Film Reviews
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Girl, Interrupted (James Mangold, 1999)
Drama with Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie & Whoopi Goldberg.
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
did it much, much better. Girl Interrupted drags up too many cliches and only
manages sporadically to generate interest. It begins well, and I was genuinely
fascinated by the way the film pulled us into Winona Ryder's mind, but after
an hour I found myself looking at my watch and praying for it to end: None of
the characters managed to keep much more than a slender hold on my sympathy;
and I got the uneasy impression that we were supposed to look up to Whoopi
Goldberg as some sort of strong, admirable maternal figure simply because it was Whoopi Goldberg, in the absence of any real depth to her
character. The central character's emergence from the brink of insanity into a
mature, upstanding young role model of a woman at the end of the film was
rather too sudden to be believable. A nice soundtrack helped, but ultimately
Girl Interrupted was far too patchy.
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Goodbye, Mr Chips (Herbert Ross, 1969)
Musical with Peter O'Toole, Petula Clarke, Michael Redgrave,
Sian Phillips & George Baker.
This musical adaptation of James Hilton's novel about the romance between a
boring schoolmaster and a west end actress (at least she is in this version)
clearly aims at success. The title credits reveal such names as Oswald Morris
(photography), John Williams (musical direction), Terence Rattigan
(screenplay) and Herbert Ross (director). Such an impressive line-up leaves us
in no doubt that the producers were pitching for a smash-hit to rival
My Fair Lady or The Sound of Music
. Why, then, Leslie Bricusse? The presence of his name virtually guarantees
dullness. As expected, only one or two numbers (the School Song, perhaps, and
London is London) come close to the target, and the rest are almost
unbelievably banal. Only John Williams's lively orchestrations save the
musical numbers from total failure.
O'Toole is bereft of Robert Donat's charm, and even seems heartless at
times, rather than merely shy and inept. Indeed, in the first few scenes he
appears to be a rescusitation of Andrew Crocker-Harris, the cold schoolmaster
from The Browning Version,
which is no coincidence, since they share the same writer, Terence Rattigan.
Otherwise, the screenplay is one of the most satisfying aspects of the
production. In fact, as a drama it is reasonably successful; unfortunately,
Bricusse's songs are only sporadically hummable (the lyrics are atrocious), as
usual, and weaken what could have been a much better film. The makers of
Goodbye, Mr Chips had a lot to live up to, the story having been memorably
filmed some thirty years earlier, so it is no surprise that they miss the
mark. It does, however, manage to retain some charm.
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Gorgon, The (Terence Fisher, 1964)
Horror with Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Barbara Shelley &
Richard Pasco.
An underrated film, The Gorgon is a mesmerizing fantasy that
brings together ancient mythology and Hammer's best gothic style under the
expert direction of stalwart Terence Fisher. Production looks great, even if
it is unfortunately studiobound. The film has a definite fairy-tale-like
quality to it, confirming Fisher's reputation as a maker of "fairy tales for
adults". Lee is a tad uncomfortable in a fairly untypical role here, but
Cushing excels as the ambiguous anti-hero Dr Namaroff. Michael Reed lights and
photographs the production beautifully and with great atmosphere, lending
Hammer some of its most poignant moments.
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Greatest Show on Earth, The (Cecil B DeMille, 1952)
Circus drama with Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Charlton Heston,
Dorothy Lamour, Gloria Grahame & James Stewart.
In DeMille's big-top, ordinary people take on extraordinary proportions,
and small lives reveal epic qualities. In the circus everyone has a story to
tell, and we watch as those stories unfold. DeMille's film also has something
of an introspective quality: The circus is an allegory for Hollywood, with
everyone struggling to find their fortune, everyone coming to the melting pot
from every walk of life, some finding themselves bruised by the mechanistic
and brutal realities of showbiz. The film is rather lengthy, mainly due to the
periodic montages of circus trickery, artistry and buffoonery, though they are
generally amusing enough. A good cast sustain it, however, including James
Stewart as Buttons, a clown, whose appearances are unfortunately fleeting.
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Horror of Dracula aka
Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958)
Horror with Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Melissa Stribling,
Michael Gough, Miles Malleson & John Van Eyssen.
Terence Fisher's stunning 1958 adaptation of Stoker's famous
novel is far and away the finest of several screen versions. The film has
several points to commend it, all of which converge to make this a true
masterpiece of horror cinema: First, Terence Fisher's strongly Christian
mythological framework, rarely so brilliantly brought to the screen as it was
here; second, Jack Asher's superbly atmospheric photography and lighting,
bringing us the most memorable and carefully articulated images of vampirism
of all time; third, Bernard Robinson's splendid sets; fourth, James Bernard's
score, his most famous, complementing excellently Fisher's blend of
fairy-tale, sexuality, horror and drama; fifth, Jimmy Sangster's intelligent
script; and sixth, two sterling performances by relative newcomers to stardom,
Cushing and Lee. This film has haunted me since I first watched it at the age
of ten, and it still weaves a powerful spell. Later versions have tended,
perhaps inevitably, to be highly derivative, where the Hammer version set the
tone for a whole genre of films, putting its stamp irrevocably on the face of
Dracula and its surrounding mythology for almost half a century to come.
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Hound of the Baskervilles, The
(Terence Fisher, 1959)
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Ice Cold in Alex
Wartime drama with John Mills, Anthony Quayle, Sylvia Syms,
Harry Andrews & Diane Clare.
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Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978)
Science fiction with Donald Sutherland, Leonard Nimoy, Brooke
Adams, Jeff Goldblum & Angela Cartwright.
Philip Kaufman's 1978 remake of a 1956 original (whose
director Don Seigel and star Kevin McCarthy both have fleeting cameos here) is
an entertaining and truly scary movie. Tension is high throughout, although at
the same time Kaufman directs from WD Richter's script with a sense of humour.
On the negative side, while I appreciated the way the camera is used to create
a terrifying image of a world that is already distorted long before the
monsters show up, photography and editing are just a little too frenetic
overall, hardly giving the audience the chance to breathe. Apart from its
stylishness, it does fit in thematically, but it's all rather overdone, and
the tension could have been maintained and even improved without the overkill.
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Invisible Man, The (James Whale, 1933)
Thriller with Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, William Harrigan,
Henry Travers & Una O'Connor.
This adaptation of HG Wells's novella has everything: A great
script by RC Sherriff; an exemplary cast headed up by then-unknown Rains in
the title role, who has the perfect vocal presence for the part; an
irresistibly funny and dark sense of humour; thrills and suspense; and fairly
impressive special effects for its era. Whale generates just the right
atmosphere from the opening shots, and the story's English setting is a
delight in his capable hands.
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Iris (Richard Eyre, 2001)
Biographical drama with Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, Kate
Winslet, Hugh Bonneville & Penelope Wilton.
I didn't have the feeling I was watching a film about "Iris Murdoch, the
famous novelist", at all. Indeed, this film could have been about anyone, for
it was not so much a biography as it was a fable about life's ironies. The
second half of Iris's life is played out like a grotesque parody or inversion
of the first. The parallels are fairly oblique, but there is no denying that
this is an aesthetically stunning and incredibly beautiful film, if a little
heavy-handed at times. James Horner's score is haunting, even though one
wishes the BBC had gone for some homegrown talent.
The counterbalance to the tragic irony is found in the enduring love and
warmth in the relationship between Iris and John, played touchingly by Judi
Dench and Jim Broadbent, with Kate Winslet and Hugh Bonneville as the lovers
in their younger years. The pain and anguish of Iris's descent into the late
stages of Alzheimers are movingly portrayed.
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Italian Job, The (Peter Collinson, 1968)
Caper with Michael Caine, Noel Coward, Benny Hill & Rossano Brazzi.
This cult classic has an unsatisfactory first half, but boasts a
spectacularly entertaining and justly famous second. The patchy script has
Caine engineering a heist in Turin with the help of jailed criminal mastermind
Noel Coward, a welcome cameo. As the heist itself gets under way, director
Collinson delivers first-class thrills with a cheeky sense of humour. The
production is excellently shot by veteran cinematographer Douglas Slocombe,
best known for the Ealing comedies of the 1940s and '50s; his presence here
reinforces the sense of Britishness with which the film has become associated.
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It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934)
Comedy with Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert & Walter Connolly.
On the run from her rich daddy, spoiled Colbert bumps into hardnosed
journalist Gable. The two leads bounce off each other with perfection, helped
by a script that seems to have lost none of its wit after more than seventy
years. The film is bursting with sexual tension, inspiredly handled by
director Capra.
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