West Side Story (1961)

Recently celebrating its 50th anniversary, in its own words this musical "grows younger" with the passing of time. For my own appreciation of this film, I am indebted on this occasion to a certain amount of maternal influence.

Way back in the 1970's in Aylesbury, my mother kept the film soundtrack of West Side Story as one of her most cherished possessions. I didn't know much about music - or films - in those days, but curiosity one day compelled me to ask what that slightly abstract album cover (above) was all about, with two silhouetted figures dancing for joy down some ladders. It was, I soon discovered, connected to a modern day musical version of Romeo & Juliet, transplanting the setting to the streets of New York with two gangs, the Jets and the Sharks, and the two lovers were naturally members of opposite sides.

It was such a favourite of Mum's that she had actually seen the film in the cinema four times, which knocked my obsession for Star Wars (that I'd seen in the cinema a mere twice) into the shade.

Such devotion to a film inevitably compelled me to find out for myself what all the fuss was about. When video cassette recording became fashionable, one of the first films we recorded from the TV was West Side Story - for Mum's benefit, and so also ultimately, for mine too.

It's a film musical which immediately strikes you as bold and rather different, from the first unexpected image which is of some vertical lines across the screen. This continues for several minutes, while some of the film's melodies are overtured. This must have been bizarre and fascinating for cinema audiences to watch, with the image projected over the curtains as they waited for the film to start. As the curtains eventually parted, the three-word title emerges at the bottom of the screen, and those enigmatic lines suddenly turn out to be the skyline of Manhattan.

From that moment, I was hooked. Any film which discharges the need for any unnecessary names of actors and technicians in its opening credits will always win me over. The idea for the opening sequence, together with the long, lingering camera flying over Manhattan towards the story's backstreet setting, was the idea of the film's chief co-director Robert Wise - in collaboration with the stage show's original director Jerome Robbins. With Robbins involved in most of the choreography and Wise dealing with the dramatic side, United Artists hoped to get the best of both worlds. Inevitably however Robbins' ceaseless overworking of his actors (and the budget) led to him being replaced in mid-production with Wise totally supervising all the remaining sequences.

Robbins' hand is very evident in the opening ballet where the first skirmish between Jets and Sharks takes place. After the atmospheric opening we pan down to see Riff (Russ Tamblyn) and his cohorts gathered, finger-clicking in time to the music, and then suddenly see them prancing around like ballet dancers, which may have worked on stage, but to say the least it looks a little odd on screen, in such tough real-life surroundings.

The pirouettes excepted, the opening (completely unspoken) first 10 minutes are a great introduction to the film, not least because of the electrifying music of Leonard Bernstein, whose masterful score is the lynchpin of the film throughout.

As for the singing...well, in those days most actors were actually dubbed by professionally trained singers, but no-one gave it too much thought until it was revealed that major stars the like of Deborah Kerr and Audrey Hepburn were actually being dubbed by Marni Nixon - or in this case, also Natalie Wood, the film's nominal star.

Her casting was the product of a certain amount of compromise brought about by the studio. The makers' original intent was to use relative unknowns in the main roles, to add to the boldness (although Russ Tamblyn was not without renown having appeared in notable musicals such as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Rita Moreno was also a veteran of supporting character roles), but some sort of star name was needed for the sake of the billing. Miss Wood had just come off the back of a strong role opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, and her other emerging films of the 1960's meant that she was a bankable enough name without also being too much of a cash-in for the moneymen. I think she gives a refreshingly bright, truthful and hard-working performance which gives the film much of its heart. It's such a shame that her performance was overshadowed by all the gossip about the fact that she was - secretly - dubbed. (It's also a shame that film history has been largely ignorant of Marni Nixon, outside of her very accomplished singing voice.)

For the role of Romeo (aka. Tony) opposite Natalie Wood's Maria/Juliet, the producers chose Richard Beymer, who was up to the standard for good-looking young men back in 1960. He, like Wood, Tamblyn and Moreno, had emerged on the scene in small roles in notable films (such as The Diary of Ann Frank), and also like them, was dubbed - by Jimmy Bryant.

The resulting love duet "Tonight" therefore, is sung with the voices of Marni Nixon and Jimmy Bryant, and Wood and Beymer providing the faces and the lip-sync. Both elements combine to bring out the romantic power of the song. There were plenty of other notable numbers of course, such as "Maria", "Cool" (a nightmare for the actors to perform successfully), the comical "Officer Krupke", the Dance at the Gym (with an amusing cameo by an uncredited John Astin) where the lovers first meet in beautifully stylised fashion, the "Quintet" - a musical tour de force - and the always vibrant "America", which is actually improved in the film version by including the men as the counterpoint to the women, in what was originally a girls-only melody on stage.

Much of the praise and attention (and the awards) for West Side Story were given to the strength of the numbers and the dancing, but all this would be meaningless without a strong dramatic story to hold it together, and so as the tone turns a little darker with the inevitable fight between the two sides which becomes unexpectedly fatal, the story really kicks into gear. For that, we have to thank one William Shakespeare, and although WSS (SPOILER ALERT) takes a slight divergence from its source material by having one of its central lovers survive the tragedy, none of the power is lost, and if anything the closing procession is made that little more powerful by it.

The closing credits are as innovative as the opening, written on street signs and walls (I used the idea of the closing "END" sign for a film of mine, Cornucopia in 2001.) Generally speaking I find musicals a little twee and all too predictable in their happy-ever-after frothiness, so to come across a genuinely serious musical, and a very well made one at that, is an unexpected pleasure to behold.

And this was also, as I said, a favourite of my mother's, who saw most of her four viewings at the old Astoria cinema in Charing Cross Road, where several of the popular widescreen musicals (including the later phenomenal Sound of Music, also directed by Robert Wise) were often screened.

I had the pleasure to watch West Side Story myself at the Prince Charles Cinema in 1992, and though the film has a certain 1960's look to it, the soundtrack is as timeless as it always was. A 50-year old musical still has the youth of a teenager. Happy Birthday.


The Astoria Charing Cross Road in 2008, overlooking the Dominion Tottenham Court Road in the distance.

Return of the Jedi (1983)

Secretly, this is my favourite of the original trilogy. Though Star Wars(qv) stands up in a class of its own, and The Empire Strikes Back(qv) is considered to be the best entry of the entire saga, for me, Return of the Jedi has that little bit extra ahead of both, because I happened to return - literally - to the saga because of it, after a few years away from such childish whimsy. I wasn't 7 any more but 17, and was able to appreciate it that little bit more from a maturer perspective.

And maturity is what Return of the Jedi certainly has, for me, more than any other entry in the saga.

Back in the 1980s, school came and eventually went. I'd seen The Empire Strikes Back, but had stopped collecting the Marvel Comics, and the toys (which were getting more expensive), etc, etc. Ipswich Town had won the UEFA Cup (and nearly two more trophies in perhaps their greatest season ever), and I'd starting going with my Dad to see matches (both home and away) regularly.

The year was 1982, the summer of the World Cup in Spain. Around about this time mutterings were made about the next Star Wars film. The title of the next episode, according to publicists,would be The Revenge of the Jedi - which gave a pretty fair indication of what to expect. So - the Empire had struck back in the last film, but the Jedi were clearly going to get their revenge.

Enough said?

Ah well, big deal, no real need for me to go and see it then, so I thought. And maybe the saga was just taking itself a little too seriously. Somehow in my heart of hearts I knew it couldn't be as good as the first two - or certainly the first one. Besides, it was all kids' stuff that I'd grown out of.

A year later in 1983, England were playing Scotland in a Home International at Wembley Stadium. Among the advertising boards around the pitch that evening were one or two for "RETURN of the Jedi", which I noted with curiosity. I managed to get hold of a copy of the programme for that match, and saw the poster for the new film, a simple, cool but effective blue on black piece of artwork with just a single pair of hands holding a lightsabre vertically - to this day, I think it's the best and most simply effective of all the Star Wars posters.

My curiosity however, was still not sufficiently aroused to want to go to the pictures, that hot summer (cinema was also something I'd turned a blind eye to.) The Star Wars saga was for me, something pretty much on the back burner....

...BUT, little by little over the succeeding years, I had noticed minor little nuggets of information about ROTJ, mostly out of casual interest: sticker album packs, Return of the Jedi Weekly comics, little TV slots on BBC's Breakfast Time about the chart-topping video release in the summer of 1984.

And then I delved further; I forget from where exactly, but I overheard the whisper that Luke and Leia were actually brother and sister. Mentally speaking I sat up eagerly at this news, as I had always felt the consummation of their relationship was naturally the way the saga should develop, and was disappointed when Leia fell for Han Solo.

This was around about 1987, when my horizons suddenly broadened (as they do for so many teenagers) when going to college, and starting to see the world from a different perspective. After three difficult years at Wilson Marriage, and a further three even more suffocating years at St. Benedict's in Colchester, I escaped from some of the adolescent teasing and drudgery that was secondary education, and then suddenly started to remember about things that I missed when I was younger.

And one of those things of course, was Star Wars.

Interested enough now to want to know more about the plot of ROTJ, I delved further. I went to a second hand bookshop and bought a copy of the illustrated Marvel Comics adaptation of the film, a beautifully woven piece of art, if taking images directly from publicity stills for the most part, as well as dwelling upon the film's sense of melancholy.

Having left school, finally, feeling that I was, at least in theory "my own man" and not a child anymore, and wandering casually around Colchester during the holidays (between school and Sixth Form College), I happened to pass the "Video International" rental store in Magdalen Street, and peered through the window to see a video cover for ROTJ on the shelves. Once again, all the main characters (Luke, Han, Leia) were ever present, and my curiosity was once again aroused, to the point of eagerness.

And then late that summer, after watching a slightly disappointing cricket match between Essex and Surrey at Castle Park (because Essex lost), I took the plunge and asked my father to go to Video International (of which I knew he was a member), and rent out for me Return of the Jedi on video as a consolation for the cricket.

Wow! A chance to see the film 4 years after its first release! You have to remember that video rental was still a novelty: in those days films disappeared after the end of their cinema run - DVDs had not been invented - and the time when ROTJ would be shown on television was far, far away. So to get the chance to see it on video rental that evening was quite a thrill.

A few hours later, waiting for the house to be quiet enough for me to enjoy it properly, I put the tape into the machine. Watching the film in standard "pan and scan" square TV format may lose some of the widescreen spectacle (the opening shot of an Imperial cruiser and a half-built Death Star over Endor is the only moment I was sorry I missed in the cinema), but the setting still looks as captivating as always, and of course the characters were all very familiar - even Jabba the Hutt, whom up till then hadn't actually appeared in the saga.

When he does, it's something of a sight to behold. On reflection I'm baffled as to why Han Solo would be so much in dread of a giant slug who could barely move himself around, but at the time I trusted in George Lucas and whatever conception he had for the character, and that it would be great.

And that also applies to those Ewoks. I have often seen and heard them referred to as "cuddly", but I detected no real sense of this when I first saw the film - and indeed, this "cuddliness" was never really pointed up in ROTJ, but in its subsequent spin-offs: the Ewoks cartoon series and two Ewok Adventure films. They were irritating perhaps, just as the Munchkins were in The Wizard of Oz - but whoever complains about that classic film?

But Star Wars however, had become not just a popular film but a phenomenon, for an entire generation. Some fans therefore who had remained loyal from the beginning, went slightly ballistic at the introduction of these little creatures, when they felt they knew George Lucas's saga better even than George Lucas did; he had originally promised a closing battle between the Empire and an army of primitive wookiees, just like Chewbacca. But Chewie had been quite clearly established by now (Lucas explained) as a fairly sophisticated creature, able to liaise directly with Han Solo as a formidable co-pilot and First Mate - hardly the sort of life form to be considered "primitive". Added to that, wookiees proved to be exceedingly strong, so the Empire would probably be very easily overthrown by an army of these mighty beasts - so no suspense, and no surprise either.

Given these circumstances, it was only natural that Lucas should rework his original idea into something different. Crucially, he took the theme of the underdog - the little man - into its most literal form, as he had done already with Jawas in Star Wars, and created what for me were Jawas without their hoods on.

And the Battle of Endor works, there's no question about that. If there are any sentimental asides, they are usually quickly swept away by the excitement of the scenes taking place elsewhere above and on board the (Second) Death Star. Other parts of ROTJ may have dated, but the closing (three) battles are still a tremendously kinetic piece of fluent cinema.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here; before the grand finale of the saga - and finales didn't come grander than this - there had to be the setting up of the story leading to all that. And it began where it had started in the first place, on the desert planet of Tatooine.

Not quite the Tatooine as we saw it in Star Wars - filmed in Tunisia - but in hot, slightly more golden coloured mid-America, in Yuma, Arizona. Here, C-3PO and R2-D2 are seen walking along the sand dunes towards the palace of Jabba the Hutt. The set-up seems the same as the first film, but slightly different. A brief prologue with Darth Vader apart, the bulk of this opening phase of "Star Wars III" follows the same mould of its original by having its first reels consist almost entirely of creatures and robots, and no people.

Where Star Wars however was a few jawas and one or two robots at the beginning, the opening scenes of Jedi by contrast are a veritable phantasmagoria of creatures and monsters, squashing some of the human element to the side (you can see where some of the genesis for the prequels came from.)

But once the heroes do pop up in the film, they are a welcome sight and worth the wait, especially Luke Skywalker, who is given a great entrance - a character whom, you already sense, has to be the son of Darth Vader, because he's started to look like him (how so exactly is not explained.)

Luke however has more than just his Jedi capabilities to have to call upon when he suddenly has to deal with Jabba the Hutt's mighty intergalactic "hitman", the Rancor, in an excitingly mounted and scored sequence that becomes the first major set-piece of the film. A little moment after the Rancor's untimely demise demonstrates the heart and soul poured into this film: the animal's keeper (Paul Brooke) and his friend weep and console each other on the death of their pet, whilst Luke is herded off to face the wrath of Jabba, together with Chewbacca and....Han Solo, now resurrected from his carbon freeze by Princess Leia (in disguise), who also conveniently gets captured by Jabba, and is now the Hutt's personal slave girl. You can't blame him really.

Foolishly, Jabba and his entire entourage decide to execute the heroes at the Sarlacc pit, little realising that one of the guards is also Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) in disguise, and that Luke has a few more Jedi tricks up his (or more accurately R2-D2's) sleeve. I loved how Mark Hamill was given the chance to strut his stuff, being the hero in true swashbuckling fashion, and doing what I assumed Jedi knights were supposed to do. Added to that, Han Solo had returned - oh yes, and Leia Organa looked fetching in a metal bikini, which seemed to pleasantly surprise most males, and some females (Carrie Fisher included), but it was no surprise to me - I knew Leia was beautiful since 1978, and didn't need a metal bikini to prove it.

The Tatooine scenes, I confess, slightly bore me nowadays. The story only really warms up when another evil warlord arrives - no, not Darth Vader, but his boss, who is "not as forgiving" as Vader is! That character is the Emperor, formerly known as Senator Palpatine, and played by Ian McDiarmid. "Who's Ian McDiarmid?", most people wondered.

McDiarmid was one of several distinguished British stage actors, not really known outside of that medium (Michael Pennington, Kenneth Colley, Dermot Crowley and Caroline Blakiston were other examples), and did what all good British character actors do: he brought out the character in a splendidly overplayed (but never unsuitably so) performance, full of guttural resonance and Machiavellian teasing. McDiarmid has since become a Lucasfilm favourite, and his acting in the subsequent Star Wars films has stood far above anyone else.

Although much of the credit for Jedi was given to Lucas (who had much more of a "hands on" approach than on The Empire Strikes Back), little credit was given to the film's actual "director for hire", the sadly underrated figure of Richard Marquand. Because so much of the film looks like Star Wars, it was only natural to assume that George Lucas had the major hand in its making, but this I think is only partly true.

A former actor, Marquand came from a background of directing television documentaries and dramas and a couple of minor British feature films - one of which, Eye of the Needle, impressed Lucas. The sheer scale and spectacle of ROTJ however was something he had never dealt with before, but he took the task on with Shakespearean reverence to the material, and to its creator.

He also gladly allowed Lucas to dabble in whatever way he wanted (a similar creative partnership also arose at that time for the film Poltergeist, between Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg.) Lucas concentrated on the action and the overall scheme of galactic history, and Marquand dealt with the characters and the emotions - an ideal blend.

It was Marquand who also insisted that Yoda return to make one final, dignified exit from the saga, having been so strongly established as a character in TESB. Having now created a character who could walk and talk with great wisdom and truth, Stuart Freeborn and Frank Oz now had the added challenge of making Yoda look even more frail, and have a convincing death scene to boot - and once again, they came up trumps. Lest we forget, thanks also in no small measure, to the acting skills of Mark Hamill who reacted with suitable pathos.

After Yoda's death (and that was a surprise that the comic book adaptation had not prepared me for), there comes the welcome return, in spectral form once again, of Alec Guinness as Ben Kenobi, who has the unenviable task of explaining to Luke the key plot twist in the saga (that contradict Ben's own words spoken in Star Wars) about his father. The audience would only believe it if Guinness/Kenobi himself explained his reasons for "lying" - and it's an explanation which cleverly skirts around the deception, with Guinness giving a world-weary shrug to it all.

But there's more to this dark secret than just Vader however - whom we learn, was also named "Anakin" Skywalker. "The other" that Yoda spoke of in passing (both here and in The Empire Strikes Back), turns out to be Leia - as it always was really, Luke realises, as did I. The fact that she is a blood relative to Luke is of course, contrived, but like in the best (and worst) of Dickens and other great writers, it all has a nice sense of coming together and satisfying storytelling.

The scene where Luke tells Leia the truth (which she also "sensed" from the first moment too), is perhaps my favourite of all the scenes in the later SW films. Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were given short notice to learn their lines, but deliver them with beautiful aplomb, thanks to Marquand's sympathetic direction, which relies all on atmosphere and emotion and not action. Brief mention is also made in this discourse about Luke & Leia's mother, which set my curiosity bells a-ringing in the years to come.

At this point, the stage is set for the great showdown, not only physically but spiritually and emotionally, between Rebellion & Empire, father & son, and Good & Evil. Vader now returns to see Luke, and both men are much more subdued since their last meeting. They are now two rather similar sides of the same coin. Further nuggets of information about Vader's early days are mentioned - the name Anakin Skywalker is one that "no longer has any meaning" for him, and when Luke tries to entice his father back to the good side - before the inevitable confrontation happens - Vader briefly mutters a little insight: "Obi-Wan once thought as you do."

The tragedy of Vader, as well as the legend, is now brought to the fore. He turns his own son over to the Emperor, as expected, but stands ruefully over a balcony in the Ewok forest, wondering if, as Luke suggests, Anakin is truly dead.

The interweaving space battle with the (multi-alien) Rebel fleet and the dogged Ewok forest battle are splendidly mounted, but the crux of the film now lies in the scenes with Luke, Vader, and the Emperor. The film's editors (which included the soon-to-be divorced Marcia Lucas) ensure that the battle only really swings the good guys' way once Luke makes the decision not to turn to the Dark Side, unequivocally; and this, when he was provoked by Vader into the prospect of Leia turning to the Dark Side instead - a bit of artistic inspiration by Richard Marquand, and leading to a last desperate lightsabre onslaught, superbly scored by the ever-reliable John Williams.

The embittered Emperor however has more than just malevolence up his sleeve, and shows his true colours in response to Luke's defiance. In perhaps the most moving and unexpected of moments in the saga, it is not Luke but his father who finally defeats evil, by turning on the Emperor - his master - in order to save his son's life, at the cost of his own. Skywalker Senior and Junior then console each other for the first time in their lives, and the dying Anakin asks Luke to take the Vader mask off...

Here was another revelation I had not expected. The comic adaptation has Luke averting his gaze in horror and pity as his father dies away, but on screen we see, briefly, the now old man that was/is Anakin Skywalker - and he's played not by David Prowse, or James Earl Jones, but by another distinguished British stage actor, Sebastian Shaw. This was something of a revelation: a father figure who is actually rather humble, and I suppose, quite like Obi-Wan Kenobi in many ways, and was British. It all had a lovely sense of the saga coming home (to Britain that is.) And indeed, it is Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin who stand reunited together as ghosts of the past at the film's closing celebration.

As Luke sees the Three Wise Men watching over the happy scene, his sister Leia comes over to take Luke by the shoulder, and bring him back, as the novelisation puts it, "into the circle of warmth and love."

A fitting end to a great trilogy.

Yet recently, a certain number of inexplicable changes have been made to the original saga, and the one that suffered the most significant alterations was Jedi (mostly in order to keep it in line with the later prequels), which included such additions as a herd of banthas strolling through the desert, to a new "pop music" style number in Jabba's Palace (making it seem oddly dated as an 80's film, when the changes were made in 1997!), and most incomprehensible of all, the changing of Anakin Skywalker from Sebastian Shaw in ghostly form, to the (much) younger Hayden Christensen!

My admiration for the original version is sufficient to make it unbearable (and unnecessary) for me to watch the latest version.

I got round to seeing the original film in its proper setting at the National Film Theatre in London in the autumn of 1988, during a season of Jim Henson- related fantasy films. I took along my little 9-year old sister, who was terrified of the Rancor monster when unleashed from his cage, but by and large she could take the film without having to hide behind the seat too often. It was a rousing experience, especially (once again) that end title music by John Williams

It's my favourite of the saga because on the one hand of course, it's a great wrap-up to the story, and on the other that it has a sense of melancholy and destiny fulfilled. There were not many things in the 1980s that turned out to be "Happy Ever After", but Return of the Jedi was one of them. It was not a celebration of the 80's, but a belated final party for the 70's, the era which Star Wars helped to define.

Having reawakened myself to the wonders of the Star Wars galaxy, my imagination opened up again, beyond college, toward the future, towards even old forgotten dreams of being in the films myself.

The back story revealed in ROTJ had excited me enough to want to know how things were going to turn out, when - and if - they were going to make any more Star Wars films.

In the early 1990s, I decided to put these plans into concrete form, by writing my own Episodes 1, 2 and 3 of Star Wars.

But that as they say, is another story reserved for another time.....

Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)

Joan Littlewood's scathing, nostalgic satire on the First World War (based on songs and sketches first devised in a Charles Chilton radio programme Long, Long Trail a-Winding), used Pierrot clown costume for all the characters, to convey the circus farce of war. It was a move indicative of the anti-war feeling during a time when the Vietnam war was starting to escalate. Subsequent versions of the stage show however (including the above), have been indelibly influenced by the film adaptation by Richard Attenborough, which added the traditional khaki uniforms, and brought the story back into line with a general British nostalgia for the valour of those men who fought in the trenches, whilst still retaining most of the satire.

Attenborough at the time was a complete novice when it came to film directing. As an actor he was one of the foremost, having transcended his initial typecasting as slightly shifty and even psychopathic characters, thanks in part to his own efforts at producing with Bryan Forbes. His considerable expertise in the film business was therefore instrumental in bringing Oh! What a Lovely War to the screen, as well as his actor's kudos for attracting an incredible British all-star cast.

This was perhaps just as well, for Attenborough had pitched the idea for the film to the irascible Charlie Bluhdorn at Paramount, boasting that he could get Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgu, Michael Redgrave, Vanessa Redgrave, Kenneth More, etc, etc. Bluhdorn, ever the showman, promised the money for the film so long as Dickie could get just five of those names. He could, and many more too.

At the head of all-star roll call is John Mills (who first instigated the project with Len Deighton), unusually steely and reserved as Field Marshal Haig, but also capable of a jig or two and a reasonable singing voice for the title number. Not far behind him comes Sir Laurence Olivier, briefly seen but memorably pompous as Sir John French - Haig's predecessor. Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson complete the triumvirate of the Acting Knights, and Jack Hawkins has a wordless (cruelly rendered so by throat cancer) but moving cameo as Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, who in effect signs the declaration of war which sets into motion the biggest human disaster of the 20th century.

These guest appearances by the glitterati of British Theatre are perhaps distracting, and diminish a little from the central story of the Smith family going to war, but otherwise Attenborough has a firm grip on contrasting the high luxury and pomposity of the officers, with the degradation and camaraderie of the men in the trenches.

For whatever reason, the entire film was shot, and set, around Brighton, with the old West Pier (nowadays sadly crumbling into the sea since Christmas 2000) as the main focus of the action. Rather akin to Olivier's Henry V(qv), the setting gradually switches to a more grimly realistic setting as the conflict deepens, whilst the officers remain aloof back on Brighton Pier. This juxtaposition is a little odd for me, after a while, when it would be better leaving the pier and focusing totally on the "real" setting.

The satire works at its best during numbers like "They Were Only Playing Leapfrog", sung by several caustic ANZAC soldiers whilst Haig and company hop and skip over each other, as well as the early recruitment songs inside the theatre on Brighton's East Pier with Maggie Smith (and a young Jane Seymour in the chorus) enticing young men onto the stage to go into the Front Line, and especially the incredible closing shot of the film with a whole meadow full (literally) of crosses.

The songs in this musical, it should be noted, are all completely from the period in which it is set, including the title number. This gives it an extra sense of authenticity but also poignancy; we often think nowadays how futile the First World War was, and how different attitudes toward it were in those days, but these very same anti-war sentiments were felt at the time, as the songs testify.

This nostalgia was borne out when I visited my grandmother in London on the weekend of Remembrance Sunday in 1988. At her Dalston flat the TV was showing OWALW which I watched with curiosity, and though I didn't expect Nan to enjoy this sort of satirical film, she was nonetheless moved and engaged by the atmosphere of the time conjured by the songs.

More recently, at the Cambridge Arts Cinema (who nervously but perhaps quite appositely showed the film a month after September 11th) where I first saw OWALW in its proper big screen setting, the projectionist didn't realise that there were no end credits, and the film ran right out to reveal a blank white screen.

I defy anyone not to be moved, or "blown away" as they say, by the closing scene of the film. It is a vivid lasting memory of the First World War, which gets the point across with total clarity.

Superman (1978)

70 years ago this month saw the creation of a comic book character by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, that has gone through various permutations since, having to deal first with the Depression and the Second World War and then the Cold War and the nuclear threat, until 40 years later, after many radio, television and film (serial) adaptations, it got its big screen treatment courtesy of the Salkind family and effervescent director Richard Donner, with surely the definitive performance in the title role by Christopher Reeve.

Reeve's brilliant fleshing out of the character is the best thing about Superman: The Movie (as it was known at the time for trademark purposes), but there are plenty of other elements that make this a pleasing - if over-inflated – all-round entertainment package, which proved to be another big hit with 1970's audiences.

The tone of the film also had the ideal mixture of comic book heroism and big screen spectacle, a style which was only eclipsed 10 years later by Tim Burton's Batman, which made comic book movies much darker.

My own memories are of it being the only actual film from the 70s where I had to queue round the block outside the Odeon Aylesbury to get in – a true "blockbuster" then, in every sense of the word. At the time the only other film of this kind I had seen was Star Wars(qv), for which there were certain similarities: outer space setting, with the sole survivor of a destroyed planet, similar to Princess Leia and Alderaan – and indeed Margot Kidder's Lois Lane is just as feisty and plucky as Leia Organa.

Though seeming very similar in style to George Lucas's space fantasy, Superman was at least five times more expensive than Star Wars, but not quite as well made. It was, as described by Les Keyser, "the epitome of Supersell", and rather harshly by Leslie Halliwell as "long, lugubrious and only patchily entertaining…with too many irrelevant preliminaries and a misguided sense of its own importance." It's certainly quite a long haul for a film of this kind, and yes, the opening scenes do seem to hang around for a while before we finally get to the main action – but in a way, I love how the Krypton and Smallville prologues give you a flavour of the background of the story, with some useful character insights into the whole upbringing of Kal-El, aka. Clark Kent, aka. Superman.

I well remember watching the start of the film, in the cosy main screen at Aylesbury, watching the similarly cosy image of a black-and-white 1930's Daily Planet building with nostalgic revolving sign on a globe, then zooming upwards into space, where out rush giant blue credits - again, very Star Warsy.

The first actor's name we see on those flying blue credit titles however, is not that of Christopher Reeve, but of the two "star" names in the film, Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman - their contracts presumably stipulated they were billed that way.

Brando in fact has the main role for only the first 20 minutes of the film, but plays the role of Superman's father Jor-El (also with an "S" on his Kryptonian robes) with urbanity, clarity and Obi-Wan Kenobi-style authority. At the time I had no idea that he was a "Method" actor who tended to mumble and was very difficult to work with, nor that he had been paid an astronomical amount of money for just two weeks work; as far as I was concerned, he was the right man for this part, and played it well enough. It also has to be said that he had the ideal actors' director in Richard Donner.

Donner also coaxed an effective performance out of the other "above the title" star Gene Hackman, who by comparison with Brando at least gives partial value for money as Lex Luthor, cleverly combining devilish comedic charm with cold, clinical evil when it matters.

But that, ladies and gentlemen, is over an hour into the film. Before all this comes the spectre of the giant red Krypton sun onto the screen, and the mighty but vulnerable planet just below it, not long before its impending apocalypse, as predicted by Jor-El. He first of all however has to dispatch three revolutionary Krypton criminals (Terence Stamp, Sarah Douglas and Jack O'Halloran) into "The Phantom Zone", in quite a lively opening, followed by some slightly pompous scenes with the High Council, who are nearly all played by British actors (good ones too: Trevor Howard, Harry Andrews, etc.) who pay little attention to Jor-El's warnings.

All too late, the plaster-filled sets built at Pinewood (this in the days before CGI) begin to fall apart, and like Alderaan, the planet Krypton explodes, but not before Jor-El and his wife Lara (Susannah York) have safely sent off their only child, little Kal-El, into a Christmas Tree Star-shaped spaceship (intended as a prototype Krypton Arc) which scurries through "the 28 known galaxies", towards Earth.

Looking back to the 70s - in horror upon horrors, my old activity exercise book! – I could tell that the crash landing on Earth had a vivid impression on my memory, as also did the later rescue of Lois Lane from the top of the Daily Planet building.

Like the little spaceship, the film transports itself into another world; not the stylistic, oblique look of Krypton anymore, but a much more homely, believable environment in Smallville, with two excellent cameos by Phyllis Thaxter and Glenn Ford, who brings a great deal of world-weary integrity and fatherly dignity (more so than Brando) as Jonathan Kent, Kal-El's adoptive father - but for me much more of an Uncle Owen-type figure (another Star Wars connection.)

The evocative and beautifully shot Smallville scenes seem to be longer than they actually are, as though several Clark Kent "growing up" scenes had been cut, but this is not the case, it just feels that way. What there is however, is another good cameo by Jeff East as the young Clark Kent, who bears a useful facial similarity to Christopher Reeve (whose voice it is on the soundtrack.)

When the mood changes again, and Kal-El/Clark realises the call of duty (in the shape of a glowing Kryptonian crystal) by leaving Smallville and heading for the North Pole (more wonders worked by the boys at Pinewood), there is the brief return of Brando, introducing Jor-El to El Junior, explaining the job his son has to do on Earth. We get an ever so brief flutter of Superman's cape (45 minutes into the film), and then finally, in comes the third "world" of Superman The Movie: the Howard Hawks-style banter of The Daily Planet newsroom, in the great city of Metropolis (aka. New York, in all but name.)

Some of the dialogue for these scenes is really snappy and to-the-point, perhaps some of the best ever written for a fantasy film. There were a total of six credited writers during the lengthy pre-production (starting with The Godfather author Mario Puzo, whose heavy father-and-son synopsis was camped-up by Leslie and David Newman and Robert Benton), but apparently the best of the one-liners come from the pen of "Creative Consultant" Tom Mankiewicz (son of Joseph Mankiewicz), brought in by Donner late into production to give the film back some of its lost credibility.

If the witty (final draft) script of Superman tends to be overlooked, then so too is the wonderful cinematography of the late, great Geoffrey Unsworth (to whom the film is dedicated), whose distinctive texture to each of the respective worlds make the film every bit as bright, exciting and magical as it looks on the spin-off bubble gum cards.

All these different elements in the film are held together wondrously by John Williams's iconic score - another strong Star Wars connection - as well as production designer John
Barry. Barry's designs for Krypton and Fortress of Solitude are quite distinctive and recognisable, but his hideaway for Lex Luthor is a something else indeed: patterned on an
old subway station (the giant bookcase looks like it's always been there), as though the two designs were for completely different films.

Another forgotten aspect of the secret of Superman's success, is Reeve's brilliantly subtle and comedic portrayal of the adult Clark Kent, borrowing elements of Cary Grant comedies in the 30s and 40s (when he was also bespectacled), and creating a genuine character that is quite different in tone from Superman. Like with many portrayals of Jekyll & Hyde over the years, various actors have successfully put across the aggressive, dramatic side of the character, but fared less well with the gentler other half. Reeve is the only actor to have successfully nailed both.

It is more or less at the half-way point when SUPERMAN as we know him finally swings into action, rescuing the perilous Miss Lane from the top of the Daily Planet, and then foiling various petty crimes around Metropolis, with consummate charm and wit. I remember well Christopher Reeve's first "excuse me" line to a jive man, which got a big laugh in the audience.

It is Clark Kent however, who first hears Lex Luthor's sonic calling card (another brilliant touch by Donner) whilst being given a dressing down by his unsuspecting editor Perry White (Jackie Cooper), paving the way for the big confrontation between the two arch enemies, two thirds of the way into the film.

Whilst Lex distracts Superman with his grandiose plans for world domination (to wipe out most of California in order to create his own real estate), these very same plans are actually being carried out. Superman learns of the plot, but Luthor has the measure of him, allowing Superman to deduce that the missile detonator is hidden in a lead covered box (that he can't see through), but revealing instead a chunk of deadly Kryptonite! (Another brilliant reprise of the Krypton theme by John Williams.)

"Mind over muscle?", Luthor teases, and like all master criminals in the movies, he complacently explains all his plans to the hero and then leaves him to die in the pool.

So - gasp! - is this the end of Superman, in his first feature film? For a time, it looks like the answer's going to be Yes, but Luthor has reckoned without his voluptuous mistress Eve Teschmacher (Valerie Perrine), whose mother lives in the town (oh brother, what a cop out!) where one of the nuclear missiles will fall. Quickly, she dives into the pool, gives Superman a quick kiss - for fear that he won't let her later - and throws the offending piece of Kryptonite off his neck. If this seems like a heroic touch from a nice girl after all, it should also be noted that she has also calmly and clinically set the codes for the missile which will destroy California.

The resultant earthquake which follows demonstrates where a lot of the budget was spent, including some great miniature work by Derek Meddings, with a very realistic depiction of the Golden Gate bridge coming apart and threatening a school bus.

Superman saves the kids, and a few thousand others, including Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure) when the Hoover Dam bursts, but unfortunately is too late to save Lois, who sinks with her car into a crevice created by the earthquake (scenes that upped the certificate from "U" to "A" in Britain) and dies.

Reeve is very effective here in bringing out Superman's lonely despair, and decides to break his father's ultimate taboo of "interfering with human history". The twist of turning the Earth back to save Lois's life is contrived, but it does at least bring the story full circle, with both Jor-El and Jonathan Kent being a prime influence on Superman's decision - albeit two hours after those characters were last seen.

So from here the film winds down to a relatively gentle conclusion, with the evil Luthor now all too gullible to Superman's invincibility, and is dispatched off to maximum security jail - and to my shock, I discover his character is bald! (Remember, this was my first experience of the Superman legend.) The closing credits begin to roll - all seven minutes of them, something which I didn't know at the time, because I was already out of the cinema by then.

Other excesses, such as a "musical" number Can You Read My Mind? - which presumably on the grounds of Margot Kidder's vocal talents, is spoken rather than sung - are a little more noticeable, as also are unnecessary comedy scenes with Luthor's buffoonish sidekicks: his stereotypical henchman Otis (Ned Beatty) is described in publicity as "bumbling but scientifically brilliant". There's little evidence of that in the film, beyond a macabre little moment when he strolls calmly underneath Central Station, avoiding a trailing cop who is killed by a passing train.

All of these trifles meant little to me at the time however: it was just a darn good fantasy film, if only slightly longer than Star Wars, I felt.

Of the subsequent sequels that followed, only SUPERMAN II is worth any real mention, with the three Krypton villains glimpsed at the beginning of Superman The Movie coming back to wreak vengeance and rule the Earth, whilst Clark Kent (or does he look more like Clark Reeve?) is once again distracted, this time by his love for Lois Lane. Terence Stamp enjoys himself as General Zod, and this first sequel is the only one to properly take the Superman legend by the scruff of the neck and give it a good rollicking rollercoaster ride - and indeed, most of it was shot at the same time as Part I, by Richard Donner, with namesake Richard Lester ably filling in some of the remaining scenes, the way the Salkinds preferred it.

Whatever happened to Richard Donner? His previous experience on TV episodes of The Twilight Zone as well as The Omen demonstrated a director with a fine flair for bringing out the supernatural and making it seem convincing within a "real" setting. I have the feeling the maybe the experience of being sacked from Superman II knocked some of the creative stuffing out of him, and he has since settled upon relatively lightware fare such as the Lethal Weapon films. A recent DVD release of the "Richard Donner Cut" of Superman II has helpfully recovered some of the lost material for all to see.

Come to that, whatever became of Christopher Reeve? Well, as is well known, a riding accident suffered in 1994 paralysed him from the neck down, and so his true test of superstrength came with his efforts to fight the condition, and help promote stem sell research in finding an eventual cure.

It could be said that his career suffered the so-called "Curse of Superman" which also befell his namesake, George Reeves (suicide - allegedly by thinking he could fly), and others connected with the legend - Margot Kidder for one.

I prefer to think however that this career-defining role was a hard act to follow, and though none of his subsequent films are particularly bad to sit through (and certainly not Reeve's fault if they are) they can't possibly hold up a candle to Superman. In each of his other films, you're often expecting him to fly into action and overcome his character's problems in superhuman ways.

It is testimony to the impact of his performance, that when Bryan Singer remade a quasi-sequel in 2006, SUPERMAN RETURNS, many of the elements were borrowed from Richard Donner's film - with Brandon Routh in the title role carrying strong elements of impersonation of (or should I more charitably say, homage to) Christopher Reeve.

And there's one abiding lesson for all the ladies: there may not be any men in the world who can fly faster than a speeding bullet, but there are certainly many, many thousands of potential Clark Kents.

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965)

Or: How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes, to give its full title - part of the 60s vogue in British cinema for eccentric, long-winded film titles that emphasised the playfulness of the whole enterprise. Those Magnificent Men... (which I will abbreviate thus for simplicity's sake) is a comedy first and foremost, but it's also a good adventure yarn with a romantic triangle sub-plot, and some breathtaking scenery when the vintage planes are in the air. It's also for me, one of those fun family films that I used to enjoy watching on television when I was younger, with a host of familiar faces, and a great, jolly score by Ron Goodwin.

It captures the excitement of air travel (the Space Age of its time) combined with the humour of those daring would-be aviators all over the world who tried and usually failed to reach the skies.

The film opens in this vogue, with the Twentieth Century Fox fanfare played as if by a small tinny band in an old Edwardian theatre, and the first face we see is that of "Neanderthal Man" Red Skelton, looking up at a seagull flying in the sky, and thinking of emulating the feat. But flying, as narrator James Robertson Justice points out, "was strictly for the birds." Falling flat on his face, this does not prevent the amusing Mr Skelton from trying the feat many other times in the generations to come, leading up to 1910, the period setting of the story. Playing around with history, several actual attempts at flying machines are topped by one such creation of Emilio Ponticelli (Alberto Sordi), who makes "what many people claim was the first long distance flight" - of about 100 yards, before coming down to land with a bump - as he will a few more times in this movie.

Mr Justice declares that "Man had conquered the air, and people everywhere were all agog about, those magnificent men in their flying machines", which segues in Ronald Searle's amusing title sequence (animated by Ralph Ayres). The film gets underway at last when Lt. Richard Mays (James Fox) of the Coldstream Guards - a future Biggles in the making - touches his plane down. His fiancee, the rebellious but delectable Patricia Rawnsley (Sarah Miles), is desperate for Richard to take her up into the skies. If their on-screen chemistry seems rather good, that could be due to the fact that off-screen James Fox and Sarah Miles were lovers at the time, and here co-starring together in a much more light-hearted film that their previous teaming, The Servant with Dirk Bogarde.

Patricia's stuffy father however, Lord Rawnsley (Robert Morley), forbids such ideas of his daughter flying, but is much more enthusiastic to Richard's idea of organising an air race between London and Paris, intending to show "that Britain not only rules the waves, but intends in future, to rule the skies!"

His bewildered liaison officer Gascoyne (Willie Rushton) is given the task of informing the rest of the world's aviators about the race, and the glittering £10,000 prize (in various other currencies), and a pretty rogue bunch they are too: the womanising Pierre Dubois (Jean-Pierre Cassel) who can't take his eyes off Irina Demich - as "Brigitte", "Ingrid", "Marlene", "Francois", "Yvette" and "Betty"(!) If the French seem eccentric, this is nothing compared to the batty, buffoonish Germans, led by Gert Frobe, who believe everything is possible with a book of instructions to slavishly follow.

Late into the international affair, as ever, come the Americans, as represented by Stuart Whitman as Orvil Newton, and his associate George (Sam Wanamaker), who just doesn't share Orvil's passion for flying: it isn't the going up that discourages him, but the different ways Orvil keeps finding of coming down!

The aforementioned Emilio Ponticelli is having similar problems landing, and vows to his children and long-suffering wife Sophia (Zena Marshall - a stunning take-off of Sophia Loren), that he will retire from flying - until he sees the irresistible offer of the big prize air race, and "like-a Caesar, we go to England!"Lastly, we have the Japanese pilot Yamamoto (Yujiro Ishihara), who responds to the task given him by his lord and master, with the astonished statement, in a beautifully polished English accent (dubbed by James Villiers): "ten thousand pounds!"

However, last and by no means intending to be least, comes the rascally Sir Percy Ware-Armitage(!), played gloriously by Terry-Thomas, and the undoubted inspiration of the cartoon character Dick Dastardly. "That bounder" Sir Percy is not only going to join the race but is going to win it, by whatever underhand means he can, with the unwilling help of his seedy, henpecked valet Courtney (Eric Sykes). Their scenes together are the best of the film - the ground-based ones - but there are many other amusing set pieces too, not least the Keystone Cops-style firemen, led by Benny Hill - one of a number of famous 60's TV stars who pop up in cameo roles. Others include Millicent Martin, John Le Mesurier, the aforementioned Willie Rushton, and the king of all the sitcoms at the time, Tony Hancock.

The scene where the firemen are being chased all round the airfield by the poor German pilot (Karl Michael Vogler) who can't get his plane to stop, always had me in stitches, especially when his own German troopers have to scurry away when the plane comes towards them. In to save the day however, comes the buccaneering Orvil Newton, who has quickly won over the lovely Patricia - who sees a chance in being taken up into the skies that her fiancee denied her. The love triangle that develops therefore, between Orvil, Patricia and Richard, reminded me in some ways of the similar Han Solo/Princess Leia/Luke Skywalker love triangle in Star Wars.

Orvil gets into hot water as a result, after a narrow escape when he succumbs to Patricia's pleadings and takes her up for a joyride. The stuffy Lord Rawnsley is enraged at first, but Patricia persuades him otherwise, and off Orvil goes with all the others, on the perilous quest to fly from London across the Channel to Paris.

Before that however, those two old rivals France and Germany want to settle a few scores. The Germans demand satisfaction for being made to look like fools (as if they weren't already!), but the impish French suggest "balloons and blunderbusses" as the choice of weapons! The resulting airborne duel ends with both of them landing in the sewage, as well as poor old Emilio again. The treatment of the various nationalities in the film is of course, amusingly stereotypical - particularly of the Germans - in an old-fashioned, It's a Knockout kind of way, but it has to be taken within the context of the film as a bit of fun, for all its xenophobia.

The race begins at last, with the shock early exit of the Japanese - thanks to the handiwork of that naughty butler Courtney, and the rascally Sir Percy, who also removes one of Orvil's wheels, but the "Yankee chap" still manages to land at Dover (the first set-off point) OK, and patches the damage up overnight in time for the next stage of the race, across the Channel.

The fiendish Sir Percy however, is at it again, ahead of everyone else by crossing the Channel at night - not by plane, but [boo, hiss!] by boat, smuggling his flying machine across the seas. His inevitable comeuppance however, comes along courtesy of the good old steam train - which looks peculiarly English for a French railway line, and there's also a beautiful continuity gaffe, when a 1960s cooling tower is clearly visible in back projection behind Terry-Thomas! In spite of all his skulduggery, you can't help feeling sorry for Sir Percy when he looks back and sees his flying machine torn to shreds travelling through a tunnel, and he amusingly cries "Blast!!!"

At the climax of the race in Paris, a tense moment suddenly occurs as Emilio, in the lead up till now, once again has the misfortune to have his motor explode, and it's down to the dashing Orvil Newton once again to save the day, at the cost of winning the race, which is won by Richard Mays - in 25 hours 11 minutes. All ends well however, as the two agree to share the prize money - but will they share Patricia as well?

On that intriguing note, the story ends and the film flashes forward 50 years later, to the sight of supersonic jets covering the same distance in 7 minutes. However, back at Heathrow airport, fog has held up all flights to Paris, and one annoyed passenger - hey, it's Red Skelton! - flaps his arms in anger, as if he's flying. But, hang on a minute, perhaps he's onto something here....and so the film ends as it began.

As I mentioned at the beginning, Those Magnificent Men... was one of those fun films that was always a family favourite on TV. Officially it's a comedy, but a breathtaking one, allowing for some moments of serious drama, and of course the wonderful spectacle of all those vintage planes, which set it apart from other comedies of its kind - including a sequel, of sorts, THOSE DARING YOUNG MEN IN THEIR JAUNTY JALOPIES (aka. MONTE CARLO OR BUST).

I've yet to see Those Magnificent Men in the cinema, but I'm sure it's just as much fun as on TV, and more, especially in glorious Todd-AO widescreen which makes the airborne sequences all the more breathtaking, set to the tune of that catchy score. Altogether now:

"Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines,
They go up-tiddly-up-up, they go down-tiddly-oun-down.
They enchant all the ladies and steal all the scenes,
with their up-tiddly-up-up, and their down-tiddly-oun-down.
Up, down, flying around,
looping the loop and defying the ground,
they're, all, frighteningly keen,
those magnificent men, those magnificent men,
those Magnificent Men in Their Fly-ing Machines!"

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

First, a confession - which may come as a shock to the faithful, but I'll dodge the poisoned darts, evade the deadly spears, scurry away from the giant boulder, and press on just the same - I'm not a tremendous devotee of Indiana Jones. Back in 1981, my interests had largely turned away from cinema and towards sport (see The Empire Strikes Back blog), so the release of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK that year largely passed me by. When I saw the film on video some years later, I found it to be reasonably entertaining and action-packed, but also with some shocking holes in the plot and a very nasty climax.

Historically it's also a little dubious, based on the real-life efforts by Hitler's scientists - not to rule the Earth - but to find evidence of divine Aryan ancestry from the earliest dawn of time. But what the heck, it was a cheeky enough way to have a daredevil American archaeologist fighting the Nazis, five years before the Yanks properly got round to it in World War II.

Comparisons with the Star Wars saga were perhaps inevitable - as many of the same crew were also involved with Raiders - but where Star Wars is a plot driven spectacle in a galaxy far, far away, Indiana Jones is largely, I feel, an action-driven series, where the story usually serves as the means of putting the hero (and the audience) through various breathtaking adventures.

INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM came along three years later, and this was even more unpleasant than Raiders, with delicacies including monkey brains for dessert, and a screaming dumb blonde heroine (who later became Mrs. Steven Spielberg).

However, come 1989, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas realised they had overdone things a bit with Temple of Doom, and decided to come back on track with the old formula of Indy fighting Nazis. Having searched for no less than the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders, this time the only thing left higher to search for was - what else? - the Holy Grail. And this time, as the publicity said, the man in the hat was bringing his Dad.

And here was Spielberg's masterstroke. As the series had been conceived by George Lucas as an American answer to James Bond, Spielberg's feeling was that the natural cinematic father of 45-year old Harrison Ford, should be the 58-year old Sean Connery.

Not many people would have thought of it straight away, but Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a delight from the moment these two first appear on screen together. Connery's enthusiastic, wholehearted and slightly self-mocking performance enlivens the proceedings immeasurably, and also gives his co-star some meaty acting competition, bringing out the Harrison Ford that I remembered from the Star Wars films. The two of them were also a commendable father and son duo, who managed to defy the narrow age difference between them with great aplomb.

What precedes their pairing, is admittedly almost a carbon copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark (with even the opening school lecture scene re-staged), with the exception of an exhilarating prologue featuring River Phoenix as the young Indy, on his first scouting adventure. Phoenix was a suggestion of Harrison Ford's, having played his son in The Mosquito Coast with uncanny similarity. His tragic early death of a drug overdose deprived the world of a young star whose afterglow has since been of great help for the likes of Brad Pitt and Leonardo di Caprio. It also led on to a spin-off Young Indiana Jones TV series with Sean Patrick Flannery.

But I digress. Back to The Last Crusade, which begins in earnest when the seemingly benevolent New York millionaire Walter Donovan (Julian Glover) invites Dr. Jones to his swanky apartment to examine an ancient tombstone giving the (partial) details of the location of the supposed resting place of the Holy Grail itself. You just know however that Donovan will turn out to be a rat, because he's being played by an English actor in an American film.

Indy tells Donovan that he's picked the wrong Jones for the task, as the Grail is more the domain of his father, Henry Jones. The trouble is, Donovan has already hired Jones Senior, who has since gone missing, at the hands of - whaddya know - the Nazis. Indy therefore follows the trail which leads to Venice, then onto Germany, and ultimately the Holy Land itself.

Not only is Indy bringing his Dad, but also his old friend Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) into the film, confined to just an "M"-type figure at the beginning and end of Raiders, but here fully integrated into the action, and with the amusing extra touch of being like a fish out of water once out of his natural museum environment. Brody arrives in the Holy Land, knowing (according to Indy) "a dozen different languages. He'll blend in, disappear, you'll never see him again. With any luck, he's got the Grail already."

Cut to Brody walking through the street market, wondering if anyone speaks English! Luckily another old friend, Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) is on hand to help.

Once in Venice, Jones is introduced to his father's assistant, Dr. Schneider, who is, hey presto, a beautiful blonde played by Alison Doody. After a close run-in with Turkish guardians of the Grail in the sewers of Venice, Jones Junior is eventually re-united with Jones Senior, who promptly breaks a rare Ming Dynasty vase over his son's head - assuming him to be a Nazi. But there's no harm done - the vase was a fake! And we're off and running.

The obligatory female interest turns out to be a femme fatale Nazi (well, she was Austrian after all), for this is really a father and son's adventure, and Connery gleefully enjoys sitting in the side-car of his son's motorbike, stealing glances - and scenes - quietly dismissing every moment of derring-do that Indy perpetrates. Ford to his credit, relishes the opportunity to react to such put-downs, and the two make a great pair.


One touching little moment later on in the film, which exemplifies not only their relationship, but many father and son relationships in general, is when Indy is fighting on board a German tank that is just about to fall over the edge of a cliff, and seems to go down with it. Henry and the others stop for a moment in mournful reflection, until they realise Indy is standing among them looking down at the wreck. Henry joyfully embraces his son as they display a moment of emotional bonding, then just as quickly Henry lets go of Indy and encourages him to keep moving, " why are you resting when we're so near the end!"

The ending itself, with an ageing Medieval knight who is the last custodian of the Grail (straight out of the English theatre seemingly) is a little ponderous, although the shock of seeing Henry shot cold-bloodedly in the chest by the scheming Donovan is a startling moment. Donovan inevitably gets his come-uppance (in the film's one moment of genuine nastiness) after the misguided Dr Schneider has selected the wrong cup of eternal life (which gives the opposite effect) for him. The last remnant of Donovan's shrivelled body is his swastika badge. Once a Nazi, always a Nazi it seems. Well, you can just shoot Sean Connery in the chest like that and get away with it, can you?

Elsa Schneider fares little better, hungry for the Grail in spite of the fact that it cannot be taken beyond its resting place, and she tumbles (to her death?) down a mountainous chasm. Indy has similar desires for the Grail soon afterwards, but after a little paternal wisdom from Henry, he decides to let it go.

At the end, the remaining four intrepid heroes ride off from the temple entrance (in reality the ancient city of Petra) away into the sunset. It seemed a suitable conclusion to a series that had neatly come to a full stop at the end of this fun third episode. After all, once both Henry Jones Senior and Henry Jones Junior (for that is Indy's real name!) have tasted the Cup of Life, what else is there left to conquer, now that they're both immortal?

The recent INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL however, has given the series fresh impetus, with an all-star supporting cast including Cate Blanchett, John Hurt, Ray Winstone, and the welcome return of Karen Allen (from Raiders) - but crucially missing the comedic touchstone that was Sean Connery.

I first saw Last Crusade in the cinema that summer of 1989, during those wistful days when Lucasfilm fans were waiting (seemingly endlessly) for the next Star Wars film. In the absence of Episodes 1, 2 and 3 however, we had to make do with this climactic [we thought] conclusion to the adventures of Indiana Jones, and a pretty rousing one it was too. It was also, rather poignantly, the last blockbuster to be shot exclusively at Elstree Studios.

I've since seen the film several times - more than any other in the Indy series - and it's still just as much fun to watch as it was the first time, whenever Ford and Connery are on screen together.