Brief Encounter (1945)

For Valentine's Day a romantic choice is required, and for me it's a close run thing between Casablanca and Brief Encounter, but as we've got a David Lean centenary coming up, I'll plump for Brief Encounter, and leave Casablanca for another time.

Back in 1945, David Lean was a relatively unknown but hard-working film-maker with a limited amount of high acclaim in British films. Britain was also rather different in 1945, especially the period just before the war, which this marvellous film ostensibly deals with.




Its setting may be old and antiquated, but its themes are universal, no matter what the time or the place, which in this case was austere Middle Class England, and though undoubtedly set in the South (just listen to awll theuse stiff upper lip accents), its main location was actually in the North of England, at Carnforth in Lancashire, because its railway station had a long enough platform with an underground ramp exit, and a station clock. It was this railway station (combined with Watford Junction because it had lots more fast trains) that gives Brief Encounter its distinctive atmosphere.

The cast was exemplary. Celia Johnson was an old pal of Noel Coward's, and at the time a regular in David Lean's early films as a director. She was the matriarchal figure in This Happy Breed, and an excellent and moving Captain's wife (to Noel Coward's Captain) in the very successful In Which We Serve. Come the time of Brief Encounter therefore, there was one obvious choice as to who should play Laura.

As for the part of the handsome doctor Alec, a new actor had just arrived to films named Trevor Howard (who had appeared in Rep at the Colchester Theatre Royal among others), and who had just the right sort of handsome dignity that British cinema liked back in the 1940s. He may not be today's idea of a matinee idol, but at the time his following became huge after this film established him as a romantic lead. What a shame that in later years his career spiralled into a series of red-faced, over the top characters, when his thoughtful subtlety was so much more compelling.

The Master himself, Noel Coward, adapted his own play Still Life brilliantly - set originally in just the station buffet - elaborating the restrained but passionate love affair that begins in the most mundane of circumstances: a piece of grit caught under the eye - a common danger on steam railways in those days. Although the show belongs to the two principals, there are those who also get their scenes of fun in between, such as Stanley Holloway as the station master flirting with Joyce Carey as the lady behind the bar.


Cyril Raymond as Laura's husband is among the characters added to the film adaptation (only referred to by name in the play), and is suitably staid and respectable, and blissfully ignorant of his wife's affair, until perhaps at the end, when he has the most moving line of the film: he has an inkling that Laura is a little saddened by something, so he leans down toward her and says: "thank you for coming back."

One jolting moment just prior to that, is the climactic reprise of the beginning of the film, when Alec has just left Laura at the station buffet, only this time seen from the perspective of the tormented Laura. In a fit of madness, she hears a train whistle, and the camera swerves towards her unnervingly, as she contemplates falling in front of the train - and only just stops herself from doing so at the last moment.

On its own Brief Encounter is not a classic because of Celia Johnson, or Trevor Howard, or Rachmaninov, or even its trains or the young whipper-snapper David Lean, but a combination of all five. And somehow romance is always more compelling when the lovers are prevented from consummating their unrequited love.

The recent stage presentation of Brief Encounter, at the same cinema in Haymarket where it was first shown in the 1940s. No mention of David Lean on the billboard.

Enchanted April (1991)

Back in 1996, I was trying to carve out a proper future career for myself. Having stuck around in temporary employment for a time, and also having dabbled in local drama to practice my acting skills, it was time to consider what I really wanted to do which was become a film-maker. At the Panico post-production workshop in Falconberg Court in London (where many of the tutors had worked on the Monty Python films) I was given my chance with an intensive 5-week course which involved learning some of the tricks of the trade from the experts, and at the end of it we were all able to shoot our own short film.

In the midst of all this, I was therefore seeing a lot of London during that eventful summer of Euro '96, and one of the places I happened to pass by was The Comedy Store just off Leicester Square, where one of the loyal members of that troupe was Josie Lawrence, now famous for appearances on Whose Line is it Anyway? on Channel 4.

The film-making course, alas, didn't lead up to much - the evening when all our respective bits of film were showcased on the big screen (at the De Lane Lea recording studios), I was stuck on the trains outside Ilford, and arrived too late to see my little bit of celluloid history - but the experience had been an enlightening one, and in tribute to that watershed of a summer, I watched two films on video: Time Bandits - dedicated to the many backstage boys at Panico - and Enchanted April, in tribute to The Comedy Store and Josie Lawrence.



Mike Newell's TV film features Ms. Lawrence in a welcome straight acting role, after many previous years renowned for amusing improvisation on Whose Line...? including her astonishing ability to improvise songs. She is one of just four [non-singing] majestic ladies in this pleasant semi-travelogue drama, the other three being Polly Walker, previous Mike Newell veteran Miranda Richardson, and Lady Olivier herself, Joan Plowright. All four get to show off their acting chops and play genuinely rounded characters, who are all charmed by the magic of the Italian Riviera.

Not that the men don't have a say in things as well however, with the excellent Alfred Molina as Josie's husband Mellersh Wilkins, and the always wonderful Jim Broadbent as Frederick Arbuthnot, married dutifully to the loyal but slightly demure Rose (Richardson), and therefore enjoying an alternative lifestyle as author "Gerald Arundel", and coincidentally lusting after fellow guest Lady Caroline Dester (Walker). The story was covered in a largely forgotten Hollywood film version of the book in 1935. The 1990's version however fits in much more with modern times and gives stronger emphasis on the characters, even if this does ever so slightly depart from Elizabeth Armin's original novel in some ways (the character played by Michael Kitchen was originally a much more immature fellow.)

The opening scene of the film, for starters, sets the story in its historical context: it's 1919, in a grey, sober London still coming to terms with the loss of life in the Great War, where Lottie Wilkins (Lawrence) sits depressingly on the bus, until her eye suddenly catches an advertisement in the newspaper:


"To Those Who Appreciate WISTERIA AND SUNSHINE. Small Medieval Italian Castle."


Struck by the prospect of such an experience, she races over to her club (for these are downtrodden but also well-to-do ladies) to seek out the advertisement for herself, and where one fellow club member, Rose Arbuthnot (Miranda Richardson) has also seen the ad, and the two decide to advertise for two other women to join them to help finance the trip (to the self same house in Portofino as described in the novel.)

The grey of London then switches to the sunny Italian Riviera, where after a slightly bumpy journey, Lottie opens the shutters and sees for the first time the exhilaration of the Italian Riviera. It's a delightful moment, encapsulating the experience of being somewhere totally new, as if in another world, captured well by Rex Maidment's cinematography and Richard Rodney Bennett's pleasantly invigorating score.

The ladies escape to this idyll, but their essential Britishness remains. In one evocative scene Rose sits on a rock in perfect pose under an umbrella as shield from the sun, whilst Lottie lies back on a rock and lets her long hair spread out, both of them in thoughtful repose

What I like especially about the film is how it uses its evocative setting to actually solve plot complications, rather than create them. The holiday itself is a means of reconciliation for all these lonely, slightly jaded characters. In so many films the couples (especially married couples) have a journey of discovery and ultimately break apart and choose new paths in life: here, the already married couples find themselves and each other, as the landscape affects them all in their outlook on life.

In one poignant little scene, Joan Plowright sits by herself in melancholy reflection, and looks for all the world as thoughtful as her late husband, Laurence Olivier, as she reflects that all her dead friends (the great poets) are not worth listening to tonight, "good things they say, many of them....But they've one terrible disadvantage. They're all dead. I'm tired of the dead. I want the living!"


Just then Lottie comes up to her and gives her a comforting little kiss on the cheek. It's a scene which typifies the simple tender sweetness of the film.

Enchanted April popped up on television in 1991, but just a few weeks later came the worldwide cinema success of Howards End, and Miramax eyed the possibility of a good cash-in on Merchant-Ivory's success, with another English Heritage-style drama, and so the film received a cinema release in America. As a result, Peter Barnes's script and Joan Plowright were subsequently nominated for Oscars, and so the film reached a much wider (and deserved) audience than had hitherto been expected.

All the four ladies are attention grabbing, but for me the one that holds it together is Josie Lawrence.

In many ways, it's a film which speaks about the joy of holiday and how it refreshes the mind and the soul.

The Lord of the Rings (2001-3)

At around Christmas and New Year, a new tradition had started for film fans: the December fantasy movie, a trend begun in 2001 with the release of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING - about which this blog will mostly concentrate, because that was the one film of this particular trilogy which had the biggest impact on me.

Its release was highly anticipated by fantasy film fans; the advent of special effects, which had steadily grown during the 1980s and taken a giant leap with the arrival of digital technology in films such as Jurassic Park, meant that old barriers were being broken and potential new frontiers of storytelling could be reached, where epic works of fiction that were once deemed too imaginative to be adapted onto film, could now be considered. It was time to return to the work of Tolkien, provided someone could be found who could manage such a massive undertaking.

Step forward the Lord of the Ring-bearer, who came not from Middle Earth, but from Down Under.

Peter Jackson was not by any means the first to attempt to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy novel: John Boorman had collaborated with Tolkien himself for a time, in the hope of creating a live-action version of the saga in the 1970s, which fell through ultimately (partly because of Boorman's intention to slash the story down to an economical one hour and forty minutes), but soon afterwards came an animated version of the story, directed and supervised by Ralph Bakshi (see Film Review blogpage), who had at the time notably made the first adult "X" rated cartoon feature, Fritz the Cat.


The 1978 film had its pros and cons, and only attempted to tell part of the whole story of Frodo Baggins and his quest to destroy the mighty ring of Sauron. But Peter Jackson was taken with the film sufficiently to want to know more about Tolkien, and 23 years later, the result is in some ways, a "live action" remake of the Ralph Bakshi film, with certain images directly imitated in The Fellowship of the Ring - but also with far more meticulous attention to the huge, sprawling narrative of the book, and the benefit of 21st century digital technology to help bring it to life.


Being already an acclaimed film maker in New Zealand, and becoming noticed on the international scene with Heavenly Creatures (the film debut of Kate Winslet) and The Frighteners (a useful warm-up for further films with scary special effects), Jackson was just the man to be able to tackle head-on with typical Antipodean energy the challenge of putting Tolkien onto film properly. His full-blooded adaptations of all three volumes of the novel (which was clearly influenced by the horror of two world wars) always allow the right amount of pathos without ever letting the special effects dominate too much.

But, ye Gods, on hearing some of the publicity build-up to the first film, I discovered that The Fellowship of the Ring was to be THREE AND A QUARTER HOURS LONG - and this is just the first of a trilogy.

Okay, the quality of a film should not necessarily be determined by its length - as Alfred Hitchcock once said "the length of a film should be directly proportionate to the endurance of the human bladder." In comedy a film that is longer than 90 minutes is frequently pushing the endurance level of its audience. The average drama can probably sustain itself for the first two hours. But any special effects fantasy film which exceeds three hours - with no intermission - is frankly, overkill.

By a coincidence, that same winter also saw the release of the first Harry Potter film, at an overlong 150 minutes for children and their parents to sit through - and it still cut several scenes from the book, to the younger audience's dismay.

If Warner Brothers' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone seemed long, then what was to follow from New Line Cinema would feel like an absolute eternity.

Nevertheless, armed with a lot of curiosity and a certain amount of trepidation, I persuaded my sister Catherine to come along with me and see the film at the Odeon Colchester, as she was sufficiently intrigued by the concept to pass up her plans to have a special pasta lunch that Saturday, in favour of the 3 hour-plus marathon in Screen One. At the end of it, I think she would probably have preferred the pasta.

But the fans were hooked.

What is so impressive about the first film, to me, is how it sets its sense of time and place so brilliantly in the first few minutes, from the softly atmospheric prologue (narrated by Cate Blanchett) explaining the history of Middle Earth, and the subsequent build-up to the discovery of the one ring "to rule them all." All of the best (and worst) elements of the trilogy are demonstrated here: a fine sense of medieval whimsy and the scale of the battles, with Lord Sauron batting off literally thousands of Elf soldiers, until his sword arm (containing the Ring) is miraculously hacked off by King Isildur, who subsequently takes possession of the Ring, until it corrupts him, and the ownership of the Ring eventually passes into the unlikely hands of Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm), at which point Tolkien's story begins proper.

The title caption sets out Peter Jackson's intentions from the start too: this is to be "The Lord of the Rings" as one film, and this is the first part, "The Fellowship of the Ring".

Seconds in, and we see the Luke Skywalker-ish hero, Bilbo's cousin Frodo (Elijah Wood), the quintessential innocent sitting under a tree in the Shire, when he hears the approaching sound on a horse and cart of his old friend Gandalf (Ian McKellen), and sits down beside the wizard on the front seat, like a child - of adult Hobbit size. The transition is seamless, and the viewer is instantly transported into Middle Earth without any sense of fakery.

Soon afterwards, Gandalf is knocking on the door of his old friend Bilbo, who is turning away all intruders in the midst of his hectic preparations for his "eleventy-first" birthday - except that is, for very old friends. The two are thus re-united, and the sense of nostalgia is immediately evoked from The Hobbit, a story which I've never seen on film, but instantly recognised the characters' relationship, having read the novel at school when I was 11.


The birthday party scenes that follow are perceived by some to be the weakest of the trilogy, but they have a sense of light relief about them (in the light of what's to come), before Bilbo unexpectedly disappears - literally - to take "a long journey", but not before Gandalf has persuaded him to leave the Ring behind, into the custody of Frodo...

...and from there the story suddenly swings into dramatic fifth gear, with the return of Sauron's power, and his sinister and demonic Ringwraiths riding out towards the Shire in search of the Ring, and the stage is set for one of the most epic chases in fantasy literature.

On the advice of Gandalf, ringbearer Frodo heads out of the Shire altogether, with his loyal servant Sam Gamgee (Sean Astin) and two other close Hobbit friends, Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd). Gandalf himself meanwhile sees the stormclouds gathering over Mordor, and goes to his old friend Saruman for consultation. As Saruman is played by Christopher Lee however, this can only lead to something sinister. Sure enough, the two old wizards are duelling each other ferociously, in a style that reminded me of Christopher Lee's memorable head-to-head confrontations with Peter Cushing in the classic Hammer films.

The highlight of the film for me is the ensuing race towards the ford by the Ringwraiths in pursuit of the wounded Frodo - who has been stabbed by one of them - with Princess Arwen (Liv Tyler) riding him to safety on a white horse in a thrilling chase scene, daring the black riders with the bold line "If you want him, come and claim him!" Tolkien purists grumbled at the diversion from the book in having Arwen riding the horse at all, when her character is basically depicted (by Tolkien) as a lady-in-waiting rather than an action girl, but Peter Jackson, attuned to more modern tastes - and sensibly in my view - gave Liv Tyler's character some backbone and helped to bring out the drama.

Thereafter, the film slightly soft-pedals as the cured (but not totally) Frodo is reunited with Gandalf and, equally unexpectedly, cousin Bilbo, together with the rest of his Hobbit friends, at the castle of Elrond (Hugo Weaving), who soon summons the other leaders of Middle Earth united against Sauron, for an urgent conference.

The strength in depth of the film's cast is demonstrated here, with the brooding, disillusioned Aragorn - son of Isildur - played very well by Viggo Mortensen, Legolas by the soon-to-become hot property Orlando Bloom, the dwarf warrior Gimli played suitably rumbustiously by 6-foot John Rhys-Davies (another brilliant trick of special effects), and the determined but doubtful Prince Boromir played by Sean Bean, whose presence in the film and untimely death towards the end makes one sorry for the loss of his character in the rest of the trilogy, and also gives the ending a suitable amount of poignant reflection.

This merry band, including of course those pesky Hobbits, join together to help Frodo in his daunting quest to take the Ring into Mordor - the only place where it can be destroyed - and the Fellowship of the Ring is thus formed......

Two epic films later, the quest to destroy the Ring is finally achieved, but not of course without lots of thrills and spills, and the breaking up - or in some cases death - of our heroes along the way. In the course of the first stages of this epic quest, Jackson was able to utilise some of the spectacular and multi-faceted locations of his native New Zealand, that were ideal for his vision of Tolkienland.

It's not too difficult to spot some of the similarities with other films such as Star Wars (George Lucas was clearly influenced by Tolkien in writing his fantasy space saga), with the Obi-Wan Kenobi-ish Gandalf making a dignified but unexpected "death" at the hands of the mighty Balrog. I think it's fair to say that Ian McKellen readily stepped into the shoes of Sir Alec Guinness, who would otherwise have been probably the ideal choice for the role, say, ten years previously. The loss of Gandalf is further emphasized by the eventual arrival of our remaining heroes to the sanctuary of Queen Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), who says with mournful recognition "he has passed into shadow", and any film which has an actress the quality of Cate Blanchett waiting in the wings to make a belated cameo appearance, has to be special indeed.

At the end of the three hour onslaught of action, noise, special effects and pathos, I was pleased that Jackson had chosen to ironically finish it with a relatively straightforward image (alluding almost to European/arthouse cinema) of Frodo and Sam sailing away on a single boat towards Mordor, leaving the story in limbo but nicely poised for audiences to anticipate the follow-up - which they did, eagerly.

THE TWO TOWERS duly came along the following year, which I saw with friends and fans at the Odeon Leicester Square, and a mounting sense of expectation after the acclaim and success of the first film. Happily this second instalment was less than three hours long - by one minute. The Odeon Leicester Square, being what it is nowadays, had me bracing for a bombardment of digital stereo sound, especially during the later battle scenes.

After the ads and trailers were over, the lights dimmed, the curtains opened, and the BBFC certificate displayed the film's title, to the delighted whoops and gentle ripples of applause from fans in the audience.

Jackson kicks off the second film with another stirring flashback, as Frodo dreams about the fate of the unfortunate Gandalf at the hands of the Balrog - keeping this in mind for later when the wizard will make an unexpected return as "Gandalf the White". Ian McKellen is well into his stride in the role by now, and in general The Two Towers allows for a deeper study of the characters, and contains for me the best performances in the trilogy, particularly by McKellen and also Bernard Hill, as the despairing King Theoden, who eventually rises out of the spell cast upon him (by Saruman), and defends Helm's Deep from literally thousands upon thousands of Orc soldiers.

The most celebrated aspect of The Two Towers however, much more so than the Battle of Helm's Deep, was the creation of the character of Gollum, that could only be created effectively (as Tolkien described him) using CGI. For this, they also hired the services of a relatively unknown but brilliantly energetic British character actor, Andy Serkis.

Gollum, for me, is an irritation - the same as, in their way, the Ewoks, Yoda and even C-3PO & R2-D2 were in the original Star Wars trilogy - but this I suppose was Tolkien's (and Peter Jackson's) intention. On nearly every occasion when the story looks to be moving along nicely, in both The Two Towers and The Return of the King, he pops up annoyingly, but thanks to Serkis's brilliant interpretation, you also see the character's schizophrenic torment with his alter ego Smeagol. I watched some behind-the-scenes footage recently with Andy Serkis filmed in a leotard, with visual reference points for the CGI animators to work on, and found his performance to be touching, real, and to be honest, much more believable than the emaciated character created - brilliantly - on computer.

For the second time in the saga, I made a customary visit to the toilet when the natural intermission point came, and caught up with what I missed when I saw The Two Towers again a few weeks later at the new Odeon Colchester. As I was with a friend, the second time round I restrained myself from taking another self-imposed intermission, and sat grimly through the whole 2 hours 59 minutes - at the end of which Saruman is briefly humbled, but the bigger fight is still to come: Ian McKellen's resurrected Gandalf paraphrases Churchill, declaring "The Battle of Rohan is over, the Battle of Mordor is about to begin."

THE RETURN OF THE KING begins in unexpectedly gentle fashion, flashing back to the prologue of the story, and the sight of Smeagol fishing, and played movingly by the real, undigital Andy Serkis, who is quickly corrupted by the Ring's power, and compelled to commit murder for it, a path of darkness that leads him inexorably down the road to becoming the monstrously parasitic Gollum, from which point the story resumes where The Two Towers left off.

Thanks to a churlish local magazine article, a major spoiler in the plot was revealed to me about one of the main characters (having not read the novel at the time), when I admit my enthusiasm for this saga was flagging. But having gone this far, it would have been foolish not to go through with the rest of it and see "the third part" of this one film. I waited until the Easter of 2004 for the inevitable event, once it had come round to the superb Electric Palace in Harwich.

At the end of the third and final 3-hour marathon (which stretched to 4 hours on the Collector's Edition DVD), I was pleased that Jackson had at least faithfully used the last line of the book as the last line of the film, at the end of an epic 4-year journey for both audience and crew -principal filming having taken the better part of a whole year, with constant subsequent revisions of certain scenes. I can remember (if you'll forgive my name-dropping here) talking to Ian McKellen's sister Jean (a doyenne of local amateur theatre in Colchester) about how she and her husband had spent their holidays in New Zealand with Ian during filming.

Sadly Jean died in 2002 before the completion of the trilogy, but Christopher Lee fulfilled his one wish (as he stated when receiving a BAFTA fellowship award) to live long enough to see The Return of the King. Unhappily for him however, his own character Saruman was inexplicably missing from the cinema version of ROTK - and only dedicated fans were able to see his cameo on the Collector's Edition DVD the following year - and so the dark epilogue to the book is lost, where the Hobbits return to the Shire to find it enslaved.

Otherwise what is left in the third and final instalment is more of the same: bigger and, arguably, better than the first two (the Academy Award voters certainly thought so, giving ROTK a staggering 11 Oscars - typical Hollywood sycophancy after the comparative lack of awards for the first two films.)

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As a 3-part whole, The Lord of the Rings is not, for me, a great film. I was initially totally captivated by The Fellowship of the Ring, but felt beaten into submission by the end, through the sheer amount of noise and action to have to put up with in one sitting. In some ways, that first instalment pushed the boat out so far (particularly with Howard Shore's overbearing score), and set the bar so high, that it left the following two episodes with simply too much to follow.

It's certainly a landmark film (how could any trilogy that length not be?), influential enough for Hollywood to have churned out other CGI fantasy "franchises" such as The Narnia Chronicles, His Dark Materials, and the contemporaneous Harry Potter saga. And in fairness, it's a much more interesting and self-sustaining saga than the recent Star Wars prequel trilogy.

Whether or not Peter Jackson will slip into the realms of becoming another George Lucas (ie. a promising director who basically slipped into producing special effects) remains to be seen: his subsequent work has followed in a similar semi-digital vein, with another huge remake of King Kong, and his current plans include producing a remake of The Dam Busters, no less. I sincerely hope that in due course he moves on to more arresting material like Heavenly Creatures, because he is far too prestigious a talent to be left just remaking other people's work.

Technically, The Lord of the Rings is also a remake, but full marks to him for giving fans of the book the adaptation they had been yearning for.

With thanks to Mark Richards for Leicester Square photo.

The Magic Box (1951)

William Friese-Greene was a pioneer of the cinema, there's no doubt of that in my view; where exactly he lies in the pantheon of film history is open to question and a certain amount of conjecture, but he was certainly a dedicated and enthusiastic photographer who devoted much of his life to bringing a sense of life to his pictures, by striving to make them move.

Born and raised in Bristol, William Green as he was christened, developed his photographic skills as the apprentice of High Society photographer Maurice Gutenberg (Frederick Valk), and after marrying Helena Friese (played in the film appealingly by Maria Schell), he adopted the soubriquet of Friese-Greene using his wife's maiden name and adding the "e" to his own to give it more status.

Cliff Road in Dovercourt, where Willy and Edith Friese-Greene lived for a time.

At the point which the film begins however, is several years later in 1921, when Friese-Greene meets his ostracised second wife, Edith (Margaret Johnston), in the midst of his ongoing efforts to create colour film (which his son Claude later took up), shortly before his tragic death, when at a meeting of British film exhibitors at The Connaught Rooms in London, he collapsed after making an impassioned speech (in the film) about the state of British Cinema - a message which is still relevant today.

Upon his person at his death were practically his sole possessions of value: a pawn ticket for some cufflinks, a glass prism for refracting light, a can of colour film, and a purse containing one and tenpence - the price of a seat at the pictures.

For whatever reason, the making of this excellent and only moderately romanticised biopic of him, has tended to be rubbished by the media, both today and also in 1951 when it was specially commissioned to be the British film industry's contribution to the Festival of Britain. Perhaps therein lied the innate cynicism that commentators attached to the project. Not unlike a similar Millennium project in 2000, the Festival of Britain was thought in some quarters to be a white elephant, and the Festival Films contribution to it was not actually finished until most of the festival was already over and done with, and not released to the general public until much later. It flopped commercially, but this is not to say it's a bad film, far from it.

At its heart is a moving, quintessential performance by Robert Donat, one of the great forgotten stars of British cinema - mainly due to the fact that asthma cut his career tragically short in the 1950s. His notable triumph in 1939 was to win the Oscar for Best Actor for his shy schoolteacher-cum-headmaster in Goodbye Mr Chips, surpassing the likes of Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Praise indeed.

Donat's "Willy" Friese-Greene in The Magic Box is a partial throwback to that fine Mr Chips characterisation, but with a much darker side that covers the anguish of near-success and bankruptcy, instead of the usual tale of rags to riches. This is some ways, is what endears me to this film: it seems all the more real for it.

The other key factor is the plethora of famous British actors (70 or more) who appear in the film - besides Donat - in supporting roles. Being the Festival of Britain, practically anybody who was anybody in British cinema at the time was offered a part, and in honour of the occasion they accepted reduced fees to appear in the film. Using the skill of director John Boulting and a sympathetic script by the great Eric Ambler, all the supporting performances are subtly integrated into the story without ever drawing attention to themselves as "guest star" appearances.

Right at the beginning of the first flashback, there's Richard Attenborough and Glynis Johns introducing Edith to Friese-Greene. Willy's children include Janette Scott and John Howard Davies (then famous for playing Oliver Twist). Stanley Holloway plays a sleazy bailiff, Joyce Grenfell the member of a choir, conducted by the unmistakable Miles Malleson, and William Hartnell and Sid James play army officers when the Friese-Greene boys volunteer for War Service in 1914. The noisy conveners at the Connaught Rooms include Robert Beatty, Michael Denison, Peter Jones, Cecil Parker and Peter Ustinov. The irrepressible Margaret Rutherford has a typical cameo as an eccentric wealthy customer of Gutenberg's. Michael Redgrave walks in with the much prized first movie camera of Friese-Greene's, and the first subject for the camera is his cousin Alfred, played by Bernard Miles.

And then there is no less a name than Laurence Olivier listed in the credits.

Upon watching this film on television the first time with my mother, we played a little game of wondering which character he was going to play or where he was going to pop up in this cornucopia of British talent. Then I vaguely remembered a schools' science programme I had seen a few years before, and a scene where a projectionist was showing a film to a bewildered policeman. Mentioning this to Mum, she promptly deduced "he's not playing the policeman is he!?"

And sure enough, to our surprise and delight, up strolls Sir Laurence himself, carefully disguised as a London bobby with a period moustache, to relieve PC Jack Hulbert on a Holborn street corner late at night, and noticing a single light on in the flat that Friese-Greene has rented to carry out the most important stage of his work.

Legend has it that Friese-Greene was so ecstatic that his experiment had worked, that he raced out of the building in the middle of the night to find the nearest person he could show his work to, who in this case was PC 94. The story is probably apocryphal, but I like to think there was an element of truth to it.

The brief scene that the two actors share together (which is the highlight of the film) illustrates just what a great actor Robert Donat was, if only his career had lasted longer. His sincerity when set against Olivier's straight-laced dignity is a fine if brief teaming of two great stars of that era.

The elation of his new invention is however, short-lived, for insurmountable debts have led Friese-Greene into near poverty, whilst Helena finds herself to be terminally ill. Most other biopics would have sidetracked this pessimistic turn to the plot, but I admire the film makers for including it, with the moral that film-making is a hard road, for which many of the innovators stumble and fall, but the dream remains.

Its earnestness and honesty was perhaps the architect of its own downfall. So many truly romanticised biopics have taken the short cut to success by giving its main character a happy ending and an almost totally incorrect view of the person's life. The Magic Box may dress itself up with elaborate scenes and give its central character more stature that perhaps he really had, but it certainly does not portray him as a flawless character.

The final shot of the film is of Friese-Greene's name etched in stone alongside all the other pioneers of early cinema (Edison, Lumiere, etc). A debatable claim of course, but several monuments sprang up all over Britain in acknowledgement of his achievement, including an especially grand memorial to him laid in Highgate Cemetery (see below).

Like all accomplished or would-be film makers in this country and elsewhere, the triumph of the accomplishment on film almost takes second place to the actual achievement of getting the cameras to roll in the first place. Working in films as I occasionally have done - and having seen a good deal more of other people's films too - I know that one of the hardest things for any film maker to achieve is to get all the people together and get the material on film from which it can then be worked upon in the editing room.

The Magic Box may be a dubious tribute to a failed craftsman, but it's certainly a sincere depiction to one of Britain's first cinematic adventurers who fought the good fight.

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

On a wet September evening, or thereabouts (research reveals it to have been sometime after the first week in July) in 1980, my father and I - once again - headed out to see the much anticipated sequel to STAR WARS (see May 27th blog) at the Odeon Colchester. It was with a certain amount of excited anticipation, and also slightly idle curiosity - for I already knew most of the plot of this film: "Star Wars 2" as it became known in the media up until the Spring of 1979. Little did I realise at the time that what I was actually seeing was in effect "Star Wars 5", and the central story of a nine film saga.

Making our way with some difficulty through the wet weather, we also passed the ABC in St. John's Street (then still functioning as a cinema) and continued on eventually into Crouch Street to see the film, but had arrived rather later than planned, after the film had already started. This however, was in the dying days of roving performance times, when latecomers could enter the cinema and stay for the next screening. When Dad and I stumbled into the darkened Screen One therefore, it was to the sight of Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca and See-Threepio crowded inside the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, nestled within a cave inside an asteroid which is "not entirely stable!"

In honour of that first occasion therefore, I will tell the story from that point onwards, then regress to the beginning.

Moments after settling down into our seats, we are taken from the mysterious asteroid cave to a semi-submerged X-wing fighter on the swamp planet of Dagobah, where Luke Skywalker emerges to begin his training as a Jedi knight, in the most seemingly unlikely of places, and the most seemingly unlikely of Jedi Masters: the initially comical and eccentric but quickly preachy and philosophical midget Yoda.

The original conception of Yoda (as seen in the original Marvel Comics adaptation), prior to eleventh hour amendment by George Lucas and Stuart Freeborn.

I will come to the defence of Yoda here, against my own later opinion of the character as much as anything. George Lucas was thrown into something of a dilemma during the making of Star Wars with the fate of Luke's previous mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi. With the character due to train Luke in the ways of the Force (in the later sequels), Kenobi had barely anything to do after a certain point in the plot, so Lucas took the audacious move of killing the character off (at the hand of Darth Vader), a decision which understandably upset Sir Alec Guinness at the time, but with hindsight it actually helped to make his character all the more memorable.

However, come The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas needed to create a new Jedi Master to teach Luke, and thanks to the combined genius of Stuart Freeborn and Frank Oz, the character of Yoda (a genuine original that Lucas has since slightly disparagingly referred to as "just a puppet") was brought to life, and perfectly suited the ethereal nature of both the character and the world of Dagobah itself. In the hands of Buddhist-leaning Irvin Kershner, Dagobah could almost be taken for a state of mind rather than an actual place, such is the mysticism. Subsequent attempts (in the Star Wars prequels) to take Yoda out of his native habitat and to also "quantify" the Force have been, in my view, misguided, when the mysticism should remain intact. The very elusiveness of the Force is one of the secrets of the whole success of the Star Wars saga.

The Jedi training scenes on Yoda may appear sluggish (there were apparently many other scenes which were cut - see right), but they are usefully counterbalanced by the continuing chase of the Millennium Falcon by the Empire, having evaded their clutches by the most sneaky of methods. Just when he thinks he has led them off the trail, Han Solo takes his friends over to the sanctuary of Cloud City on Bespin, where an old friend is in charge. Unbeknownst to them however, a bounty hunter knows some of Solo's tricks, and pursues the Falcon on its journey to Bespin: Boba Fett.

Fett was a character introduced quite early in 1978 to Star Wars fans (first seen in the one-off "Star Wars Holiday Special"), and from initial appearances I perceived him to be one of the good guys. This soon becomes patently not the case, but for whatever reason, he has become quite a cult figure among fans, more so in some ways than Darth Vader.

The old friend of Solo's meanwhile, is the Cloud City administrator, Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), more in truth a gambler and smuggler - and a bit of a charmer with the ladies - than a "responsible leader", and intended by George Lucas as an "earlier" version of Han. Indeed, Billy Dee Williams was one of those who originally tested for the role of Han Solo in Star Wars.

One element that Calrissian is also not beyond is deception, and before our heroes know it, C-3PO is dismantled into several pieces by stormtroopers, and our heroes are finally caught by Darth Vader, who has been led on to the trail by...Boba Fett.

Lando's reasons meanwhile for "betraying" Solo have been purely mercenary, of course, but it's a deal which he soon begins to regret, and not just because of the involvement of Boba Fett, or the added betrayal of some boy named Skywalker. The two disparate elements in the story therefore suddenly come together in exciting fashion, and despite the dissuasion of both Yoda and the "ghost" of Ben Kenobi (a fleetingly seen but always memorable Alec Guinness), Luke deserts his Jedi training on Dagobah to rescue his friends, whom he perceives to be in danger. But - ahah - this is all Vader's trick, to lure Luke towards him.

And we realise by the end of the film just why Vader is so interested in young Skywalker, in a plot twist that few if anyone could have guessed.

How I first learned of the surprising twist in the tale.

Before that however, Han Solo is "tested" for carbon freezing so that "the Emperor's prize" can also go through a similar fate. The scene in the carbon freezing chamber I find rather sluggish and melodramatic, but it brings out the best in Harrison Ford. Famous for being allowed to improvise much of his dialogue in the Star Wars (and subsequent) films, he is at his most inventive in The Empire Strikes Back, with he and director Kershner changing the emphasis from Leia being emotionally stronger than Solo, to the other way round. There were those - Lucas in particular - who were nervous about the use of Ford's "I know" ad lib, as it was perceived to be unintentionally comical, but on previews of the film the only laugh it received was a laugh of recognition. It is for me, one of Harrison Ford's best and most underrated performances - up there on a par with Mosquito Coast and his Oscar-nominated performance in Witness - where he makes the character of Han Solo his own - and receives a semi-martyr's death for good measure, before the film's main climax.

If Ford takes most of the acting honours - closely followed by the always excellent Mark Hamill and Frank Oz - then in terms of characters the film belongs to Darth Vader, turning a character from what in the first film was something of a hatchet man for both the Emperor and Grand Moff Tarkin, into a black avenging angel of doom - and much more than that, we later realise.

The scene where he chops Luke's hand off (quite carefully edited for a "U" certificate film) and then tries - and fails - to turn Luke to the dark side, watching his own son fall down a massive chasm on Cloud City, has some of the poignancy for me of the end scene of King Kong, where you felt sorry for the monster in spite of everything.

We are nonetheless still on Luke's side as he tumbles down to the bottom of Cloud City and hangs - on one hand - to a slender weather vane, and appeals to Ben Kenobi for help. But Ben "cannot interfere", especially where family matters are concerned, so Luke uses the Force to turn to someone closer to home - hinting at a plot twist later to be revealed in Return of the Jedi.

Thus a curious love triangle reaches its closure, as Luke, in love with Leia from the beginning, is rescued by her - reversing the pattern set in Star Wars - but her heart now belongs to Han Solo, whom they both resolve to rescue, as too does Lando Calrissian and, of course, Chewbacca. The film ends therefore, beautifully poised with our surviving heroes severely humbled but having reached the sanctuary of the Rebel fleet, and looking out from the edge of the galaxy, to an uncertain but hopeful future.

Roll credits. End of film.

We sit sheepishly in Screen One, hoping that the Odeon staff will let us stay in the cinema for the next screening that evening, and after one audience has rolled out and another rolled in, we sit through the familiar "Rank Screen Advertising", and the trailers for some other fantasy films (none which I remember now), before in due course, the second screening is under way.

And so it begins.

Opening in a very similar fashion to Star Wars, a single Imperial destroyer comes into view, but this time with several Imperial pods flying out of the cruiser like angry wasps, to the various planets littered all over the galaxy, in search of the elusive new rebel base. One such vessel flies fortuitously onto the sixth planet of the Hoth system, out of which pops a sinister looking probe droid which floats across the snow like a fly, in a skillful visual effect created by the newly named Industrial Light and Magic.

Before Luke Skywalker - the boy himself - can check the status of the "meteorite", an angry snow creature assaults both him and the "Tauntaun" he is riding. This scene was apparently filmed as a means to explain the reason for Luke's badly scarred face - as Mark Hamill himself suffered facial injuries in a car crash in 1978, after the making of Star Wars.

Han Solo meanwhile, unlike Luke, has successfully returned from snow patrol duty, and emerges through the main rebel hangar (filmed on the then huge new "Star Wars Stage" at Elstree) past his wookiee co-pilot Chewbacca who is trying to fix a flagging Millennium Falcon, to tell the base commander, General Rieekan (Bruce Boa) that he has to leave to pay off an old debt to Jabba the Hutt - still unpaid since the first film. Listening in on this conversation, none too pleased at Solo's decision, is Princess Leia Organa, for whom clearly something has sparked between her and Solo in the intervening time, no matter how prickly.

Who will she choose? Luke - in a forbidden (by George Lucas) romantic scene...

...or Han?

Before the romantic complications can be sorted out however, Luke is rescued out of the snow by Han, and once these slightly sluggish opening scenes on Hoth are done with, we get to the nitty-gritty of the story of the story, when the aforementioned probe droid is disintegrated (by self-destruction) to just a fragment, and the alerting signal to the Imperial fleet is all the proof that Darth Vader needs that the Rebel Alliance, and Luke Skywalker, is there.

So the resulting impressive battle in the snow with giant evil Trojan Horse-style Imperial Walkers, was actually at the end for me, rather than the beginning - which probably helped - followed soon afterwards by a thrilling asteroid field chase, after the crew of the Millennium Falcon discover to their shock that the ship's trademark lightspeed is faulty! Using his wits and his cunning, Han Solo navigates the Falcon through a Grand Canyon-like gorge to evade the dogged Imperial TIE fighters, and finds temporary refuge in a mysterious "cave"...

... which as they say, is where we came in.

Mischievously, I watched a few minutes extra, and really wanted to see the rest of the film over again, but Dad eventually persuaded me out of the cinema.

On the way back home (by which time the rain had eased off) that night, I told my father of the various imaginative ideas I'd had for sequels ever since Star Wars first set me buzzing in 1978 - including one where I imagined a 9-year old (modelled on myself of course) befriending Princess Leia and helping the heroes to defeat Darth Vader. In later years I thought this to be just childish whimsy - or was it? Little did I expect that 27 years later, another Star Wars film would indeed feature a 9-year old as its pivotal hero.

So after all the anticipation, and indeed all the euphoria after the first film, the new follow-up in the "continuing" saga was enthralling, quite dark, and with some unexpected plot developments. But is also, on reflection, a very sluggish film, deliberately so at times, trying to focus on characters and philosophy rather than plot, and characters bicker with each other - C-3PO is reduced to a figure of ridicule, and Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia is still spiky and feisty but also petulant, rarely feminine or princess-like, and even reduced on a couple of occasions to a screaming heroine. Above all, the Empire strikes back indeed, with a vengeance, but it is not as much FUN as Star Wars.

So at the time for me, the excitement of the Star Wars whirlwind had blown its full course. Perhaps on reflection I wasn't entirely happy with the way things were mapping out for the characters; I certainly had always envisaged Luke Skywalker as Princess Leia's true love rather than Han Solo, and to see the way things were going was secretly disappointing - although that particular romantic triangle was later resolved in rather ingenious fashion.

Come 1980 however, my childhood days in Aylesbury were over, and rehabilitated in Essex, there came a new distraction just round the corner: football. Colchester United and in particular, Ipswich Town's successful UEFA Cup winning season in 1980/81, gave me another popular culture hook to latch on to, away from the cinema, and galaxies, far, far away.

It was a fashion which, by and large, did not swing back the other way until seven years later, when I got round to seeing Return of the Jedi.

With the director of the excellent first Star Wars sequel, the venerable Irvin Kershner.

Way Out West (1937)

A word is overdue now for my favourite comedy double act. There are so many of Laurel and Hardy's films that I love to watch: this one just happens to be the film that I enjoy the most consistently.


Apart from anything else, this is a darn good comedy Western, one of the best of its kind, that utilises the appeal of "the boys" to maximum effect. Their comedy routines honed to perfection, combined with an above average plot, make for magic entertainment. In the corrupt town (is there any other kind in the Wild West?) of Brushwood Gulch, hard-working Mary Roberts (Rosina Lawrence) slaves away Cinderella-like at the saloon of her irascible landlord and legal guardian Mickey Finn, and his wife and star attraction Lola Marcel, played with villainous relish by James Finlayson and Sharon Lynne. But unbeknownst to Mary, her gold prospecting father has recently died, and two unlikely knights on white chargers (or more accurately, a single mule) are riding into town to present her with the valuable inheritance of her late father's goldmine.

The villains alas, get word of the loot first, thanks to the incompetent innocence of Stan:

"Yeah, you see it's private. Her father died and left her a goldmine, and we're not supposed to tell anybody but her..."

.. and some skillful acting on the part of Lola as "Mary":

LOLA ("sobbing"): "Tell me. Tell me about my dear, dear Daddy. Is it true that he's dead?

STAN: Well we hope he is, they buried him!

LOLA: Oh, it can't be! What did he die of?

STAN: I think he died of a Tuesday, or was it a Wednesday...?"

The deception complete - in spite of Stan's unwitting resistance - the boys are packed off having delivered the deed, until they meet up with the real Mary. Ollie, ever the chivalrous one, marches up to the villains' lair and demands the deed back, or Stan "will eat his hat." So in they march, knocking on the door, and then when the door opens, he knocks accidentally on Finn's head:

OLLIE: (to Finn) "Out of my way, you snake in the grass!

STAN: You Toad in the Hole!"


The resulting chase round the saloon culminates in a hilarious scene in which Lola traps Stan in her boudoir (lucky chap) and burrows into his clothes to grab the deed back, and the ticklish Stan is paralysed with laughter. Even Sharon Lynne can't conceal the grin from her face, as you'll notice if you watch the scene.
"Just in the nick of time" comes the Sheriff, whom unfortunately the boys have already had a run-in with over sharing a stagecoach with the Sheriff's wife (Vivien Oakland) - and quick as you know, the boys are racing out of town - "you can't see them for dust!"
But fear ye not, the boys are back - after Ollie has first of all insisted than Stan carry out his pledge to eat his hat - with salt added for flavouring! Returning late that night to Brushwood Gulch, they sneak in to rescue the deed - and Mary - even in spite of being trapped in a piano (that Finlayson plays!), and Ollie having his neck twisted around 360 degrees (oddly pre-dating a similar scene in The Exorcist.)
Riding out of town to pastures new, the three triumphantly make their way home to the town where Mary was born, "way down South." Ollie declares that he is from the South too, as does Stan - "the South of London...and some good old fish 'n'chips!" The film ends with a running gag, as they march singing merrily across the river, until Ollie once again finds the deep end and takes a plunge!
And in the midst of this joyous and all too short 66 minutes, come two famous song and dance numbers, The Shoe Shuffle, and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine - a song which was popular enough to become a top ten single in its own right. The voices that Stan adopts when he switches from heavy bass to soprano, were actually the voices of co-stars Chill Wills, and Rosina Lawrence.

The Shorts

I realise that I've unfairly restricted this blogpage largely to "feature" films, so this is an ideal opportunity to also mention some of the classic Laurel and Hardy short films that they made in the 1920s and 30s, and were in many ways, their metier.
I can remember laughing uncontrollably when I saw Beau Chumps (the British title for Beau Hunks) on TV when I was younger, a spoof of Foreign Legion films - as much as Way Out West was a spoof of Westerns - where the boys foil a raid by the Arab armies by throwing drawing pins on the ground under their bare feet! Another amusing running gag was how everyone in the legion - including Ollie, and even the commander of the outpost (Charles Middleton - best known as "Ming the Merciless") has ended up there because of their one-time sweetheart, "Jeanie Weenie" - a pre-megastardom Jean Harlow, no less.
The most famous of their comedy shorts is probably The Music Box, an Oscar winner (the very first in that category) with the boys hauling a musical piano up a large flight of steps (that still stand today in suburban Los Angeles), and brilliantly finding ways to climb up the hill and then come tumbling straight back down again! As in Way Out West, there is also a pleasant little song and dance number, to the tune of the musical piano, naturally.
One of the best examples of their endearing antipathy with James Finlayson, is Big Business (perhaps the best of their silent films), where the boys are Christmas tree sellers - in June - and Finn is naturally an unwilling customer. The boys will not take no for an answer however, and Finn - unfortunately for him - does not know how to reject them politely. The disagreement escalates into a slapstick war which half demolishes both the boys' car and Finn's house, and in due course embroils the local policeman (Tiny Sandford), and ends with the four of them in a fit of mutual weeping - while the audience is weeping with laughter.
Stan and Ollie are in dungarees again in Dirty Work - a title with a double meaning, as the boys are chimney sweeps at the house of a mad scientist, who has dabbled in a formula for rejuvenation. At the end Ollie overdoses on the formula and turns into a chimpanzee - complete with bowler hat! (Was this where they got the idea for the PG Tips ads I wonder?) Their interaction in this short is particularly engaging. "I have nothing to say!" is Ollie's frequent response to the various indignities heaped upon him by Stan - not quite as distinctive as "Here's another fine mess..." perhaps, but just as funny.

Helpmates is a brilliantly funny black comedy, as Ollie tries to clean up after a wild party, before his dragon of a wife comes home. In one tour de force sequence, he slips on a carpet sweeper and crashes into the dishes that Stan has just cleaned, then accidentally catches his arm on a string which unleashes the soot from the stove and covers him! He then accidentally washes his hands with butter instead of soap, and to top it all, Stan gets a towel from the cupboard, but out falls a tin of flour onto Ollie's head, transforming him from a Minstrel into a ghost!
By the end of the film, Ollie has returned - alone - with a black eye, and Stan has rendered the house to ashes - "I guess there's nothing else I can do.", he says!

Legacy

I believe the secret of their appeal was very much how they seemed to be on the same level as their audience. They never spoke down to them. Chaplin had a brilliant common touch with his Tramp characterisation, but had a tendency to preach with his comedy, once his power and his success increased. Buster Keaton was technically brilliant, but didn't quite have that magic of engaging his character with the audience, the way that especially Oliver Hardy did with his frequent despairing looks to camera. Laurel and Hardy had just the perfect mix, and like so many successful double acts, it was one of those happy coincidences that just happened to come together and create a unique style, that has never really been surpassed.
Stan Laurel was of course, the prime mover in many of these classic comedies. He was actually already semi-retired as a comedy actor, and working largely behind the camera at the Hal Roach Studio before his official teaming with "Babe" Hardy. Many of their short films in fact, are not film scripts as such, but simple synopses around which they planned their own comedy routines, and then performed them in front of camera. Peter Cushing remembers a time when, during the making of A Chump at Oxford (below), the boys have a scene where they are tricked into walking through a maze, and naturally get lost. The scene was originally shot with doubles in long shot, but both Stan and Babe felt it needed themselves to do the scene, adapting it to their own unique style, an example of their model professionalism which they maintained throughout their 40-year careers.

A Chump at Oxford (1940). Standing in the middle with fake moustache: a young Peter Cushing.

It's sad to reflect that the time of Way Out West was actually at the end of a renaissance of fine comedy for Laurel and Hardy. This was the second and last of two official "Stan Laurel Productions" which were markedly slicker and more professionally made than many of their other films, and refuted the notion that LandH were only good in short films. But the golden run was brief.
For whatever reason - though their popularity remained - the feature films which they had successfully (and gradually) adjusted to from shorts, were to go by the wayside quite quickly, and contracts were negotiated for them away from Hal Roach, to other studios such as Twentieth Century Fox, who just did not understand the way Laurel and Hardy ticked.
But when watching Way Out West, time and time again, I defy anyone not to be engaged and feeling better after the experience. This, as I say, was their appeal. Other comedians made you laugh: these two made you laugh and also made you feel like you really knew them at the same time.