The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

My private life is my own affair

In The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, an original story by Billy Wilder and co-writer, I. A. L. Diamond, the filmmakers slyly play with the familiar tropes of the great fictional detective and audience expectations, fashioning a tale at once classical in plot and characters but contemporary in vision.

The film kicks off with a very smart temporal bookend, set in a bank vault 50 years after the main action, in which a dust-covered, bound, sealed chest of Sherlock Holmes memorabilia belonging to Dr Watson is opened and, piece by piece, the contents revealed. First, the audience is reminded of the familiar elements of Sherlock Holmes' life - the deerstalker hat, the meerschaum pipe, the magnifying glass, the door number 221B, and so on. Second, a tantalising puzzle of novel or less familiar elements is introduced: a musical score entitled "for Ilse van H. Sherlock Holmes, comp.", a gold pocket watch containing the photograph of an attractive young woman, a ring fronted with the initials "SH" hiding a miniature magnetic compass, a medical syringe, a snow globe featuring a bust of Queen Victoria, and a sheaf of papers entitled "To my heirs", from which a ghostly Dr Watson narrates. After mentioning the 60 or so published accounts of Sherlock Holmes' cases, he continues, "But there were other adventures which, for reasons of discretion, I have decided to withhold from the public until this much later date. They involve matters of a delicate and sometimes scandalous nature, as will shortly become apparent…".

The story switches back 50 years to Holmes (Robert Stephens) and Watson (Colin Blakely) returning to their shared Baker Street flat, and to an immediate puncturing of some less modern aspects (the habit of wearing a cloak and deerstalker hat) of the familiar Sherlock Holmes stereotype, and the reinforcing of some other ostensibly more modernistic elements (the interest in music, the use of recreational drugs), with Holmes waxing irate at the public's inaccurate image of him, foisted on him by Watson's use of poetic licence when reporting his "simple exercises in logic" and the publisher's erroneous illustrations. Holmes also protests that Watson has falsely characterised him as a misogynist - he does not dislike women, merely mistrusts them - thereby introducing another of the more modernistic themes of the film: Holmes's sexuality.

Nowadays, if two unmarried men share a flat and one writes consistently glowing reports of the other's exploits, people might reasonably wonder about the nature of their personal relationship. Wikipedia reports that "Holmes is not known to have had any relations with women" whereas Watson was married in some stories. In a minor plot thread involving an ageing Russian prima ballerina (Tamara Toumanova) on the point of retirement, the script writers have some fun playing with the notion that Holmes might have been gay. Holmes is summoned to the side of the ballerina, and only manages to avoid a proposal to father her first child, in exchange for a precious Stradivarius violin, by pretending to be in a relationship with Dr Watson. Watson's conventional panic about what people will think of him highlights Holmes' amused and urbane response, adding to his status as a man socially, as well as intellectually, ahead of his time.

Now into the film comes a damsel in distress, Gabrielle Valladon (Geneviève Page), a beautiful woman with a foreign accent and a missing husband, and the story takes on more of the elements of a standard Sherlock Holmes mystery, including cages of canaries, disappearing circus midgets, monks sworn to silence, odd goings-on in the ruins of a Scottish castle and even sightings of a Loch Ness monster.

The scriptwriters continue to have fun with Holmes' sex life, allowing him to provide a rationale for his distrust of women, and placing him in various interesting juxtapositions - and let's be honest, temptations - with his new client, Valladon, including full-on nudity and the semblance of domestic married bliss. Early on, at the Baker Street flat, for example, Valladon, mentally confused after a recent near drowning and apparently thinking herself in her own home and mistaking Holmes for her husband, wanders around unashamedly in a state of undress and attempts to embrace him. Later on, to mask their true identities, Holmes and Valladon pretend to be a married couple, with Watson as their valet, leading to interesting developments in the bedroom.

In any case, by the end of the film, the significance of the items pulled out of Dr Watson's chest should be quite clear and questions about Holmes' choice of relationships feel satisfactorily resolved.

Turning to performances: as the great consulting detective, Robert Stephens, his features suitably angular, is really pretty convincing. With voice and body language, he conveys a background of sufficient social and educational privilege and the required intellectual arrogance, and with just a hint of arch campness, introduces the shadow of a doubt. Colin Blakely plays Watson very conventionally, as is right, to emphasise Holmes' uniqueness; Geneviève Page is just right as Holmes' client, lovely and loveable; and Christopher Lee is very sinister as Mycroft. Of the supporting actors, Irene Handl gives a wonderful performance as Mrs Hudson, Holmes' landlady.

This film would make a good double bill with John Huston's classic The Maltese Falcon (1939).

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• Director: Billy Wilder
• Writers: I. A. L. Diamond, Billy Wilder
• Starring: Robert Stephens, Geneviève Page, Colin Blakely, Christopher Lee, Irene Handl, Clive Revill, Tamara Toumanova, Stanley Holloway

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 27 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home, on iPad
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: Added ranking image.

The best science fiction movie...

Over on the Linkedin website, in the Movie Addicts discussion group, Michael Gericke posed the question "Science Fiction - What's the best movie?" Although it's not a movie commentary as such, I'd like to re-post my answer here, somewhat amended.

As the notion of "best" here is clearly subjective, it's not really possible to arrive at a definitive answer. That given, my vote would go to Stanley Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), probably the most far-reaching SF movie ever in ambition of ideas and brilliance of technique, though its intellectual "coldness" may put many people off.

My second vote would probably go to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) which was hugely influential and which I can watch again and again. As well as the brilliant scenes where replicant androids are tested for emotional responsiveness, I especially love the scene where Deckard, using speech navigation on his home computer, finds a crucial clue in a photo, zooming in beyond all belief.

Here are some other contenders, organised by topic:

• Best noir-inflected: Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville;
• Best robots/androids: Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running, Paul Verhoeven's Robocop, John Cameron's The Terminator / T2, and again Ridley Scott's Blade Runner; Brad Bird's The Iron Giant;
• Best aliens: Robert Wise's The Day The Earth Stood Still, Nicholas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth, Ridley Scott's Alien, Steven Spielberg's E.T,, Close Encounters of the Third Kind;
• Best action-packed: Andy & Larry Wachowski's The Matrix, James Cameron's Aliens and The Terminator / T2, John McTiernan's Predator, Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall, John Carpenter's The Thing;
• Best social satire: Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Stanley Kubrik's A Clockwork Orange;
• Best paranoia: Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris
• Best humour: John Carpenter's Dark Star, Stanley Kubrik's Dr Strangelove;
• Best special effects (at the time): Jack Arnold's The Incredible Shrinking Man, Stanley Kubrik's 2001, Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park; James Cameron's Avatar

N.B. I referred to an excellent book: The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies, John Scalzi (2005)

Source Code (2011)

Make Every Second Count.

Source Code is an intelligent suspenseful science fiction thriller with a clever script and excellent performances.

The premise of the story, like an updated version of Groundhog Day (1993) for the attention deficit generation, repeatedly casts the central protagonist (Jake Gyllenhaal) back into a single 8-minute period of time on a speeding train. Groundhog Day's weatherman Phil Connors' comparatively leisurely 24 hours are compressed into the high pressure intensity of Gyllenhaal's character's situation, and the minor misadventures and personal tragedies punctuating small town life in Punxutawney are upgraded to kick-ass action sequences and life-threatening explosions.

Like Gyllenhaal's character, the audience is thrown right from the very start of the film into a very confusing situation, and a large part of the fun for the audience is working out, in parallel with him, why he is there and what the heck is going on. Like Groundhog Day, more fun is then had exploring the parameters of the situation, introducing permutations, and learning how to "game" or otherwise exploit the situation.

Without dropping any specific plot spoilers, and without getting into questions of strict scientific legitimacy, I can say that for me the story develops and concludes very satisfyingly. Geeky types like me, familiar with the standard tropes of time travel fiction, will probably see a key plot revelation coming quite a long way off, but the difficulty of avoiding a degree of predictability is a problem common to all popular genres and not a major criticism.

If there is anything that doesn't work so well for me, it is a recurring story thread of a person Gyllenhaal's character needs to contact. Somehow, this seemed tacked on, not intrinsic but as if it was intended to manipulate the audience's sympathies.

As for the performances, the film stands or falls primarily on the performance of Jake Gyllenhaal, and he carries the role with ease, combining a character of intelligence and sensitivity with a believable potential for physical action and even violence. Vera Farmiga also impresses as Goodwin, ably intimating her character's internal conflict between personal empathy and strict by-the-book professional competence. Within a narrow range of rather repetitive dialogue, as Adam Kempenaar and Matty Robinson pointed out in their review, Michelle Monaghan keeps her performance fresh and apparently spontaneous.

I don't mean to make too much of the similarities with Groundhog Day, as this is quite a different film, in a way more similar to Tony Scott's fun but somewhat less compelling Deja Vu (2006). Beyond the confines of the story itself, looking at the character arc, and even the morals of the stories, one has to say that Groundhog Day has far more to give and far more to say than either Source Code or Deja Vu.

Groundhog Day stands the test of repeated viewings, remaining delightful. If Source Code can achieve that, it will have done very well.

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 17 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Cinema
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Sources:

• Filmspotting #342

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Amendment: Added ranking image.

Groundhog Day (1993)

He's having the worst day of his life... over and over...

This is a wonderfully entertaining romantic comedy in which a clever fantasy premise is exploited to the full by a really sharp script, supported by exemplary performances, and underpinned by a subtext of real substance.

The film poses the question, "What would you do if you got stuck in a time loop, and were condemned to relive the same day, over and over again?" Would it be a curse or a blessing? Scriptwriters Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis take obnoxiously jaded TV weather reporter, Phil Connors (Bill Murray), with accompanying producer, Rita (Andie MacDowell) and cameraman, Larry (Chris Elliott), and drop him into small-town hell. For Phil's fourth year running, he is being sent to report from the otherwise unremarkable town of Punxutawney, Pennsylvania, on the February 2nd tradition of using a burrowing animal, the eponymous groundhog, a sort of over-grown hamster, to predict the weather, and the accompanying goofily energetic celebrations that grip the townspeople.

February 2nd, our first day in Punxutawney introduces us, at least tangentially, to most of the characters and locations that we will be revisiting in the rest of the film. Phil, painted as a cynical pessimist, a "glass is half empty" kind of guy, dismisses the enthusiastic Rita as "fun, but not my kind of fun", cold shoulders the rather nerdy Larry, and sneers at the small town antics of the townspeople and their ignorance of more fashionable ways of life in the metropolis. Forget about being able to get an espresso or cappuccino, they don't even know how to spell the words!

The following morning, Phil is subjected to a second performance of the previous day, but finds that he is the only person aware that the day is repeating, in a kind of nightmarishly extended deja vu. As he continues to wake up, at 6.00 a.m. morning after morning, on the same day, February 2nd, he goes through the full gamut of responses to the situation, ranging from scepticism, confusion and disbelief to panic, stoicism and darkest despair, all to no avail. Although he can behave as a free agent, no matter what he does, he can't escape this loop in time.

Quickly figuring out the parameters of the situation, Phil realises that when time loops, effectively, there are no social consequences, no retribution for selfish, immoral or illegal actions, and he begins to "game" the system. This aspect of the film is highly entertaining, as day-by-day, Phil cynically accumulates knowledge in order to exploit other people and gain material things and experiences, and various scenarios mutate and extrapolate in different ways, some of them laugh out loud funny. It is only when he realises and tries to win his heart's desire that his system breaks down, and things get very interesting.

The cinematography is not flashy, but in some scenes the visuals and audio are used in quite sophisticated ways to subliminally enhance the emotional impact, with the filmmakers subtly distorting spacial dimensions and/or soundscapes. For example, to create an eerie "deja vu" effect when Phil returns to Gobblers Knob, the little park with the bandstand, the music is slightly distorted with a chilling echo effect. Later too, when in extreme close-up the clock numerals on Phil's hotel alarm clock change from 05.59 to 06.00 a.m., the audio effect is amplified, heightening the dreadful inevitability Phil feels. And apparently the dimensions of Phil's hotel room were changed to increase feelings of claustrophobia and alienation.

Speaking of alienation, Brian Aldiss, one of the later breed of science fiction writers mining inner space (people's psyches) rather than outer space, successfully created an objective rationale for alienation in the short story "Man In His Time" (1965). The idea in this story is that planets have their own time zones and that planet-hopping astronauts may return to us physically but remain separated from us temporally, even, in the case of the protagonist of this story, finding himself experiencing everything an awkward three minutes ahead of his wife and colleagues. Likewise, Groundhog Day is an elegantly realised externalisation of inner space through a time-travel or alternate dimension paradigm, encapsulating the whole breadth of human emotion and attitude to life. For all that it is a comedy, at its centre, I would say Groundhog Day is a story about human depression and despair and our responses to that human predicament. The title has entered the vernacular as short-hand for a tedious repetitive (working) experience.

Turning to the performances, Bill Murray puts in a great performance, typically minimal, and credible across a wide range of character traits, from warm-hearted and loving to coolly obnoxious to clinically depressed. I hadn't given Andie MacDowell much credit, but on second thoughts, she is an excellent foil for Murray, and functions as the story's moral and emotional compass, guiding the audience via her reactions to Phil. As Adam Kempenaar and Matty Robinson said about Michelle Monaghan's performance in Duncan Jones's similarly themed Source Code (2011), MacDowell is able to overcome the inherent difficulties in a role with a lot of repetition, keeping her performance feeling fresh and spontaneous.

It is not only the leads who give good performances. A host of actors with small roles provide outstanding supporting performances. Stephen Tobolowsky is gorgeously obnoxious as the insurance salesman and Marita Geraghty is stunningly ditzy. Given only the verbal equivalent of post-it notes, Angela Paton, Brenda Pickleman, Robin Duke and Rick Overton, to name but a few, are all brilliantly effective in making their points.

Exceptional films like this remind us that, like good dramas, good comedies turn out to be about something substantial. I tell my students that we can derive two morals from this film: 1) It's up to you what you make of your time (your day) on earth, so spend your time wisely; 2) If you want to win a person's love, you need to make yourself loveable.

Postscript (30.05.11): I've been reading "How to Read a Film" by James Monaco, and this has reminded me of the filmic writing of Alain Robbe-Grillet. It occurs to me now that the literary equivalent of Groundhog Day is Robbe-Grillet's novel "Jealousy" (1957), in which the same scenes are revisited again and again, with new twists and false trails and dead ends and backtracks and insights, in the mind of a man suspicious that his wife may be having an affair.

• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 14 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Sources:

• Filmspotting #342

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Corrected "Quickly figuring out the parameters of situation" to "Quickly figuring out the parameters of the situation". Added ranking image.

Desk Set (1957)

Make the office a wonderful place to love in!

Desk Set is a smart romantic office-based comedy starring the legendary on-screen/off-screen couple, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, and an interesting man (or in this case, woman) vs. machine theme, with a sly twist of woman vs. man thrown in.

Miss "Bunny" Watson (Hepburn) is the operational head of the Reference Department of a large corporation (the fictional Federal Broadcasting Network, it says on Wikipedia), where she oversees a small team of women researchers, fending a host of queries by phone. Watson has moulded her researchers into a capable and productive team, and she herself is stunningly encyclopaedic in her knowledge. Into this smoothly-running department comes a mystery consultant assigned by top management, Richard Sumner (Tracy), a self-effacing tight-lipped but strangely likeable character who spends his time poking into obscure corners, measuring things with his tape measure, and crawling around on the floor with a piece of chalk. He turns out to be an efficiency expert, or "methods engineer" as he puts it, whose work in the Accounts Department is rumoured to have resulted in the installation of a new computer system, and a large number of workers losing their jobs. As one would expect, such rumours lead to high anxiety among the Reference Department staff, particularly as, because of a possible upcoming merger deal, Sumner has been sworn to secrecy by the top brass as to his true goals within the department.

There are some very enjoyable scenes, including one where Sumner, hoping to prove to Watson how useful a computerised reference system would be, tests her with the sort of questions that computers are very good at but most humans are rather poor at, with interesting results. Another excellent scene pits the women in the reference department against a computerised system, like a modern version of John Henry, the legendary railway worker who pitted his skills against a mechanical steam hammer (or drill, depending on the source [Wikipedia: John Henry (folklore)]).

As for the romantic angle, Watson is in a long-term relationship with her immediate boss, titular head of the department, Mike Cutler (Gig Young), and as the film begins, is waiting for her invitation to accompany him to some upcoming key social event. There is more than a little anxiety on her part due to the length of their relationship, and the way he seems to take her for granted. Sumner's arrival introduces an interesting twist. Watson is unexpectedly asked out to lunch by Sumner, and there is a little flutter of excitement at a potential rival suitor, though the lunch engagement turns out very differently to how Watson imagines.

For those familiar with the genre of romantic comedies (and who is not?), there is little suspense to be had here, but a great deal of pleasure in watching the easy interplay between the two leads in their familiar double act (they first teamed 15 years earlier, according to Wikipedia), with Tracy playing the quiet straight man, the understated foil, to Hepburn's high intensity comic. Of course, as often happened in the old Hollywood studio system with its stables of highly charismatic and capable but ageing stars, Tracy and Hepburn are too old for their roles. The role of Watson would be best suited to someone in her late thirties, at a guess, while Hepburn was a decade older, and Tracy was in his mid-fifties at the time of filming. Perhaps this is partly why Hepburn ramps her performance up to such high levels of energy, simulating youthful vigour and joie de vivre.

Viewed as a group, the women represent a cline of romantic options in the office environment. At one extreme is the fresh young recruit, Ruthie (Sue Randall), so green she has to ask how far you can go with male co-workers at office parties (the unwritten rule being, apparently, whatever you can get away with without having to lock the door). At the peak of her powers is Sylvia (Dina Merill), still young and confident that she can have her choice of men, (it is she who pins a sprig of mistletoe to the inside of the department door so that she can nab any good-looking men on entry). Further along is Watson, older and on the border of hope and despair, languishing in an excessively long and uncommitted relationship with her immediate boss and worried that, like a dependable old suit of clothes that he knows will be waiting for him at the back of the closet, he might tire of her and pass her over for a younger woman. Finally, at the end of the road is Watson's best buddy, Peg (Joan Blondell), more mature, not quite so attractive, perhaps, who describes herself as having passed the point of no return, and is now on the shelf with no hope of romantic salvation.

This all begs the question of why the men should seem to have all the initiative in romantic relationships, severely disadvantaging the women, and leads on more generally to the issue of equality in the workplace. The script clearly establishes that Watson is the brains of the department, with Cutler exploiting their relationship to get her to help him with his work, which he then takes credit for. The women are clearly on relatively low salaries, with Ruthie struggling to find an affordable party dress, and even Watson having insufficient funds in hand to repay a co-worker ten dollars until another colleague repays her loan of five dollars, putting them almost at the level of the office errand boy, happy to be able to extract another five dollars in tips with their advice.

• Rating: High matinee
• When seen: 16 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Hepburn)

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

There's one in all of us.

Where the Wild Things Are is rather like a live action version of Pixar's Monsters Inc (directed by Pete Docter, 2001), with some insightful dramatic parts, some laugh out loud fun and funny parts, but also some parts that are quite dark in tone and rather scary for under 10s.

When the film came out I remember there was some doubt as to whether the presumed target audience (kids) would take to it. Checking Wikipedia, they have a quote from the director that 'his goal was "to make a movie about childhood" rather than to create a children's movie.' In a home viewing context, with most of the cast running around in big "silly" animatronic monster suits, I thought it would be touch and go as to whether my 10-year old son would suspend his disbelief, but he watched till the end, laughed quite a lot at times, said he enjoyed it and would give the film 4.5 out of 5 stars.

The initial setup introducing the 8-year old boy, Max (Max Records), is very insightful, showing things from his point of view, exploring how lonely life can be in the winter holidays for a kid in a modern single-parent family, with no friends evident nearby, no siblings to spend time with, and a mother busy with work or boyfriend. Max Records is very convincing as a normally imaginative boy pretty much left to his own devices, who sometimes puts on his wolf costume and goes a little wild and crazy, like jumping on the kitchen counter and howling. In the heat of the moment, he goes further than that here, does something that causes him to need to escape the home environment, to flee to the country of the Wild Things.

The way Max travels to the country of the Wild Things is different than in the book, where the voyage is clearly and artistically psychological in nature, but it still works pretty well. A key question is how the filmmakers are going to tackle the monsters themselves. At first glance, seeing the direction they'd taken, using costumes with big heads, and animatronic expressions, like the Jim Henson creatures, the casual viewer might well be apprehensive, but as the story progresses, the monsters turn out to work very well, in large part due to the strength of the storyline, and the strength of the characterisation. So that by the end, the fate of the Wild Things is quite moving, and by the very end of the film, it had even got a little dusty in there.

In the book, which is very short, whatever else they may be, the monsters are an expression of Max's psyche, an outlet for the wild, wicked side of his character. In this film version, the monsters are that too, but from the very outset, they clearly have lives of their own that apparently exist independently of Max. To my mind, the monsters go beyond representing Max's wild imaginings, and are in a way more his imagining of the sort of virtual extended social network, extended family or group of friends that he might appreciate. The group of monsters that Max happens upon reminded me most of a small commune of aged hippies or community of artists, who have their own long-standing issues, especially relationship issues.

Because one thing that Max seems to be missing, that could help during times like these when he's burnt up or used up relations with his closest relatives, his mother and sister, is a deficit or lack that Kurt Vonnegut highlighted in his book Slapstick! or Lonesome No More (1976), and that is extended family (and friends and neighbours). Many of us in the west, perhaps especially in the USA, live in small tight family groups, nuclear families. And that's just not enough, Vonnegut points out, for animals who until recently evolved in tribal societies with lots of adults to pick up the slack when nuclear relations go sour or when those people need a break.

• Rating: High matinee
• When seen: 16 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Amadeus (1984)

Amadeus. The man. The music. The magic. The madness. The murder. The mystery. The motion picture.

Who could make a film about the life of a dead white European classical music composer that would be anything but worthy and dull? Peter Shaffer and Milos Forman, that's who. Adapted from Shaffer's stageplay, Amadeus (the middle name of Wolfgang Mozart) is a highly entertaining film, a wonderful portrayal of creative genius and the feelings of people around a creative genius, positive and negative, and a very effective dramatic packaging of the music of Mozart.

In Vienna, Austria, in the late 1700s, Emperor Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones), a rather dull-witted but enthusiastic and well-meaning, if undiscriminating, patron of music, is surrounded by a group of master musicians, with vested interest in maintaining their influence over him. Into their midst comes the young hugely gifted composer and performer, Mozart (Tom Hulce), whose brilliance, to their annoyance, far outshines anyone else's. The current leading light, Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), finding himself beginning to be eclipsed by this new star, begins a secret "dirty-tricks" campaign against Mozart, while at the same time pretending to work on Mozart's behalf.

The story is structured as a series of flashbacks, narrated to an incredulous priest by an apparently victorious, aged wheelchair-bound Salieri, incarcerated in a madhouse, and fixated on the idea that, many years ago, he murdered Mozart. Telling the story mainly from Salieri's point of view is a very effective device. Unlike the rest of his contemporaries, apparently, Salieri has the capacity to fully appreciate the beauty of Mozart's music and the seemingly superhuman power of his genius, is transported by the music, flooded with admiration for the ability to create it. Through Salieri, we, the audience, are brought to feel a similar appreciation. What Salieri, and to an extent, we, the audience, cannot understand is why a person of such obvious personal failings as this arrogant crass immature youth should be chosen to be the vessel of (divine) inspiration, rather than a more deserving recipient, such as himself. Viewing Mozart through Salieri's twin emotional filters of admiration and jealousy intensifies our appreciation of Mozart's genius.

As well as providing an excellent way to view the genius of Mozart and an appreciation of his music, Salieri's jealousy of Mozart provides the engine that drives the story forward. Paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes' remark to Dr Watson about mediocrity, Salieri's tragedy is that he has the talent to recognise genius in others, but not the talent to create genius in himself. In so far as Salieri cannot possess that which he loves best, he will be compelled to act to destroy it, and these actions provide the trials that beset Mozart and start to take their toll on his career and his family life. With regard to historical accuracy, according to Wikipedia, in order to heighten the dramatic thrust of the story, Shaffer used a large measure of artistic licence, pretty well inventing Salieri's dirty tricks campaign and even tampering with Mozart's character, making him more childlike in his personal life than he probably was.

Whatever the case as regards historical accuracy, this is a really enjoyable film that succeeds in dramatising musical genius with a compelling story and a masterful script. The staging of the musical numbers is terrific. The choice of an all-American cast was apparently controversial at the time, but did not bother me, maybe because I'm half-American myself. Amongst a host of excellent performances, including Hulce, with his signature giggle, in the title role (Wikipedia says Hulce is thought to have based his performance partly on the character of the irascible tennis player John McEnroe), and Jones as the slightly dimwitted Emperor, the performance by F. Murray Abraham as Mozart's nemesis, Salieri, is simply outstanding. Interestingly, both Hulce and Abraham were nominated for Best Actor Oscars; Abraham won. The film also won seven other Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadeus

• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 7 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

It Came from Outer Space (1953)

From Ray Bradbury's great science fiction story!

Based on a story by the great lyrical SF writer, Ray Bradbury, this low budget but interesting aliens-on-Earth thriller is dated, but at only 81 minutes well worth a viewing for SF fans, and could work well in a double bill with Don Siegel's superior The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). And like Body Snatchers, often viewed as a reflection of contemporary Cold War paranoia, this film could be seen as an expression of Americans' fear of the Red Menace, the personification of the unknown other from a strange land. Hollywood was in the grip of an FBI and governmental witch-hunt for Communist sympathisers in the few years leading up to this film, with many unlucky writers, directors, actors, musicians and others being blacklisted from working in the movie and TV industries.

The story, set in small-town Arizona, USA, begins with science writer, John Putnam (Richard Carlson), and fiancée, schoolteacher Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush), investigating a large meteor crash. Descending alone into the crater, Putnam discovers that the meteor is actually a crashed space craft. He examines some strange tracks he finds outside the craft, little knowing that he too is being observed by an off-screen presence within the space craft. Other people, including a local newspaper reporter, arrive at the scene, but before anyone else can see anything, the space craft is hidden by a massive land-slide.

Can Putnam convince others of what he has seen, and what he suspects (that non-Terrestrial life-forms are on Earth)? What is the reason for the mysterious sounds on the telephone wires outside town? What is to be made of the disappearance of certain townspeople and the strange behaviour of others?

As I said, the film is dated, and the theme of alien visitation has been pretty thoroughly explored in the almost 60 years since this film was released, but it's still a fun watch. The script is intelligent (Wikipedia says "it is said Ray Bradbury wrote the original screenplay and Harry Essex merely changed the dialogue and took the credit"), and takes some interesting turns that resonate very ironically with a Red Menace paranoia reading. The acting by the leads, Carlson, in particular, and also Charles Drake as the local Sheriff Matt Warren, is very good. The weak link in the chain is the special effects, which at the time were probably rather poor, and for 21st century eyes are decidedly ropey though not without their own kind of kitsch charm.

Funny how so many movies in this period, in order to signal reliability in a male character, give him a pipe, even if, like Putnam in this tale, the character uses it only as a prop, never actually smoking tobacco in it. Funny too, how, although Putnam is characterised as a lonely intellectual seeking the solitude of the desert, he seems to be able to greet almost everyone in town by their first name, and everyone seems to know him.

• Rating: Matinee
• When seen: 8 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home, on iPad
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invasion_of_the_Body_Snatchers
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist#The_Hollywood_Ten
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_from_Outer_Space

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Two Rode Together (1961)

TOGETHER...THEY RODE INTO A THOUSAND DANGERS!

John Ford's earlier film, The Searchers (1956), dug deep into the psyche of one man, Ethan Edwards' (John Wayne), obsessive and increasingly conflicted search for the niece stolen years before by native American tribespeople. This film moves the discussion on, unearthing wider social aspects of the issue. Can children or adults taken prisoner by native American tribes be successfully returned to "civilised" society? What if they don't want to be rescued? What problems will returnees face in reintegrating into society? Underlying these questions is the more basic issue of the nature of the immigrants' attitudes to native Americans. Consider cultural invasions by other groups of immigrants at other times and places in history, and the resultant subjugation and marginalisation of the indigenous peoples, and the nature of these attitudes is easy to predict. I read on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche) that just a decade or so previous to this story (1880s), the Commanches had agreed to move into a reservation on the government's promise to protect the buffalo herds, but the government had failed to keep up their end of the bargain, and at the time of this story, "the buffalo were on the verge of extinction, effectively ending the Comanche way of life as hunters".

The film opens rather leisurely, setting up the contrasting characters of the two leads, in many ways the personifications of private enterprise and state-sponsored aid in the USA, who ironically will contract to "ride together". James Stewart's elegantly attired US Marshal Guthrie McCabe, luxuriating in debauched affluence on 10% of the town's business, is shown to be driven by venal self-interest, and has to be tricked and coerced into acting on behalf of others. By contrast, Richard Widmark's standardly uniformed low paid US Army Lieutenant Jim Gary is the epitome of honourable selflessness.

The action shifts to a US Army fort on the edge of Indian territory where an encampment of hopeful parents and siblings awaits. Their view of Stewart as a saviour figure, the man most likely to be able to rescue long-lost family members due to his history of successful dealings with Commanche Chief Quanah Parker (Henry Brandon), contrasts ironically with his efforts to extract money from them. Without disclosing specific plot-spoilers, can I say that already there are pre-figurings of the torrent of ignorance and fear and revulsion, driven by demonisation of the unknown "other", that will later sweep through the immigrant encampment, blindly seeking retribution and revenge, and not drying up until the life of at least one person has been carried away.

I was somewhat bemused by the way, early on, the film dwelt on Stewart's hostility to the woman in his life, Belle Aragon (Annelle Hayes), until I realised that attitude to romantic partner in general, and matrimony in particular, was being used as a metaphor for degree of social commitment, with Stewart's antipathy contrasting with Widmark's willingness.

In the second reel, Stewart and Widmark enter Indian territory, and the realities of the captives' situations becomes apparent. Ford is known for his relatively even-handed attitude to native Americans, and his depiction of them in this film is of special interest. Overall, I would say, Ford paints a reasonably fair, if harsh, picture of Commanche culture and peoples. If anything, the Commanches emerge with greater honour than any other social group. Unlike some other directors of westerns, as I recall, Ford employed actual native Americans. In this film, however, Henry Brandon and Woody Strode, the actors playing the key native American roles, were not native American.

Again without revealing specific plot spoilers of a key scene, mention must be made of the masterful exposition during the film's final act of the kind of obstacles faced by ex-captives of the Commanches hindering their reintegration into society. The bottom line for the immigrants, it is revealed, is the conviction that confronted by a future as a "squaw", as the wife of a native American and all that entails, the only honourable option for a woman is to take her own life. And every look and twitch of body language thrown their way lets the survivors know that, in choosing life, they have become objects of shame and disgust.

There are two elements of the film that are not entirely successful. First, the use of whimsy. Ford has a habit of using whimsy, in interstitial scenes and in certain supporting characters. In this film, the estimable Andy Devine is the butt of various verbal and visual size-related jokes. Harry Carey Jr and his screen brother figure in some routines based on foolishness peripheral to the main themes. Ford is using whimsy like cheery neon signs designed to lure reluctant viewers into a jolly amusement arcade until they turn a corner and find themselves in the middle of somewhere much more dark and dangerous and interesting. The assumption that entertainment must always equal fun is false, insults the intelligence of the viewer, and so ends up being counter-productive.

Second, the casting. Linda Cristal, who will go on to co-star in the TV show Bonanza, is very good, as are most of the rest of the supporting cast, notably Annelle Hayes as Belle Aragon, John McIntire as Widmark's superior officer, and Henry Brandon and Woody Strode as the two key native Americans. Jeanette Nolan is terrific as the most notably distressed mother. Shirley Jones is all right but seemed a bit old for the part, as do both Widmark and Stewart, by as much as a couple of decades, a common fault to my mind with the old Hollywood studio system, with its stables of ageing stars.

Despite arguably excessive maturity, Widmark is entirely believable and likeable as the upright military officer, playing it naturalistic and low key, his character's integrity and honour never in question. When you consider the kind of extremely psychotic characters he played at the start of his film career (notably in Kiss of Death, 1947), this is quite a feat. For the role of McCabe, the epitome of self-interest, what's needed is someone likeable but unpredictable and with a dark side to him, someone with inner conflict, to keep the audience guessing as to the moral choices he will end up making. Stewart, surprisingly, given his brilliance in similar roles in films by Anthony Mann (e.g. The Naked Spur, 1953) somehow mainly fails to convince, possibly due to poor scripting, possibly due to lack of belief in the role, possibly due to poor technique. The trouble seems to be that, especially in certain key scenes in the first and second reels such as the scene where he demands payment for his services or the one where he gets drunk, where the film tries to establish the corruptness or wildness of his character, he plays the part much larger than is required, unconvincingly large. In the third reel, however, where his character has strong points to make, there is a return to form. Perhaps if Widmark and Stewart had switched roles, Widmark would have been more convincing as the corrupt jaded lawman that the audience hopes will prove to have a heart of gold.

While watching the first two thirds of the film, I thought it was a very below average Ford movie. However, given the strong final reel, and considering how well the film exposes anti-native American prejudice in the West, I like it enough to raise its ranking to high matinee / low full price (3.5/5).

• Rating: High matinee
• When seen: 31 Mar 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.