The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

As one generation of blockbuster follows another, this film seems to get better and better with age.

It's ironic to think of the city of Baghdad in the context of more recent troubles, when this glorious film is very much by contrast the stuff of dream-like adventure. Equally ironic is that although the height of fantasy, it was made during the darkest days of World War II, with Alexander Korda's beloved Denham Studios too unsafe for filming, so production was switched to Hollywood, and some very American rocky mountains.

Apparently it was also an utter mess of an undertaking, but a spendid mixture of the exotic, the fantastic, and the humorous production. It's fascinating to delve through and wonder which of the various directors helmed which (Tim Whelan, Ludwig Berger, even Michael Powell, and others), when ultimately the presiding genius over it was Korda.

His scheme was to adapt the epic romantic sweep of the Arabian Knights utilising his two most popular stars of the time: Sabu and Conrad Veidt. Sabu was the star of Elephant Boy and also the original Mowgli The Jungle Book, and whose popularity was rocketing skywards, for which Abu the thief became his lasting legacy, whilst Conrad Veidt had a loyal female following as the mysterious, velvet-voiced romantic hero/villain of The Spy in Black - so The Thief of Bagdad was very much designed as a way of drawing in these two audiences together into the box office.

Abu enters the enclave of the All-Seeing Eye. Arachnophobes beware...

Indeed, the film unfolds very much like two separate narratives revolving around these two figures, with Sabu's impish, adventure-seeking thief who'd probably steal from his mother if he could (and maybe he had!) but has a heart of gold which will fulfill a prophecy, and the terrifyingly magnetic Veidt trying to woo the beautiful June Duprez (as a nameless but quintessential princess) under the nose of her eccentrically oblivious father (Miles Malleson) who is much more besotted with his toy collection - and in particular Jaffar's magical flying horse.

In these days when villains have to be "justified" or given "realistic" terrorist-like motivations, there's just no need to explain Jaffar's villainy; he just is, but with a compelling undertone of devotion that prevents him from hypnotizing the princess into loving him.

Whilst the winsome romantic leads (Duprez and John Justin) are very much idealised heroes who are made for each other, it is Abu and Jaffar who have much more fun and relish - as also does Rex Ingram in one of the great film-stealing cameos. It's no surprise to learn that Ingram's characterisation of the Genie was the inspiration for the same character in Aladdin as voiced by Robin Williams.

It's a film since cherished by the likes of Scorsese, Coppola, Lucas, and many others. Indeed, one can see in Star Wars all the the elements of heroism that can be traced back to the Thief of Bagdad: the mysticism, the evil wizard, the wizened sage, the beautiful princess, the roguish smuggler hero, and perhaps most significantly, the magical special effects, which by today's CGI standards might seem primitive, but come with that key secret ingredient: enchantment.

Once Upon a Time in the West (1969)

A few years ago when a group of us were putting together ideas for an experimental film, we discussed ways to convey unusual visual metaphors in the camera, and a couple of us mentioned how we'd recently seen Once Upon a Time in the West on TV, and remembered in particular a recurring scene of a blurred figure on the horizon, constantly walking in the distance towards the camera. It is one of many indelible images that Sergio Leone would use in his films, and Once Upon a Time in the West is one of his finest, quirkiest, most haunting of epics.

Leone had of course, become famous for his "Spaghetti" Westerns, a new resurgence in the genre with Clint Eastwood immortally linked to the series, but otherwise mostly Italian actors pretending to be American (and seemingly deliberately badly dubbed), and filmed in the Spanish desert pretending to be the Wild West. They made a killing at the box office, in more ways than one. For some it was a cynical, violent reproach to the good old days of the Hollywood Western, but whether or not you liked the method of film making, they had an undeniably rich stylization about them, coupled with Ennio Morricone's lyrical music.

Both Leone and Morricone pulled out all the stops for this one.

Once Upon a Time in the West was also an opportunity for Leone to actually explore these American locations for real - production difficulties only allowed him to film in certain iconic locations such as Monument Valley (used for many a John Ford epic), but in a very unusual, distinctively Leonesque style.

Just take the beginning, where for a whole TEN minutes we have the credits lazily dragging themselves in, whilst three gunmen (Jack Elam, Woody Strode and Al Mulock) sit around at the railroad station......waiting - for someone (Charles Bronson) who isn't going to get a pleasant reception. Legend has it that Leone wanted his three original stars of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach - to play the three assassins, who are thereby killed off within the first reel.

Soon after that, the body count doesn't get any lower, as an Irish family are unexpectedly and ruthlessly wiped out by an anonymous gang of killers, headed by: Henry Fonda, of all people - another of Leone's quirky and darkly cynical touches, turning the Western convention on its head by having Fonda, so often the image of upstanding, dependable American values, to be the ruthless psychopathic killer. It's casting which sits uncomfortably with his other roles, although in a sense it has a perfect logic: Fonda was so often the defender of men, women and children, so naturally he also becomes their exterminator, like the fallen angel: as one critic of the time put it, who else could do such a dreadful deed but Henry Fonda?

A moment of lost maternal comfort for Jill McBain.

It's hard to tell who exactly is the leading character in OUATITW: maybe each of the four main characters (five if we include Gabriele Ferzetti's railway tycoon) cover the various aspects of the West: the frontiersman's wife/widow Jill McBain (in the very Italian shape of Claudia Cardinale), or Fonda's evil gunman Frank, or Jason Robards in fine Doc Holliday-like form as Cheyenne, or Bronson's "man with no name", usually considered the lead role but here bizarrely given fourth billing.

Watching it nowadays, it seems quite acceptable to see Charles (Death Wish) Bronson in a film where loads of people are getting killed, but back in 1969 it was an unexpectedly startling moment - and the flashback scene where the mysterious man on the horizon is finally revealed - is one of the most memorable payoffs in cinema history.

Sergio Leone intended the film as a requiem to the Western of sorts, with the coming of the railroad signalling the beginning of the end of the old ways, and most of the characters are also experiencing the twilight of their active lives. Cheyenne is a grizzled gunfighter who's trod the fiery path many times, Bronson's character is a man with an old grudge, and Henry Fonda himself was already approaching middle age. It's poignant to think that those three actors - Fonda, Bronson, Robards - have all since, indeed, died; only Claudia Cardinale is the surviving member of the four principals.


The melancholy of the film is reflected by Ennio Morricone's beautiful score, with not just one but three main themes - the stirring and startling "Harmonica" theme which covers Henry Fonda's character quite well too, the rickety banjo of Cheyenne's theme, and the beautiful main theme to the McBain family and the railroad; a very operatic Italian perspective on the classic American Wild West. Long, violent, elegiac, and utterly absorbing.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

If Five Easy Pieces was a great evocation of the downside of the American Way, then this is the great affirmation of it.

The life mentioned in the title is actually pretty dark and cruel at times - I mention this by way of contrast in what is generally considered to be a sentimental classic and one of Frank Capra's most beloved of films, and also arguably James Stewart's greatest role.

The darkness wasn't just confined to the screen: in the hardened post-war years of the 1940s, the American Dream was also the birth of film noir with established classics like The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Killers, The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Asphalt Jungle, which represented much more the darker side of human nature, so that by comparison to all these, It's a Wonderful Life seemed a little sentimental and old-fashioned, in keeping with the "Capra-corn" values of the 1930s.

James Stewart however, had also come out of World War II as a decorated bomber pilot, and was ready for a return to acting with something a little edgier from his wholesome, regular guy image, and this seemed the perfect niche between the two. His George Bailey is one of life's would-be crusaders, an often selfless champion for other people's welfare, whilst himself always striving to see the world and enjoy all its richness and adventure - the perennial Luke Skywalker or Dorothy figure always yearning to leave the farm, but in his case never able to.

Not that George is unhappy; certainly not when he has the welcome arms of Donna Reed to fall into as his childhood sweetheart Mary, who becomes his wife and mother of their four children. He also has a thriving community in his home town of Bedford Falls, such as taxi driver Ernie (Frank Faylen) and his cop pal Bert (Ward Bond) - apparently the inspiration for the Bert & Ernie double act on Sesame Street. There's also the local vamp Violet (Gloria Grahame in sultry form), and two elderly gents who are a primal influence of George's life; his staunchly upstanding father Peter (a great cameo by Samuel Hinds) and ageing drugstore boss Mr. Gower (H.B. Warner - who by coincidence or otherwise played Jesus in King of Kings some 20 years before), who in a fit of grief nearly prescribes the wrong pills to a customer and is only prevented from committing manslaughter by George's quick thinking. The film also has its incidental charms, such as the prom dance which suddenly turns into a swimming bath, and a great ad lib moment when one of Bailey's customers (during the Wall Street crash) asks for a very small amount of money so that the Building & Loan can stay in business - Stewart gives the actress an impromptu smacker of a kiss.

If there is a weakness to the characters drawn by Capra for me, it is the need to create a physical villain of the piece, in the shape of Lionel Barrymore's Henry Potter: no fault of the actor himself, brilliantly played in Barrymore's distinctive style, just Capra's notion that all the meanness and cynicism of the world had to have a human face, when the real villain of IAWL is Fate itself.

All these disparate elements that weave through the film, and the whole generational span of George Bailey's life, come to their head when his Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) loses a fortune by accident, and George is the one to suffer. Driven to imminent bankruptcy and rapidly sinking into despair and misfortune, he feels his life has become one big waste, and desires to jump off the bridge into the river - until an eccentric old gent named Clarence (the splendid Henry Travers) who happens to be George's guardian angel, jumps in the river first because he knows George's selfless nature to help others.

It's sometimes said that the things we take most for granted are those that we miss so much when they're gone. That certainly applies to IAWL's sinister third act, where George's tempestuous wish that he had never been born is granted, and we see the town Bedford Falls would have/has become without him: a den of vice, misery and corruption - sadly, a slight reflection of the modern world today - now impertinently named Pottersville, with Violet now a prostitute, old man Gower a self-pitying drunkard, and George's brother Harry drowned as a child because George was previously there to pull him out of the lake. Strangest (and perhaps most unlikely) of the lot, lovely Mary is a bookish spinster.

In my view, with this far greater and more sophisticated nightmarish twist in the tale than Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the resultant elation of George when he wishes his life back again and rushes along the street wishing everyone Merry Christmas, is put into context. The finale where all the friends and relatives club together to raise funds to take him out of debt, is pure Capracorn, but beautifully mounted, and quite satisfying - when, once again, you understand the circumstances.

For many people It's a Wonderful Life was first experienced as a perennial favourite for American TV audiences every Christmas. My good fortune however was to see it for the first time in the cinema on a 1997 re-release. Coming out of the auditorium that afternoon left me with a special feeling of deep self-gratification, a sense that one's own achievements, no matter how small or insignificant, have value and enrich the world. And It's a Wonderful Life and an enriching film indeed!

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Oscar Wilde once said that people destroy the thing they most love; whether that maxim applies to Jack Nicholson's Bobby Dupee is debatable, but there's clearly some element of denial in his self-loathing, as he seeks to shirk away from responsibility of anything he might be attached to. Never at any point does he cease to remind us that he is not someone to sympathise with; his actions at numerous points during the film detract from those friends and relatives around him - yet he is compelling and moving in one of Nicholson's best roles, in perhaps his and also Bob Rafelson's finest hour and three quarters, an indictment of the attitudes and neuroses of a disaffected generation of Americans in the post-1960s.

It also has some great cinematic moments that crystallize modern life - particularly the "chicken sandwich" diner scene where Bobby irritably smooth talks the waitress into giving him the order he wants. I'm also impressed by his bowling skills - Jack Nicholson was apparently the star player in the Walt Disney Cartoon Department's bowling team!

At the beginning of the film, Bobby has some measure of disaffected contentment, working on an oilrig with his buddy Elton (Billy Green Bush). But deep down Bobby knows that this is really only a life that he lives at a casual arm's distance, after he rebelled against the life given him by his well-to-do but suffocating family. It's this clash of different worlds, between down-at-heel and affluent, that informs Five Easy Pieces. A perceptive moment in the film is when his cousin chides Bobby for playing at vaudeville musical revue: "You don't really call that music, do you?" "Yes, I do. It's music."

Other men might have taken a benevolent view of the life they have been given, but Bobby is casually resentful (and secretly snobbish) about his pregnant, simple-minded girlfriend Rayette - sympathetically played by Karen Black.

His two worlds come into conflict when he learns from his dysfunctional sister (Lois Smith) that their father has suffered a stroke and is dying. A chance for redemption or some sort of closure presents itself - but all Bobby gets out of the experience is the hots for his brother's gifted but haughty wife Catherine (Susan Anspach), who is attracted to Bobby for his talent but likewise repelled by him, which only turns Bobby further on the road to self-expurgation.

It's perhaps appropriate, given the film's emotional apathy, that Bobby should make his confession to his father as a one-way conversation, with no opportunity for this particularly stern and disciplinarian figure to make his own influence on Bobby's aimlessness. This was quite a difficult scene for Nicholson to perform (his own parentage was as an orphan), but movingly draws upon his own personal upbringing.

In confess I've often felt like Nicholson in the film's unforgettable non-finale, where he stands in front of a mirror and stares at himself forlornly, and though I wouldn't go as far at hitching a lift northwards as he does, the emotional despair is certainly just as prevalent.

Metropolis (1926)

This was a familiar image before I'd even heard of Fritz Lang: not from Metropolis as you will notice, but Ralph McQuarrie's concept design for the humanoid robot in Star Wars - though with an eerie sense of deja vu. The name Metropolis itself (from the Greek for "Mother-City") is also associated with being the main earthbound city of Superman, and is synonymous with futurism and the whole notion of modern 21st century city life. Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery.

Such is the influence of this epic, the godfather of science fiction cinema, which is in itself a good deal more thoughtful and philosophical about the society in which we live than most of its successors, with all the naive, uneven stretches and great visuals that any modern sci-fi classic has. Yet it was made 84 years ago, and still seems just as prevalent.

Fritz Lang was highly influenced in the city look of Metropolis after his first visit to New York.

Its original time (of making) was the crest of the Expressionist wave of German cinema, of which Fritz Lang was one of its greatest exponents, and there could be fewer greater expressions than this one - which perhaps goes some way towards explaining the contrasting acting styles on offer. From Alfred Abel's stiff and sombre Joh Fredersen - the uncrowned king of Metropolis - and his idealistic and almost ceaselessly energetic son Freder (Gustav Frohlich), to the mostly demented but also brooding inventor Rotwang, played by Rudolf (Dr. Mabuse) Klein-Rogge, and at the centre of all this, an impressively balletic and agile performance (in a restricting skirt and sweater) from Brigitte Helm as Maria, an impossibly virtuous prophet for the needy on the one hand, but on the other a voluptuously cloned robot who intends to destroy not only the real Maria's good work, but also the city of Metropolis itself. But then the acting always took second place to the dazzling overall visual style.

The early 20th century - not long into the Industrial Age - seems now the perfect time to have seen the direction in which modern society was going: this remember, was before computers were even mentioned as a possible future technology. Whoever it was, either Fritz Lang or author Thea Von Harbou who first thought the idea that machines would not serve man, but the other way round, they were on to something. It's probably the first film to portray the future as something to be feared, a blueprint by which so many futuristic films have since copied, that it's somehow impossible not to think of it any other way (the film is set in the year 2000, which was not quite so sleek or as foreboding as foretold - although we're catching up, if Blade Runner's depiction of an ethnic run-down Los Angeles is anything to go by.)

The creation of the robot Maria was a strong influence for Bride of Frankenstein

Paradoxically, it is at one of the oldest houses in the ancient city where the most modernistic invention is created. The metal robot - which is only seen for a few short minutes in the film but is nonetheless an iconic image - is fashioned by Rotwang as a Svengali-like creation intended to replace Fredersen's lost love Hel (who is eulogised in a huge memorial bust), and whom for some reason the mad Rotwang had some sort of emotional attachment. The comparatively saner Fredersen however is freaked out at the thought of a replica of his wife walking around, and instructs Rotwang instead to model the robot's human exterior on the saintly Maria, intending to incite the workers to revolt, so that they can be knocked back down to size.

There's a certain amount of symbiosis with the success of Frankenstein here: in both cases the story involves the creation of an artificial being, and also in both cases the phenomenon of the idea became greater than the original story itself; various newer, re-styled versions of Metropolis have shown up in the subsequent decades, each one of them a reflection of the modern times in which they were re-presented.

In 1984 most notably (the Orwellian significance of the year was appropriate), a severely shortened and tinted version was presented with background music by Giorgio Moroder, and seemed to speak more to the 1980's than future times or the time in which it was made. Various other truncated versions of the film have knocked around, with varying degrees of musical accompaniment. I even put together one myself, combining elements of Schubert's Ave Maria (obvious but effective) and Trevor Jones's score for the Metropolis-influenced sci-fi thriller Dark City(qv), which matches up very well with the images. Anyone who has an interest in background music in films should try doing a score for Metropolis, as the images are so easy and dramatic to set to music.

The actual original score (by Gottfreid Huppertz and Bernd Schultheis) is by way of contrast, much more a score of its time, in the grand silent movie orchestral tradition - and as such reminds one that Metropolis is really a contemporary statement on the class struggle, with the rich and affluent not exactly slave merchants to the machine workers, but certainly unaware of their toil. Lang's later fellow masterwork M covered the social problem in more complex fashion - again, on another still topical subject: child killers and our attitudes towards them.

The finale of Metropolis, for all its fantastic futurism, is little to do with special effects and everything to do with human melodrama, as Maria is abducted by Rotwang, and Freder pursues them to the top of the cathedral tower (a finale later used in Tim Burton's Batman) to the horror of his repentant father Joh. The eventual (supposed) reconciliation between workers and bosses, "the mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart" - a message rammed home incessantly from the beginning - has a very Communist feel to it. Curiously, one of Metropolis's biggest admirers at the time was the ultimate fascist, Adolf Hitler.

Metropolis is not only a great sci-fi film, but in its longer original 152 minute form, now mostly restored, one can also see the philosophical and political ideas that were at work. In either form, either as period piece or as heavily reworked futuristic fantasy, it is still a work that adapts to both times brilliantly. Perhaps not Lang's best film (and that's saying something), but certainly his most famous, and most lavish.




See also this excellent account on the new restored version.

Dead of Night (1945)

For Halloween, an English chiller par excellence is a suitable choice.

Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) is invited for the weekend to the country farmhouse of Eliot Foley (Roland Culver). But as he drives along to the farm, something odd disturbs Craig as he drives up and stops his car, something strangely familiar about the place, as if from a dream, which he finds himself gradually recollecting.



As he steps in, there's something oddly familiar about the other guests too: not only that, but they've also had their own dealings with the supernatural: racing driver Hugh Grainger (Anthony Baird) who has seen a creepy hearse driver (Miles Malleson) who turns up again on a bus that is about to crash. There's also Mrs Joan Courtland (Googie Withers) whose blissful married life is suddenly threatened by a sinister mirror which drives her husband (Ralph Michael) to murder. Even sceptics like Foley himself (who tells the one humorous segment of "Ealing comedy" involving Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne), young Sally O'Hara (Sally Ann Howes), and most notably, the pragmatic Dr. Van Straaten (Frederick Valk), all have their strange tales to tell.

Thus began, in its now well-trodden form, the multi-ghost story compendium, which seems to suit horror and in particular British horror very well, where few of them are particularly long (or have any need to be), so Dead of Night is the ideal transposition of these chilling tales, and though Ealing were rightly famous for their comedies, they could turn their hands to other genres with equal skill, as this compelling film very ably demonstrates. Indeed if anything, there is a vein of wry conversational humour to the linking sequences in the farmhouse that helps to emphasize the horror even more.

Van Straaten's tale is the most remembered of the lot, and also the most imitated; it's perhaps not so terrifying, indeed even comical nowadays, to see a ventroliquist's dummy take over its owner. However, Michael Redgrave's demented Maxwell Frere (with his dummy, "Hugo") is a case of the film's main star in a relatively brief but startling role, and one that certainly grabs the most attention.

The nightmare reaches its zenith for Walter Craig, as Hugo strangles him.

But even more chilling for me however is the climactic linking sequence, where the whole stately set-up suddenly spirals into nightmare, and allows Basil Dearden (chief of the film's four fine directors) and Ealing to be experimental and highly avant garde.

Many film makers have mimicked this style of portmanteau horror, but the wrap-arounds are often tame and perfunctory, and none of them have Dead of Night's force - which makes itself felt even on the end credits, where...

...Walter Craig is invited for the weekend to the country farmhouse of Eliot Foley, but as he drives along to the farm, something odd disturbs Craig as he drives up and stops his car, something strangely familiar about the place.....

The Village (2004)

Back in 1999 when one blockbuster followed another with a variable degree of intelligence and a greater amount of special effects, along came an old-fashioned ghost story called The Sixth Sense, which dared to keep the camera still, the soundtrack quiet, and to let the audience in on the experience (even though it also cast macho Bruce Willis as a sleepy-looking psychologist to precocious Hayley Joel Osment.)

The Sixth Sense was followed by Unbreakable (again with Willis) and Signs, with Mel Gibson this time as the macho hero for whom widowhood has made him lose the faith that he regains when fear strikes the world at the sight of alien invasion on every TV channel (an allegory for September 11th). Also cast as Gibson's brother was Joachim Phoenix, for whom M. Night Shyamalan specifically wrote his next project, the unusual setting on this occasion being a remote village in the 19th century, where a fragile but happy existence is enjoyed by the community in spite of the growing threat of murderous creatures in the woods.

Things turn awry however when quiet, introverted but courageous Lucius Hunt (Phoenix) dares to walk the line into the woods - and the domain of the creatures - and both he and the villagers suffer the consequences.

Unusually however, when events in the story take an unexpected turn, it is not Lucius but his prospective fiancee Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard) - who has quietly slipped into the film one third of the way through - who takes up the challenge to go beyond the woods into the towns to get help. Ivy, blind since childhood, is ironically the best qualified for such a quest, for being intuitively able to sense things that others cannot, her blindness being her strength as well as her handicap - and helping also to heighten the suspense and terror in the audience.

The Village is one of the few cases where I have sat in the cinema and audiences have literally screamed aloud, a testament to the suspense and atmosphere created by Shyamalan, not only from the threat of the creatures but also the beautifully conveyed scenery and sense of community (the wedding barn dance strongly reminisces Heaven's Gate), thanks also to a superb supporting cast - the best of all Shyamalan's films - that includes William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson, and in an offbeat diversion from his Oscar-winning The Pianist, Adrien Brody - as the village idiot, who like Ivy, is a lot smarter than he looks.

In spite of its beautiful construction and taut suspense, a certain amount of critical backlash has - unfairly in my view - been accorded The Village. Trailers for the film misleadingly emphasised most of the horror aspects, and some audiences expecting a ghostly shocker on the lines of The Sixth Sense were rather disappointed to find an elegiac suspenseful romantic drama instead. The characteristic final twist in the tale is (as with most of Shyamalan's work) quite guessable, but does not in any way diminish from the tension or the atmosphere. If anything, it serves to strengthen the resolve of the village elders, and speaks a great deal about the spiritual dedication of their cause.

Many of M. Night Shyamalan's films have a haunting spiritual undertone, drawn from his upbringing (from India but raised in America) and though his recent work seems to have withered and turned pretentious in the eyes of many, The Village is one of his best works, on all counts.