Dead Poets Society (1989)

With school term upon us, for those either teaching or still lucky enough to be learning, here's a reflective thought about the time that is sometimes called the happiest days of our lives.

So much of learning comes from the particular personality and charisma of the teacher. My English teacher at St. Benedict's was something of an eccentric; not necessarily with the zany flamboyance of Robin Williams, but she was able to get things across in a certain galvanising way that set that little spark of inspiration alight. As a result, English turned from what was a standard educational chore into a major creative pursuit. So in the years following the end of school, the sight of Robin Williams inspiring his pupils about the beauties of the English language struck some familiar chords.

Williams himself I've often thought had the attributes of a crying clown: an incredibly creative comedian, who could produce jokes with as much spontanaiety and timing as Mozart could produce musical notes, but also with a poignant side. In recent years his sentimentality has been attacked by some critics, but here in the hands of Australian director Peter Weir (who also made the excellent Witness) he had an ideal nurturer for his talents. Besides all that, they had a compelling story by Tom Schulman to work with, covering youthful hopes and dreams within a harsh establishment-oriented school environment, typified by veteran Norman Lloyd as the headteacher.

Williams as teacher John Keating was the star of the show, but the main focus of the story is on the boys, particularly Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke), the film's main "observer" of the drama, and his roommate Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard, right), as well as their like-minded friends Knox Overstreet (Josh Charles) and the most rebellious of the group, Charlie Dalton (Gale Hansen), all of whom are suddenly swept away by Keating's quirkiness and inspiration. We've all experienced these kinds of children in one form or another before.

Neil's story is especially poignant, rebelling studiously against his disciplinarian father (Kurtwood Smith) in the process of discovering that he has acting blood in him, whilst for me the much more relatable character is that of Todd Anderson: shy, repressed in his passions for art and poetry, but who suddenly breaks loose at unexpected moments, and is ultimately the first to openly express support and admiration for John Keating when events in the story turn tragic.



Neil's father (Kurtwood Smith) cannot come to terms with his son's sudden acting aspirations.


Peter Weir (with the help of composer Maurice Jarre) indulges in his flair for otherworldliness, as Neil relives his lost dreams of playing Puck.


This motley band of young rogues, unwittingly instilled by Keating (a former pupil at the same school) revive a long forgotten band of Bards known as the Dead Poets Society (some pedantic English teachers noted the lack of an apostrophe in the word "Poets"), who recite works of the Greats to indulge in their rebelliousness, and satisfying their own desires to woo girls in the process. One such pretty specimen (Alexandra Powers) flutters into Knox Overstreet's life, and he pursues her lovingly - in spite, alas, of her attachment to a dorky football player. The fact that he fails in the quest does not matter - his yearning from the heart is the more important achievement.

I saw Dead Poets Society - three times - in that pivotal year of 1989 whilst at college, where triumph as well as tragedy were both passed and present, and it was a reminder that education is not only about studying the world around you, but also learning about yourself. As well as reminding me of those recent (not always happy) halcyon school days, the film also spoke towards a greater idealism of pushing yourself from what you know you can do already to what you are capable of doing, and how strong a mentor's influence - parental or non-parental (ie. teacher) - can be on your future life. Some of those ideals never worked out - for most of the boys or for myself - but that isn't important. It was the pursuit of the dream that mattered. A life-affirming film.

Escape to Victory (1981)

With the emotional recent departure of Bobby Robson, my mind is drawn irreverently towards a film in which some of his "Boys of '81" happened to find themselves unexpectedly involved.

By the summer of 198o, Ipswich Town had rounded off another impressive season with qualification for Europe, finishing third in the league behind Liverpool and Manchester United (beating the latter 6-0 at Portman Road.) The year after that was arguably their greatest ever season, when they were in contention for three trophies and eventually won the UEFA Cup.

In between, Robson's team were approached by film producer Freddie Fields with a view to spending a few weeks in Hungary to play some football alongside the likes of Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone, and to be directed by no less a person than John Huston. Eyes perked up when two other footballing names associated with the project were Bobby Moore and Pele, and so it was that Russell Osman, John Wark, Kevin O'Callaghan, Robin Turner and Laurie Sivell (the last two on the German side) took to the field, and the film stage, whilst goalkeeper Paul Cooper (who coached Stallone) and the legendary Kevin Beattie (Caine's stand-in, or run-in if you like) also offered their assistance.

The film was originally based on a real life incident in World War II when Eastern European prisoners were forced into a football match, where they would be set free provided they lost the match to the Germans. Tailoring the film to a more mainstream audience, Fields modified the original concept to make it into a Great Escape-ish adventure where the German Army pits itself against a combined team of Allied prisoners, the intention being - as before - to force a victory to prove German supremacy as an excellent propaganda exercise.

To boot (excuse the pun), in order to re-create the climate of noted footballers, Fields and Huston cast real-life footballers in some of the roles. In addition to those players already mentioned, there was Tottenham Hotspur's legendary Argentinian Ossie Ardiles, another former England star Mike Summerbee, Belgium's Paul Van Himst, and the international flavour was completed by Norway's Soren Linsted, Dutchmen Co Prins, Belgium's Paul Van Himst, and Manchester City's Polish star Kazimierz Deyna - who in one powerful scene is in a group of maltreated Eastern European players.

And then there's also a fella named Edson Arantes dos Nascimento - better known as Pele, who contrives to be in a PoW camp as a West Indian with a fairly thick Brazilian flair.

The international guest stars notwithstanding, there's a healthy "Boys of '66" spirit to this film, represented appropriately by the presence of Bobby Moore, when a group of ordinary down-to-earth lads gathered together as a great team unit to win football's most coveted prize. Here that spirit crosses a whole international frontier, and is epitomised by the film's two most credible characters, Major Von Steiner (Max Von Sydow) and John Colby (Michael Caine), who have set up the idea for the match:

STEINER: "If nations could settle their differences on the football pitch, wouldn't that be a challenge? How would you like to play a match against a team from the Wehrmacht? From the army base nearby?

COLBY: What for? To settle the war?

STEINER: Unfortunately not."

On balance, the soccer players are more suited to acting than the actors are in having to play soccer. Certainly in John Huston's hands there's a greater enthusiasm for the skill and endeavour of the footballers that in the mechanical rudiments of the plot. The weakest of them, alas, is the film's chief star, Sylvester Stallone. Riding on the success of the Rocky films, Sly was clearly considered a bankable property for this kind of sports film.

Only in Hollywood.

What Stallone brought to boxing, he certainly does not bring to soccer; frankly, he'd be just as well off trying rhythmic gymnastics. But clearly his physique and his star clout got the film made. If Stallone is the worst idea of a goalkeeper, then at least the other 10 team in front of him lead the way.

The match itself is a classic - in the football sense of the word - mirroring the course of events of World War II. The Germans dominate the initial stages, thanks to a little judicious refereeing (then again it could just be Hatch's inept goalkeeping) and before you know it, the Hun are 3-0 up. What's worse for the Allies, one of their leading players, Luis Fernandez (Pele), is taken injured after a brutal challenge, and soon the Nazis are 4-0 up. But then a little determined rearguard from the Allies sees Terry Daly (Bobby Moore) score at the far post shortly before half-time, to the delight of the hitherto stony-faced French crowd.

At half time itself, Hatch's sneaky plan to escape from the dressing room into the sewers of Paris is hatched (excuse pun no. 2); but to the rest of the team there are certain things greater than their freedom, and that's their pride and dignity. To the surprise of the British officers who've organised the escape, the Allies take the field again for the second half, and here's where the game really starts cooking: a lovely flowing run and finish by Carlos Rey (Osvaldo Ardiles) pulls the score back to 4-2 shortly after the resumption. As the Allied crowd and the players become more excited, the resulting bewilderment in the German defence leads to a third Allied goal, scored by Poland's Paul Wolcek (Kazimierz Deyna, who curiously alternates the No. 7 shirt with John Wark.) The Allied comeback is almost complete when a shot hits the post and Doug Clure (Russell Osman!) scores off the rebound, but it's disallowed for offside. Silly ref.

The high point of the match comes however, when the hobbling Luis Fernandez, his chest still badly bruised from the earlier tackle, comes back onto the field, and scores an overhead kick from Terry Daly's cross, past the hapless German goalkeeper Schmidt (Laurie Sivell), a moment which is poetic enough in the eyes of the filmmaker to give it a multiple Leni Riefenstahl-style slow motion replay. In one of the film's most hilarious moments, Von Steiner is moved enough to stand up and applaud the goal scored against his own side. There then follows a moment that has often haunted me whenever I think of this film - the French crowd, resurgent at the Allied comeback, chants "Victoire!" constantly through the final minutes, of a match that has clearly gone something beyond a mere game.

4-4 then (echoing, by no small coincidence, the year of the Allied invasion), but then - oh dear - the Germans get another penalty in the dying minutes of the match, relying on the late intervention of the inept American goalkeeper to save things. Somewhat improbably, Hatch manages to save the resulting penalty kick by catching the ball cleanly with his fingertips! (Stallone's original idea was to dribble from one goal to the other and score the winner - something which Pele vetoed vehemently.)

In the whimsical climax, the crowd breaks out of the stands and smothers the Allied team, who ultimately make their escape through the mob as they flee out of the Colombes Stadium: an unlikely but in its way satisfying denouement to a fun footballing war film.


I make no bones of the fact that I enjoy this film because of the involvement of familiar Ipswich Town players; from my later enthusiasm for sport that followed on from cinema, here unexpectedly was a film that combined both. But there's also something powerfully omnipresent here, a sense of the power of sport to cross international barriers, to use the football field as a metaphor for solving difficulties off the field in a more global context. John Huston's chief enjoyment of the film was the challenge of staging the soccer game, and though the film is corny, that enjoyment shines through, particularly with Bill Conti's catchy score. Michael Caine is agreeable as the honest, King, Country and Football-devoted Colby, and even Stallone can be forgiven as a footballer.

It also harkens back to a more innocent, nostalgic era of soccer, a time when the spirit of the game was more important than the increasing professionalism that has crept in over the years. As the opening exchange between Von Steiner and Colby puts it so tellingly:

"It's a shame the war has ended your career."

"Interrupted it."

"Let's hope so."

Fantasia (1940)

"How do you do. My name is Deems Taylor, and it's my very pleasant duty to welcome you here on behalf of Walt Disney, Leopold Stokowsky and all the other artists and musicians whose combined talents went into the creation of this new form of entertainment, Fantasia."

So began Walter Elias Disney's most audacious experiment in the field of animation. Four years previously he had mortgaged his house and practically his entire career on the reckless venture of a cartoon feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and the results paid handsome dividends. From this seminal moment, a new genre of film was born, and Disney was able to push the boat out with further adventures in the feature length animation field, as well as the further adventures of his "star" originally to be known as Mortimer Mouse (named after the camera whose reels his ears mimicked), later changed to Mickey.

Thus it was that Disney approached Leopold Stokowsky with a view towards making a cartoon short version of Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The end result however, was something considerably more ambitious.

It was a film that I had known about since the 1970s, from looking at posters in the London Underground stations; the cartoons of Walt Disney were as rich and prosperous a commodity as they are today, but this particular one seemed a little unusual, which even a child of my age would notice. The one unmistakable image was that of Mickey Mouse, but the rest of it seemed puzzling: what was the title about? Why wasn't it a Mickey type cartoon adventure? Where was the story? And what were all those other strange things around him?

Such an impression led to an aura of mystique around the film, so that when I did finally get round to seeing it in 1990 (on the film's 50th anniversary) at the new Odeon Ipswich, I was curious to the point of wonderment, and found it an incredibly beautiful film, having grown up enough to be able to appreciate it as not just a cartoon. The children of the 1990's however, were just as mystified as children of the 1970's (or indeed the 1940's) - "When's Mickey coming on, Dad?", I heard a child ask in the cinema in Ipswich that afternoon. I suspect many other children have asked their parents that question in cinemas through the decades.

Youngsters may not have expected the arty tones to the film, but this doesn't alter the brilliance of the animations, which all work on their own different levels. The first of them is a slightly uncharacteristic rendition of Bach's Tocata and Fugue, unusual not for the abstract animation, but for Stokowsky's orchestration of a piece originally written for organ. This was no doubt to allow Stokowsky and his orchestra full reign to their talents.

A rousing, stylish start nonetheless, followed equally audaciously by Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite, perhaps the most charming of all the animations, with characteristic Disney flourishes of imagination such as Chinese mushroom dancers and Cossack dancing thistles.

Next comes the long-awaited arrival of The Sorcerer's Apprentice; as the erstwhile Mr. Taylor puts it, "a piece that tells a very definite story", and formed the basis for the whole project. It's the one item of all that seems most in tune with what would be perceived to be the "Disney style" (if one thinks of the "Silly Symphonies" they had been producing for years), and in that sense is probably the most successful of the lot. It certainly sold this otherwise unsellable film by putting Mickey on the front of the posters.

After the mischievous exploits of Mickey the Sorcerer's Apprentice, comes something altogether different in The Rite of Spring, which was always a very experimental and ritualistic piece as composed by Igor Stravinsky, and a highly unusual piece for Walt Disney to challenge. As an adaptation of the music, it chops and changes with uncomfortable melodies to listen to, and as animation it's variable but certainly has its moments, and Disney has rarely dared to push the barriers further than this.

As if to trivialise things after the primal experience of the story of the beginning of the Earth in The Rite of Spring, there comes an intermission (in the tradition of a "Concert Feature") where a soundtrack line makes various noises and wave forms, before the second half of the concert/film commences with The Pastoral Symphony, only partly trivialised by switching to a mythical setting. Its difficult not to recognise a certain My Little Pony imagery with parts of this sequence; secretly I also wonder if it was considered politically incorrect to depict Beethoven's beloved Austria because of its connections to the Nazis in World War II (The Ride of the Valkyries was also a piece considered and ultimately rejected by Disney), but Beethoven's music still transcends the prissiness of the visuals, and there are still some charming moments such as the storm and the party of revellers.

The funniest and perhaps most enjoyable of the pieces for me is The Dance of the Hours, an unashamed parody of Ponchielli's ballet but quite appropriate considering the jollity of the piece, with balletic ostriches, hippos (the inspiration for those "Hippapotamousse" ads in the 80's?), elephants (two years before Dumbo came along) and amorous crocodiles, all coming together in a delightful finale.

The "big finish comes" with Mussourgsky's Night on Bald Mountain and Schubert's Ave Maria, a beautifully powerful mixture of "the profane and the sacred", with the sight of Satan atop the mountain (looking very Darth Vader-ish) demonstrating the darker element that often permeated Disney's work. The beautiful ending representing the triumph of good over evil (darkness gives way to light) was done with innovative multi-plane animation, ending with a sunset to conclude Fantasia, which at the time (and still today) in the eyes of some was considered pretentious, and was not a huge success. If it was a failure, then it was one of Disney's most glorious ones, a brilliant attempt at integrating mass entertainment and art, and an experience of pure cinema.

In the sixty years since Fantasia there were many attempts at reviving the formula of classical music set to animation: the original film went through various re-releases, with the 1982 version having the audacity to completely re-record the music (as previously orchestrated by Stokowsky) to the original animation.

There was much talk of a sequel, with various composers considered for animated treatment (including even The Beatles at one stage), but in 1999 the Disney studio bravely and perhaps foolishly set about trying to follow-up its original masterpiece with FANTASIA 2000, commemorating the new millennium in enjoyable fashion with Donald and Daisy Duck in a cheerfully apocalyptic rendition of the Noah's Arc story to the tune of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance. Other pieces followed a pretty similar pattern to the original, with an abstract opening (to the beginning of Beethoven's 5th Symphony) followed by a charming rendition of flying whales to Respighi's Pines of Rome, and finishing once again with the good vs. evil motif of Stravinsky's Firebird suite. Perhaps the most innovative piece was Copeland's Rhapsody in Blue animated to the newspaper drawings of Al Hirschfield.

In spite of the shortening of the music down to single movements rather than entire symphonies, as well as irritating celebrity introductions (from the likes of Steve Martin, Bette Midler, James Earl Jones and the conductor himself, James Levine), there was still a great deal of charm to the enterprise, although less of the magic that Walt brought to the original.

And it was testament to the memory of the original, that Mickey's Sorcerer's Apprentice was revived for the sequel 60 years later.

Batman (1989)

The comic book blockbuster has come to the fore in the latter stages of the 20th Century: in 1979 Superman flew in to herald the beginning of the new wave, and then ten years later came for me by far the most entertaining treatment of the Batman legend by Tim Burton.

At the time Burton seemed a choice for director that came from Left Field. He was the creator of such weird darkly comical fantasy as Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice, films that almost defied description. The prospect of such a director helming a mega-budget comic strip blockbuster seemed hardly most people's first thought, and while the plot of Batman is largely a secondary consideration to the imaginative set pieces (a Burton characteristic throughout all his films), his unique visual touch dominates Batman from first frame to last. The very opening titles set the tone, the camera prowling around darkened shadowy corridors which turn out to be the outline of a giant Bat logo.

Equally eccentric was the choice of actor to play the title role: Michael Keaton had teamed up with Burton in Beetlejuice - very much in the Jack Nicholson-type role - but here went for the slightly "harder" role of the straight-laced hero with slight psychological hang-ups thanks to his troubled childhood. Keaton did a creditable job, arguably the best of the recent Batmen (particularly with his agility in coping with the heavy costume), although generally speaking the character's psychosis remains under the mask, difficult for any actor to bring out fully therefore. This Batman is less of a caped crusader and more of an avenging angel; he observes the mugging of a tourist (Garrick Hagon) and his wife and child, but does nothing to prevent it; he merely takes his vengeance out on the offending muggers afterwards.

Early interest in this film, however, quickly intensified with the perfect choice of guest villain. Some years before, I had watched the TV series with Adam West and Burt Ward, with Cesar Romero as The Joker, and mused to myself how the perfect choice for that villain today would be Jack Nicholson. Producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters thought likewise when they were working with Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick - as another over-the-top villain, The Devil.

"I made you, you made me first!"

Nicholson has always been a great scene-stealer, and here was a role that many people argued (and I'm one of them) that this was the role he was born for. Criticisms that his performance was too OTT (as Barry Norman put it: "with more ham than the meat counter at Sainsbury's") and pushed Michael Keaton's reserved Batman to one side are irrelevant, and incorrect I feel. These after all, are the characteristics of The Joker - he's supposed be mad, bad and over-the-top, as originally defined in the comic books.

Though his character dies at the end, Nicholson did very much walk off with the film, and a cool $3 million (a lot of money at the time) plus a percentage of all the profits, and top billing over Michael Keaton. For all the millions he raked in, nevertheless as an actor he gave his all, having a whale of a time in perhaps the most luscious of all his over-the-top performances (over the illustrious likes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Shining), but never making concessions to his stardom with a huge fee for only a small appearance - unlike Marlon Brando in Superman.

The other unofficial star of Batman, besides The Joker, was a gigantic full-scale set - designed by the late, lamented Anton Furst, re-imagining a Gothic New York that had decayed from the ground up (influenced in part by Blade Runner), coupled with a certain amount of 1940s retro, intending to give the film a certain "timeless" feel. Creator Bob Kane (left) himself stepped onto the lot at Pinewood, and was in awe of how his Gotham City had been brought to such vivid life.

It seems nostalgic to look back now on the dramatic summer and late autumn of 1989. 50 years after the beginning of the Second World War, its last surviving leader, Emperor Hirohito of Japan, had died; technically, the legacy of that war was also finally laid to rest when Stalin's Iron Curtain crumbled with the deposing of several Eastern Bloc countries, and the pulling down of the Berlin Wall. There was also the dramatic Tianenmen Square protest; Salman Rushdie lost his freedom to walk in the street after writing The Satanic Verses, and the rest of Britain lost Lord Laurence Olivier, the ancient Rose Theatre, The Ashes, the first of the Monty Pythons (Graham Chapman), and there was the terrible Hillsborough tragedy.

On a more personal note, the year of my 18th birthday also saw the loss of two of the Sales family : my grand uncle George Sugden, and later my grandmother Kate Ethel Sales ("Kitty" to most, and "Nan" to me) died in October - and so the scene where Bruce Wayne lays two red roses on the site of his parents' death had an extra minor poignancy for me, and reflected some of my feelings that year.

As part of the hype machine that summer, before the film had even opened, "Batman - The Album" came out, which was basically a series of hit spin-off songs by Prince - only a smattering of which are in the film. I had to wait a few months before being able to acquire the much stronger musical element in Tim Burton's film - the grand, stamping orchestral score by Danny Elfman.

The second of three cinema viewings of the film that year - note the new "12" certificate, implemented to allow younger audiences in.

At the time, I sensed that this was not a great film, but a very exciting one. It also felt a good enough film in its own right, an eccentric one-off. Inevitably however, sequels came along. Burton and Keaton covered as much of Bruce Wayne's psychosis as they wanted to in Batman Returns, with more entertaining performances by Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny De Vito (and Christopher Walken) as the villains. Val Kilmer donned the batsuit for Batman Forever (with loyal Michael Gough again as Alfred the butler), then George Clooney for Batman and Robin, but the self-parody so prevalent in the 60s TV series had now crept into the films as well.

It led to a slight overly-serious return to the dark roots of the comic book in Batman Begins (with an excellent cast), and in more recent times, the Joker's persona has taken on a very different form in the shape of the late Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, portraying Batman's most famous adversary as a twisted, sickened individual - hardly a character to identify with or to enjoy - unlike Joker Jack.

And just for good measure, in the later months of 1989 I helped to contribute another 25 pence to Jack Nicholson's pay packet - by buying a Batman T-shirt, at a reduced-to-clear price of £5 (for which Nicholson had a 5% share in all Batman merchandise). They say the Devil has all the best tunes: Joker Jack certainly had them in this film, and made the most of them too.

North by Northwest (1959)

Sometimes there's that happy occasion when you don't discover a film, the film discovers you. On the evening of the tedious World Cup Final in 1990 between West Germany and Argentina, I switched over to the non-football channels and found to my pleasant surprise, a film in colour on BBC2 with Cary Grant and my favourite cinema villain, James Mason. Both gentlemen looked very suave and witty, as also was Martin Landau (whom I'd seen recently in Francis Coppola's Tucker) as Mason's sidekick. To my utter delight, I then checked the listings to know more about this unexpected film, and discovered that it was directed by one Alfred Hitchcock. So, whilst Diego Maradona and company were crying and bickering themselves to deserved defeat against West Germany, I was laughing my head off at the sheer pleasure that is North by Northwest.

By the time I'd seen watched the farcical and thrillingly comical drunken drive (where the villains intend to kill Thornhill and make it resemble an accident) I was totally hooked, and never gave the football a second glance.

Cary Grant was probably the greatest James Bond there never was: suave, charming, dynamic when he needed to be, and most women's idea of their perfect man. All these elements were characteristic of James Bond - added to which was a self-deprecatory sense of goofiness, which served him very well through four decades of romantic and screwball comedies - and never was his sense of droll bewilderment better demonstrated than in North by Northwest.

Ernest Lehman's brilliant spiralling screenplay with lots of beautiful one-liners ("apparently the only performance that'll suit you is when I play dead!") incorporated many favourite Hitchcock elements, some of them easily recognisable from Hitch's earlier classic comedy thriller, The 39 Steps (also one of my favourites). This considerably more polished "American reworking" contained certain key elements added to the mixture - not least the score by Bernard Herrmann which played in perfect symbiosis with Hitch's sense of the playful yet suspenseful. The film is a glorious summing-up of Hitchcock's description of how he wanted the audience to have experienced the same thrills and detachment of real danger as on a switchback railway.

Hitchcock's own appearance in the film is one of his most amusing, just after his name has disappeared from the stylish credits (by Saul Bass), and sets the tone for the two hours that follow.

The premise is so delightfully absurd, yet in its own way alarmingly plausible: staying at the Plaza Hotel in New York is top CIA agent George Kaplan, who's hot on the trail of the smooth but deadly Russian agent Philip Vandamm (Mason), but Kaplan himself is an even cannier fellow who is always one step ahead of his enemies, so that not even the Russian agents or even the hotel porter knows what he looks like. So naturally when Vandamm's sidekicks spot Roger Thornhill (Grant) inadvertently answering a bellboy's request for a "Mr. George Kaplan", they eagerly latch on to their prized adversary, and never seem to doubt the fact that he's not the real mccoy.

So much of the suspicion of the Cold War was based on tip-offs and half-truths: it's more than likely therefore that an ordinary bloke in the street could easily be mistaken for a government agent. Although in this particular case, the "ordinary" bloke in question is actually quite a smooth operator, "an advertising man, not a red herring." Well, he's Cary Grant, after all.

As with any good spy story, there's usually a glamorous female interest somewhere in the midst of it, and after Thornhill's got himself into further trouble at the UN, as well as with his disbelieving mother (amusingly played by Jessie Royce Landis - only 7 years Grant's senior), he takes refuge on the 20th Century Express from New York Central, where he manages to evade the police with the help of sympathetic passenger Eve Kendall. But - guess what - Eve is secretly one of Vandamm's conspirators, and much more besides. But Thornhill is quickly smitten.

Eva Marie Saint looks dazzlingly sophisticated and skillful in the role, and in spite of the fact that this was her one and only romantic femme fatale role, she looks from first moment to last as if she was to the manor born.

Some of the set pieces just seem to exist for their own sake: the famous crop dusting sequence and the finale on Mount Rushmore to name but two. The spoilsports at Mount Rushmore itself disliked the idea of having their famous monument desecrated by having actors clambering around the dangerous structures (one idea of Hitch's was to have Thornhill hide in one of Abraham Lincoln's nostrils!), but this probably suited Hitchcock fine as he was always at his happiest controlling things from the confines of a studio anyway. So who cared if parts of the film seemed to just plod along in a kind of elegant 1950's way - Hitch was having fun with his set pieces, as he had in past years with the likes of Blackmail, Saboteur, The Man Who Knew Too Much (both versions) and of course The 39 Steps.

And it has one of the most brilliant and rapid summing-ups of a climax imaginable: from the sight of Martin Landau's foot about to step on Grant's flailing outstretched hand, to the brazenly cheeky symbolism of a train entering a tunnel, on which Mr and Mrs Thornhill are travelling back, the whole epilogue clocks in at a helter-skelter, all-encompassing forty-six seconds.

Result by the end of that evening: World Cup 0 Hitchcock 6.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

If A Hard Day's Night signalled the launch of the Swinging Sixties, then Lawrence of Arabia was a glorious by-product of that era, perhaps the greatest ever use of 70mm widescreen to convey the vastness of the desert landscape, as well as being one of the first "intellectual" epics with a little of the old school technique about it too.

David Lean, born one hundred (and one) years ago last month, probably reached the peak of his career with this film, the one for which he is most remembered. He took on the epic project following the success of The Bridge on the River Kwai - a slightly audacious war story of British prisoners surviving in the jungle by building a railway for the Japanese. It shared certain elements that were also utilised in Lawrence: namely, the supreme irony of British soldiers triumphing in something very foreign to them (even anti-British), in a very British, no-nonsense way.

It was a brilliantly cinematic film, displaying Lean's consummate storytelling skill (as previously demonstrated with earlier films like Oliver Twist and Brief Encounter) - although personally I felt it had its flaws, dragging on for nearly three hours and sidetracking half-way through to focus its attention on William Holden's character Commander Shears, instead of the much more interesting duel of wits between Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) and Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) in the Japanese prisoner camp.

Three years later however, with Lawrence, Lean had ironed these deficiencies, and found his true metier in a location that suited him so perfectly that he could hardly bear to leave the desert once most of the principal photography was complete. But thanks to producer Sam Spiegel - who seemed the ideal general to reign in his Lawrence-like extravagance - as well as scriptwriter Robert Bolt, and a star performance by Peter O'Toole, Lean was able to create a near masterpiece.

There's something magical about the allure of the desert in this film - a tribute to another sadly missed talent of recent days, Maurice Jarre. His score, combined the brilliant photography of Freddie Young, were two key elements that still make this epic shine through the ages as a timeless film.

The story that emerged for filming however, was a bumpy journey, that started as far back as the 1930s, when a film version of T.E. Lawrence's semi-memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom was planned by Alexander Korda. The project fell through, but with various other dramatisations such as Terence Rattigan's play Ross (with Alec Guinness) very much in the domain, it was only a matter of time before someone with the cinematic skills would come along to make a film version.

Lean was able to take on the project with two recent collaborators on Kwai: producer Spiegel and scriptwriter Michael Wilson, the latter eventually abandoning the association because of difficulties with surviving members of the Lawrence family, and then further creative difficulties with David Lean; step forward acclaimed playwright Robert Bolt, to write the dialogue and re-emphasize some of the characterisation based on Wilson's original blueprint.

For the all-important title role, an international assortment of actors were considered: Lean had been very keen for some years to work with Marlon Brando - an association which sadly never came to pass - but after much digging, Lean and Spiegel felt they had their man in Albert Finney; a sudden hot property from the innovative working-class drama Saturday Night Sunday Morning, Finney was however reluctant to be tied to a major film contract, working exclusively in "epics", and declined the lucrative offer, in spite of a major screen test where he recited scenes from Seven Pillars of Wisdom (right). It could with the benefit of hindsight be considered a career-ruining move - not that Finney has done too bad in the years since - almost as well, arguably, as Peter O'Toole.

But it was O'Toole who barnstormed his way into the role late in the day, balancing the sensitivity of Lawrence with his own extravagance which Lean helped to nurture. When it came to casting the all-important Arabian key figures in the saga, again, the search was international; American Anthony Quinn was a splendid Auda Abu Tayi (good enough to be uncannily mimicked by Bernard Bresslaw in Follow That Camel), and for the main Arab role of the mysterious Sherif Ali, eyes were turned eventually towards Egypt's biggest film star of the time, Michel Shalhoub - much better known as Omar Sharif, for whom Lean fashioned a whole new star in the making, giving the Egyptian charmer a moustache and a suave Valentino-like aura which soon won over millions of female admirers (in this and later Doctor Zhivago) on both sides of the globe.

Indeed, there are few greater cinema entrances that Sharif's first appearance on the desert horizon where Lawrence and his guide Tafas (Zia Mohyeddin) suddenly discover they are not alone.

Aside from all the breathtaking visuals - and let's face it, the desert is the real star of the film - what gave me a greater appreciation of Lawrence of Arabia when I saw it in its entirety (on its restoration in 1988) was the richness of the supporting cast, not least the urbane presence of Alec Guinness (top billed in the credits) who doesn't appear very often, as nor do Claude Rains, Jack Hawkins, Anthony Quayle, Arthur Kennedy (replacing Edmond O'Brien as the American journalist based on Lowell Thomas), or Howard Marion Crawford (in a clever recurring cameo) but their presence is more than welcome. Guinness in particular, exudes charm and quiet authority as Prince Feisal, and almost looks like Obi-Wan Kenobi's Arabian half cousin. His performance is the forgotten gem of Lawrence of Arabia, alongside the deserved acclaim for the likes of O'Toole and Sharif.

Historically speaking Lawrence of Arabia leaves a certain amount to be desired - T.E. Lawrence himself worked skilfully to try and cover his tracks by rewriting Seven Pillars of Wisdom (from which most of the ideas in the finished script were taken from) so how much of the historical fact remains in Lean's film is very much open to doubt. It's unlikely, I think, that Lawrence was quite so narcissistic or as temperamental as Peter O'Toole is. Nor do I suspect was he quite so passionately in favour of the Arab cause as implied in this film. While it's true that the actual Lawrence was very disillusioned by the way in which political and economic control of Arabia was divided up between the English and the French after the First World War, the notion that Lawrence was also personally leading a revolt on Damascus to let the Arabs to take charge, just doesn't wash. I suspect he would have been much more of a mediator than a revolutionary.

But what did it matter...the legend, as they say, is greater than the truth. And in Peter O'Toole, the Lawrence legend received perhaps its definitive treatment, whilst still leaving the vacant central question mark of Lawrence's real identity. Robert Bolt and David Lean play it ambivalently, covering Lawrence's mixed-up sense of patriotism (desert lover or exiled Englishman?), his illegitimacy, and his homosexuality (in his infamous capture by the Turks in Deraa - the watershed in his desert crusade) in certain intriguing ways: "Who are you?", asks a motorcyclist (the voice of David Lean himself) when he reaches the Suez Canal, and then also at the very end, when the newly promoted Colonel Lawrence is driven away from the desert by an ordinary Tommy (Bryan Pringle) who says to him, "Well sir, going home!", to which Lawrence gives a stammered query: where is his home?

So in terms of the psychology and background of the hero, the film sheds little insight, but what does it matter after three and a half hours of glorious spectacle combined with historical drama.

Television cannot do justice to a film the scale and breadth of Lawrence of Arabia; it has to be seen in the cinema. I can count myself fortunate enough to have seen it twice in this manner. The first was at the Warner Brothers' cinema in Leicester Square, and I can well remember the queue for soft drinks at the cinema during the intermission (not surprisingly!) The other, greater memory, is how this is a film that hardly seems to date at all from first release: the desert still looks as breathtaking as it always did, the drama still as potent and compelling as it was in 1962.



Omar Sharif's original robes for Sherif Ali (in the David Lean exhibition at the National Film Theatre)

A Hard Day's Night (1964)

Many of the favourite films in this blog are based around memorable cinema experiences: in this particular case, the 14th of April 2001, at the Electric Cinema in Portobello Road - itself a historic old cinema of some repute (where the infamous John Reginald Christie once worked as projectionist) - which appropriately felt like going back in time to an innovative, electrifying age.

I mention this because as a rule films following pop groups are not usually the sort of art form that I would openly embrace: usually the plot is fairly superfluous (and this film is no exception), a means by which to thread together the various songs performed by the artists - but these particular songs, and the artists, are a cut above the rest.

The Beatles were, and still are, a cultural phenomenon. This film helps to demonstrate just how they made such a vivid impact on the era of the 1960's. Though personally never having any great admiration for their Liverpudlian Jack-the-Lad manner, what shines through in the case of A Hard Day's Night is a freshness and excitement that heralded the birth of a new era, in what was arguably the 20th century's greatest decade. This is much more than just a film one of their concerts (at the former Scala Theatre in Regent Street), but also provides an invaluable snapshot of them if not at their peak, then certainly at a time when their music and their impact was at its most vibrant and innovative, before superfame started to get the better of them.

Significantly - unlike for instance, the films of Elvis Presley - the Beatles make very little pretence at playing anything other than themselves (and quite adequately at that.) Each of "The Fab Four" is given a particular character quirk, of which the most endearing figure ultimately, is the much maligned Ringo Starr, who is seen (in the film) usually getting into trouble and requiring the other three to get him out of it. The title itself was from one of Ringo's many verbal platitudes, coming on the back of a heavy gig the previous day (that had extended into the evening): "...that was a hard day's night."

For the choice of director, the Beatles leant towards their fondness for The Goon Show (whose comedy records were also produced by George Martin), working with a fellow Goon collaborator, Richard Lester. Combined with Alun Owen's semi-observational screenplay, Dick Lester exploited the Beatles' sense of mischief and self-mockery by creating a semi-Goon show environment where the world is as we know it, but with slight eccentricities. He also brought on board some trusted comedy colleagues, seasoned campaigners such as John Junkin, Norman Rossington, Victor Spinetti, and most notably Wilfred Brambell (from Steptoe and Son) as Paul McCartney's (fictional) Irish grandfather. As such, Lester was able to play upon "Beatlemania" (the film's original working title) in a surreal satirical context.

A prime example is the hit song "Can't Buy Me Love", intended as a moment when The Beatles escape from all the fuss and bother of rehearsal - conceived by Lester as a semi-silent movie pastiche - which was quickly imitated by other pop groups, to such an extent, that in more recent years MTV declared Richard Lester to be the father of the pop video.

The subsequent career paths of Paul, George, Ringo, and especially John, have been well charted, but whatever became of Dick Lester? His career may have peaked with this film, for which he had the great good fortune to be involved, but nonetheless, his multi-faceted cinema verite techniques (aided by Gilbert Taylor's precision black-and-white cinematography) burst off the screen vividly even today - although you feel the sense of the tricks quickly losing their freshness, like a bubble just waiting to pop (excuse the pun).

Like the 1960's themselves, his was a fashion that came and went, and maybe became a little too Goonish and surreal for his own good. He went on to make some more than respectable films in later years, such as the all-star Three Musketeers, and did a creditable job in patching together Superman II after Richard Donner had been fired. But back in 1964, his idiosyncratic direction combined with the Beatles' huge following, made for a potent mixture.

Subsequent innumerable pop films (including the Beatles' own follow-up HELP! in 1965) have tried hard to emulate A Hard Day's Night (the Spice Girls' recent Spiceworld in 2000 used practically the same blueprint), but haven't been able to capture the Zeitgeist that made Dick Lester's original film so prevalent. It is a film very much of its time, and a formative one at that.

Watching it on the big screen at the Electric that afternoon, I felt the same sense of excitement and freshness for young people of the 1960's as when I first experienced the Star Wars saga in the 1970's. And there's a connection here too: both films featured music recorded at the Abbey Road Studios.


I Should Have Known Better

title song