell’s prob­ing John acci­den­tal­ly reveals that he and Pearl know where the mon­ey is hid­den, although he deter­mined­ly sticks to his vow giv­en to his father at their final meet­ing to nev­er reveal the secret.

Powell’s patience runs thin and final­ly he mur­ders Willa and dumps her body in the riv­er, telling the town that she’s scarpered for a life of sin. With the mask well and tru­ly off, the sin­is­ter Pow­ell threat­ens the chil­dren into reveal­ing that the mon­ey is hid­den inside Pearl’s doll. The kids, how­ev­er, man­age to do a run­ner with the doll and flee down­riv­er in their father’s small boat, final­ly find­ing sanc­tu­ary with Rachel Coop­er, a tough woman with a heart of gold who looks after stray chil­dren but can han­dle a gun.

Pow­ell even­tu­al­ly tracks them down, but Rachel sees through his decep­tions and runs him off her prop­er­ty with a shot­gun. Pow­ell returns after dark and an all-night stand­off ensues, dur­ing which the unflap­pable Rachel gives Pow­ell a face full of bird­shot. She sum­mons the state police, who arrive and arrest Pow­ell for Willa’s mur­der. John and Pearl spend their first Christ­mas togeth­er with Rachel and her brood of waifs and strays.

The Night of the Hunter pre­miered on July 26, 1955, in Des Moines, Iowa, but to large­ly neg­a­tive reviews. Over the years, how­ev­er, the film has been pos­i­tive­ly re-eval­u­at­ed and is now con­sid­ered one of the best films ever made. French film mag­a­zine Cahiers du Ciné­ma select­ed The Night of the Hunter in 2008 as the sec­ond-best film of all time, behind Cit­i­zen Kane. This mod­ern trail­er gives a good sense of the per­il

Robert Mitchum
Film, TV, and Theatre

Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant (1999)

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Ani­ma­tion as an art form essen­tial­ly got under­way with the advent of cel­lu­loid film in 1888. Sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ani­ma­tion tech­niques were devel­oped over the ensu­ing decades includ­ing stop-motion with objects, pup­pets, clay or cut-out fig­ures, and hand-drawn or paint­ed ani­ma­tion, the lat­ter becom­ing the dom­i­nant tech­nique of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Today of course, tra­di­tion­al ani­ma­tion has been com­plete­ly usurped by com­put­er ani­ma­tion, with the trend begin­ning with 1990’s The Res­cuers Down Under, the first film to be made with a com­put­er and no cam­era. Today’s blog sub­ject, direc­tor Brad Bird’s 1999 debut film The Iron Giant, was a hybrid of tra­di­tion­al and dig­i­tal and was a fit­ting­ly fin de siè­cle mark­er of that tran­si­tion to full-on dig­i­tal-only in the ear­ly 2000s.

The film was loose­ly based on the 1968 sci­ence fic­tion nov­el The Iron Man by future Poet Lau­re­ate Ted Hugh­es, with screen­play by Tim McCan­lies and Brad Bird. The film stars the voic­es of Jen­nifer Anis­ton, Har­ry Con­nick Jr, and Christo­pher McDon­ald, with Vin Diesel pro­vid­ing the deep metal­lic grunts of the Iron Giant him­self. Set in 1957, slap bang in the mid­dle of the peri­od of Cold War para­noia in the US, the film revolves around a young boy named Hog­a­rth Hugh­es, who dis­cov­ers and befriends a giant alien robot who has crash-land­ed from space and recent­ly arrived in the for­est near Hogarth’s house in Rock­well, Maine.

When rumours of the dis­cov­ery reach the ears of fed­er­al agent Kent Mans­ley (McDon­ald), a train of events is set in play which will even­tu­al­ly bring the might of the US Army to bear on this mis­un­der­stood alien threat. Hog­a­rth, mean­while, hav­ing learnt that the giant is in fact per­fect­ly friend­ly and means no harm, teams up with beat­nik artist Dean McCop­pin (Con­nick Jr), to thwart the author­i­ties’ attempts to find and destroy the giant, whilst simul­ta­ne­ous­ly try­ing to pro­tect his moth­er (Anis­ton) from the truth of his night­ly escapades.

The ani­ma­tion in the film is exquis­ite­ly done and the voice actors con­spire with the cel­lu­loid images to cre­ate a deeply char­ac­ter­ful film. The bud­ding rela­tion­ship between the boy and the Iron Giant are at times high­ly mov­ing, whilst the machi­na­tions of the sneaky Mans­ley pro­duce as suit­able a vil­lain as any live action dra­ma could evoke. The film was nom­i­nat­ed for sev­er­al awards and since its home video releas­es and TV syn­di­ca­tion has acquired some­thing of a cult fol­low­ing, being wide­ly regard­ed as a mod­ern ani­mat­ed clas­sic. Not bad for a direc­to­r­i­al debut (Bird would lat­er be respon­si­ble for fam­i­ly favourites The Incred­i­bles [2004] and Rata­touille [2007]).

Watch The Iron Giant trail­er here:

The Iron Giant
Film, TV, and Theatre

Robert Altman’s Short Cuts (1993)

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I have just fin­ished read­ing Ray­mond Carver’s col­lec­tion of dis­qui­et­ing short sto­ries, Short Cuts, which inspired the sub­ject of today’s blog, Robert Altman’s 1993 movie of the same name. Carv­er was a mas­ter of the sub-genre of lit­er­ary fic­tion dubbed “dirty real­ism” by Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Bill Buford. Dirty real­ism is char­ac­terised by depict­ing the seami­er side of life, with down­beat char­ac­ters suf­fer­ing from a kind of inter­nal des­per­a­tion brought about by their par­tic­u­lar life cir­cum­stances. Before full-time writ­ing, Carv­er had worked in Cal­i­for­nia in the fifties and six­ties in a vari­ety of jobs — deliv­ery man, jan­i­tor, library assis­tant, sawmill labour­er — and per­haps inter­nalised mate­r­i­al from see­ing peo­ple liv­ing lives of qui­et des­per­a­tion (to quote Hen­ry David Thore­au). His sto­ries of ordi­nary peo­ple at break­ing point inspired Robert Alt­man to make the mas­ter­piece we’re about to dis­cuss.

Filmed from a screen­play by Alt­man and Frank Barhy­dt, Short Cuts was inspired by nine of Carver’s short sto­ries (culled large­ly from his col­lec­tion Will You Please Be Qui­et, Please?, pub­lished in 1976). It was set in Los Ange­les (in con­trast to the orig­i­nal Pacif­ic North­west back­drop of Carver’s sto­ries) and traces the lives of twen­ty two prin­ci­pal char­ac­ters, loose­ly con­nect­ed to one anoth­er in one way or anoth­er. The stel­lar cast includes Matthew Modine, Julianne Moore, Jen­nifer Jason Leigh, Robert Downey Jr., Madeleine Stowe, Chris Penn, Jack Lem­mon, Frances McDor­mand, Lori Singer, Andie Mac­Dow­ell, Buck Hen­ry, Lily Tom­lin, actress and singer Annie Ross, and musi­cians Huey Lewis, Lyle Lovett, and Tom Waits.

The film begins with a fleet of heli­copters spray­ing for med­flies, which brings var­i­ous char­ac­ters togeth­er along the flight path. To this back­drop, and with the sul­try night­club jazz songs of Annie Ross as the inci­den­tal music, we see the mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters in their var­i­ous sce­nar­ios slow­ly falling apart. There is too much by way of plot to describe here, but the sto­ries play out in tan­dem and often loop back on them­selves as we see char­ac­ters famil­iar from ear­li­er scenes in the movie appear­ing in dif­fer­ent con­texts lat­er.

I called it a mas­ter­piece for good rea­son: the actors absolute­ly nail the theme of dys­func­tion. There are heart-break­ing scenes, but also mun­dane ones that nonethe­less mas­ter­ful­ly dis­play the human con­di­tion thanks to the qual­i­ty of the actors. It’s a psy­cho­log­i­cal dra­ma but a com­ic one too, and it swings from tragedy to com­e­dy and back again. It is, like Carver’s orig­i­nal sto­ries, high­ly dis­qui­et­ing but well worth the expe­ri­ence. Here is the film trail­er to whet your appetite but watch the full three hours for an extra­or­di­nary ride.

Film, TV, and Theatre

Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men (1957)

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Clas­sics night at Cot­tage Road cin­e­ma is prov­ing to be the gift that keeps on giv­ing! Just as the dust set­tles on my recent blog about Bad Day at Black Rock, this month’s fea­ture com­pelled me to write about anoth­er clas­sic from the fifties, Sid­ney Lumet’s legal dra­ma 12 Angry Men (1957). The film was Sid­ney Lumet’s direc­to­r­i­al debut, so not a bad start giv­en that it’s regard­ed by many as one of the great­est films of all time and that he was nom­i­nat­ed for Best Direc­tor at the Acad­e­my Awards (he would go on to be nom­i­nat­ed for three oth­er films, Dog Day After­noon (1975), the satir­i­cal dra­ma Net­work (1976) and the legal thriller The Ver­dict (1982)).

12 Angry Men was adapt­ed from a 1954 tele­play of the same name by Regi­nald Rose and tells the sto­ry of a jury of twelve men as they delib­er­ate over whether the teenag­er that they have just seen charged with the mur­der of his father should be con­vict­ed or acquit­ted on the basis of rea­son­able doubt. As they troop into the jurors’ room it soon becomes clear that they all regard the case as open-and-shut: the accused is clear­ly guilty. They antic­i­pate a quick unan­i­mous agree­ment to a ‘guilty’ ver­dict after which they can return to their lives. How­ev­er, when they con­duct a pre­lim­i­nary tal­ly of the jurors’ posi­tions and the ‘guilty’ votes pile in, they are some­what irri­tat­ed to find that the twelfth man, played bril­liant­ly by Hen­ry Fon­da, can­not in good con­science vote guilty. What ensues is a tour de force of psy­chodra­ma as every man is forced to ques­tion his morals, val­ues and assump­tions.

Almost the entire film is shot in the jurors’ room in which they are ensconced. It’s a hot summer’s night, the heat is sweat-induc­ing, the fan isn’t work­ing, and most of the chaps are smok­ing, and it all adds to the claus­tro­pho­bic, sti­fling ten­sion of the scene. Fonda’s char­ac­ter, Juror 8, begins to calm­ly dis­man­tle the assump­tions that his co-jurors have so read­i­ly accept­ed. He out­lines alter­na­tive fea­si­ble sce­nar­ios to the ones pressed by the pros­e­cu­tion and remains adamant that rea­son­able doubt exists. His argu­ments don’t at first find favour, but grad­u­al­ly, one by one, the oth­er jurors come around to his point of view.

There’s some great act­ing tal­ent on dis­play here, with ter­rif­ic per­for­mances from Mar­tin Bal­sam, Ed Beg­ley, Jack Klug­man, Jack War­den, and Lee J Cobb. The dia­logue is elec­tric and the cin­e­matog­ra­phy is in the real­ist style cour­tesy of Boris Kauf­man who had recent­ly won an Acad­e­my Award for On The Water­front. The cam­era work con­tributes to the claus­tro­pho­bia by grad­u­al­ly increas­ing the focal length as the film pro­gress­es, going from above eye-lev­el, wide-angle lens at the begin­ning to low­er angle, tele­pho­to lens close-ups at the end.

Let’s watch juror 3, the hot-tem­pered and most pas­sion­ate advo­cate of a ‘guilty ver­dict’, played mes­mer­iz­ing­ly by Lee J Cobb, as his defi­ance as last man stand­ing final­ly crum­bles.

Hen­ry Fon­da as Juror 8
Sid­ney Lumet

 

Film, TV, and Theatre

Spencer Tracy in Bad Day At Black Rock (1955)

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The Cot­tage Road Cin­e­ma in Head­in­g­ley is the old­est indie cin­e­ma in Leeds and has been con­tin­u­ous­ly show­ing films since 1912. As such it is regard­ed with fond­ness by much of the north Leeds com­mu­ni­ty and long may it con­tin­ue. Any­way, it has a clas­sics night every month, where view­ers can watch a series of nos­tal­gic ads and pre­views from back in the day, pri­or to set­tling back with a fair­ly-priced box of pop­corn to enjoy a clas­sic movie, select­ed for its his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al or aes­thet­ic sig­nif­i­cance. Last month, for exam­ple, I went to see Hitchcock’s Rear Win­dow; next month I’m tempt­ed by Irv­ing Rapper’s Now, Voy­ager; and this month I went to see the sub­ject of this blog, John Sturges’ Bad Day at Black Rock.

Bad Day at Black Rock is a 1955 Amer­i­can neo-West­ern film star­ring Spencer Tra­cy and Robert Ryan with sup­port from Wal­ter Bren­nan, Anne Fran­cis, John Eric­son, Ernest Borg­nine and Lee Mar­vin. The term “neo-West­ern” does not sig­ni­fy a west­ern movie as such, and instead implies the use of cer­tain themes and motifs redo­lent of west­erns but set in more mod­ern times (in this case, 1945). Real­ly, it’s a crime dra­ma but it con­tains the wide, open plains and desert land­scapes of the west­ern, and Spencer Tracy’s “stranger comes to town and is met with unfriend­ly sus­pi­cion” per­sona is top-draw­er Clint East­wood.

Tra­cy plays a one-armed stranger, John Macreedy, who dis­em­barks from the train that rarely stops in the iso­lat­ed desert ham­let of Black Rock and is soon put under hos­tile scruti­ny from the locals who lounge on the wood­en veran­das of the saloon and bar-and-grill and won­der who the hell this new guy is and what the hell does he want? At this point I should say that if I were har­bour­ing a dark secret – which you can be sure these Black Rock locals cer­tain­ly are — and a stranger comes to town ask­ing ques­tions, I would put on a friend­ly and coop­er­a­tive façade to deflect sus­pi­cion. This lot, how­ev­er, opt for the acute hos­til­i­ty and eva­sive­ness approach and thus come across as guilty as sin from the get-go, with Borg­nine and Mar­vin in par­tic­u­lar push­ing the enve­lope in the “I’ve clear­ly got some­thing to hide” depart­ment.

Still, Macreedy’s been ask­ing ques­tions about a cer­tain Japan­ese-Amer­i­can gen­tle­man named Komoko, but nobody seems to want to engage. Robert Ryan’s char­ac­ter Reno Smith is clear­ly in charge and holds the rest of the town in his thrall, includ­ing the inef­fec­tu­al, alco­holic sher­iff. Smith claims that Komoko was sim­ply interned dur­ing World War II but also reveals his vir­u­lent anti-Japan­ese sen­ti­ment devel­oped after Pearl Har­bor — we the audi­ence are only too aware that some­thing dodgy has gone down and not only that but Macreedy him­self needs to be in fear for his own life. Macreedy grad­u­al­ly breaks down the omer­ta of the towns­folk and begins to sep­a­rate the real cul­prits from the sim­ply scared, some of whom are inspired by Macreedy to step up. It’s a tour de force of psy­cho­log­i­cal dra­ma, with great tough-guy dia­logue and the stun­ning back­drop of the Mohave desert, and well worth my punt in ven­tur­ing out on a Wednes­day night!

Let’s watch Macreedy, despite his one arm, get­ting the bet­ter of thug Coley Trim­ble (Ernest Borg­nine), in this tense encounter.

Spencer Tra­cy and John Eric­son in Bad Day at Black Rock
Film, TV, and Theatre

Phil Cornwell and John Sessions in Stella Street (1997)

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A British TV com­e­dy series that per­haps fell under the radar a lit­tle bit (you can actu­al­ly find peo­ple who nev­er saw or heard of it), Stel­la Street was nonethe­less a great find when it began air­ing in 1997 and con­tin­ued over four series to 2001. Its some­what bizarre premise is that an ordi­nary street in sub­ur­ban Sur­biton is peo­pled by a group of big­time celebri­ties going about their lives in ordi­nary, sub­ur­ban fash­ion, but adher­ing to some well-known and exag­ger­at­ed stereo­types per­tain­ing to said celebs.

The show was con­ceived and writ­ten by John Ses­sions, Phil Corn­well and Peter Richard­son, with the main char­ac­ters played by Ses­sions and Corn­well (and Ron­ni Ancona for some episodes). The celebri­ties cho­sen to live in Stel­la Street were pre­sum­ably influ­enced by the per­form­ers’ abil­i­ty to do great impres­sions of them and whose per­sonas lent them­selves to some great send-up com­e­dy. The pro­gramme takes the form of a mock­u­men­tary with film­ing done on a hand­held cam­era and Corn­well as Michael Caine talk­ing direct­ly to the cam­era to intro­duce char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tions (just as he does in the 1966 film Alfie).

Jack Nichol­son is por­trayed as the invet­er­ate wom­an­is­ing bad-ass of his stereo­type (or his real per­son­al­i­ty?) com­plete with bad taste Hawai­ian shirts not exact­ly suit­ed to the British cli­mate. Michael Caine is full-on Six­ties’ Michael Caine with the trade­mark lacon­ic vocal deliv­ery, shock of gin­ger hair and horn-rimmed glass­es. Roger Moore is the quin­tes­sen­tial Eng­lish gen­tle­man with impec­ca­ble man­ners, and with a lone­li­ness theme ruth­less­ly exploit­ed by Ses­sions. David Bowie is the self-effac­ing and slight­ly awk­ward super­star stay­ing true to his Brom­ley roots. Mick Jag­ger and Kei­th Richards run the local gro­cery store, Mick with mas­sive enthu­si­asm, Kei­th with time-worn, dev­il-may-care cyn­i­cism and a gleam in his eye.

Let’s enjoy a mon­tage of Corn­well and Ses­sions bring­ing these char­ac­ters to life: the may­hem of Mick and Keef’s cor­ner shop, and then a glo­ri­ous vignette of David Bowie and Roger Moore exchang­ing spec­tac­u­lar­ly mun­dane Christ­mas presents (with Roger Moore tak­ing polite­ness to the next lev­el when gift­ed an under­whelm­ing £10 book token).

Mick and Keef
Film, TV, and Theatre

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927)

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A few months ago I went to a screen­ing of the 1920 silent hor­ror film The Cab­i­net of Dr Cali­gari at local venue the Old Woollen in Fars­ley. The film is a quin­tes­sen­tial piece of Ger­man Expres­sion­ist cin­e­ma from over a cen­tu­ry ago and a fas­ci­nat­ing insight into cel­lu­loid cre­ativ­i­ty dur­ing the era of the Weimar Repub­lic. As fun as it is, with its sto­ry of a mad hyp­no­tist induc­ing a brain­washed som­nam­bu­list to com­mit mur­ders, I want­ed to look at an even more quin­tes­sen­tial movie from the era, one that most peo­ple have come across at some point, the great 1927 sci­ence-fic­tion mas­ter­piece, Metrop­o­lis, direct­ed by Fritz Lang (1890–1976).

Lang has been cit­ed as one of the most influ­en­tial of film­mak­ers of all time, and he is cred­it­ed with pio­neer­ing both the sci-fi genre (Metrop­o­lis, Woman in the Moon) and film noir (M). He didn’t shy away from pro­duc­ing epi­cal­ly long films, either, like the 4.5 hour Dr Mabuse the Gam­bler or the two-part Die Nibelun­gen based on the epic poem Nibelun­gen­lied, but the one film that cap­tures the zeit­geist of the auteur’s work is undoubt­ed­ly Metrop­o­lis.

It was writ­ten in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Lang’s wife Thea von Har­bou and based on her 1925 nov­el of the same name. Metrop­o­lis is set in a futur­is­tic urban dystopia pre­fig­ur­ing Blade Run­ner and bring­ing to mind themes from Orwell and indeed Mary Shel­ley with its own Frankenstein’s mon­ster in the form of the sci­en­tist Rot­wang’s icon­ic robot the Maschi­nen­men­sch.

Mean­while, the film’s aes­thet­ics, with Goth­ic touch­es, draw heav­i­ly from the Bauhaus, Cubist and Futur­ist design move­ments of the time. We see a world of colos­sal sky­scrap­ers from which a wealthy elite lords it over the down-trod­den mass­es of the under­ground who toil in abject con­di­tions to keep the machines of the soci­ety run­ning.

One day a mem­ber of this elite, one Fred­er Fred­er­sen (Gus­tav Fröh­lich), has an epiphany when pre­sent­ed with what life is like for the poor, by the saint­ly Maria (Brigitte Helm, who also plays the Maschi­nen­men­sch), and the two con­spire to change the soci­ety and bring about social jus­tice. As such, it can be con­strued as a rather sim­plis­tic moral­i­ty tale, but there’s no sim­plic­i­ty in the styl­i­sa­tion and bril­liant tech­ni­cal effects, which serve to cre­ate a remark­able world, both visu­al­ly beau­ti­ful and pow­er­ful. Enjoy the the­atri­cal trail­er, below, with an excel­lent sound­track by Got­tfried Hup­pertz.

Fritz Lang