Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

This 1941 film directed by John Ford was very much what I expected (or feared): a sentimental tale about a Welsh mining community where people break into song at regular intervals.  It is an adaptation of a best selling novel with the same title, from 1939. The focus of the story is the Morgan household, comprising Mr and Mrs Morgan who are in late middle-age, and seven children.  There are five grownup sons, Ivor, Ianto, Davy, Owen and Gwilym.  None of them have much of a personality, so that as far as I was concerned they were anonymous and interchangeable characters.  Ivor gets married and moves out, but the other four live with their parents and don't seem to have any interest in the opposite sex.   There is a sixth son, Huw, played by a 12-year-old Roddy McDowall.  The events of the film are narrated by adult Huw, looking back nostalgically on his childhood. It was unclear to me how long a period is covered by the film, but it can't be many years ...

This 1940 film is an adaptation of the best selling novel by AJ Cronin about a mining community.  As a work of social realism centred on the working class it was ahead of its time in that we had to wait another twenty years or so before the wave of British kitchen sink dramas such as ' Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' and 'Th is Sporting Life' started appearing.  This is also the film that confirmed the director Carol Reed as a major talent. Cronin was involved in the process of adapting his long novel (over 700 pages) which necessarily meant some streamlining. For example World War I features prominently in the novel but is not present in the film, which I took to be set in the 1930s. The lead protagonist in the film is Davey Fenwick a bright young man, the son of a coal miner, who passionately believes in the need to nationalise coal mining. He is very well played by Michael Redgrave even if he is, at 32 years of age, too old for the part. A few years earlier Redgra...

This 1940 Western, directed by Fritz Lang, stars Henry Fonda as the older brother of Jesse James.  He is returning in the sense that Fonda played him the previous year in 'Jesse James', which was a big enough hit for the studio to reunite many members of the cast for this sequel.  It starts where the earlier film finished, with the murder of Jesse James in 1882 by R obert Ford (played in both films by John Carradine).  In truth Frank's life after the death of his brother wasn’t very dramatic: after a few months he gave himself up to the authorities, was tried for robbery and murder, was acquitted, and went on thereafter to live a surprisingly long and uneventful life. So hats off to the screenwriters for creating a moderately entertaining story, the highlight of which is his trial and acquittal, which takes up the second half of the film. Before we get to Frank handing himself in, the film has him going after Ford to avenge his brother's killing, but first committing a ...

This excellent 1954 Western is a good example of what happens when you hand over a good story to a competent director (Edward Dmytryk) and a decent cast, headed up by  Spencer Tracy as Matt Devereaux, the domineering owner of a ranching empire and father of four sons — Ben (Richard Widmark), Mike, Denny and Joe (Robert Wagner). T he first three were born to a white wife who died long ago, whilst Joe is the son of an Indian woman (Katy Jurado) who Matt married.  The locals disapprove but given Matt's wealth and importance he can afford to ignore it. But, as we learn, all is not well in th e Devereaux family.  All the sons, especially Ben, resent the fact that Matt treats them as little better than hired hands.  Ben also envies Joe because he is Matt's favourite. The film has an interesting structure, starting with Joe being released from prison after serving a three year sentence.  Matt is dead, and Ben as head of the family tries to get Joe to start a new life e...

Joel McCrea always brings a sense of decency to any of his roles, in a way that even in the days of the Wild West (as in this 1957 Western) must have seemed a mite old fashioned. He always wants to do the right thing - here he’s trying to stop a lot of killing but he sure has his work cut out.   On one side is his bull-headed half-brother Bishop who owns more land than he knows what to do with but who's determined to protect it at any cost. On the other side is a devious piece of work, Harper, who wants to get his hands on Bishop’s cattle.  He has a cunning plan to do so, involving a bunch of innocent settlers who he has brought to Bishop's land, so that there will be a battle between them and Bishop's men.  In addition Harper has employed the services of a criminal, Zarata, and his men.  It's an intriguing setup which held my attention throughout.  Admittedly the settlers are largely a forgettable bunch, other than an eye-catching widow, Ellen, played by Virgin...

This Wes Craven film gave the horror genre a shot in the arm by introducing a meta element, by having the teenage protagonists aware of slasher movie tropes.  This is at its most obvious when a movie buff informs his fellow students of the three rules which films of the type we are watching must follow.  The first of these is that you are safe if you are a virgin which is amusing given that at this precise moment our main character Sidney is losing her virginity to her boyfriend Billy. Sidney has been having a bad time of it: we’re just coming up to the anniversary of the horrific rape and murder of her mother, her father has abandoned her for a business conference, and she has been attacked by a killer who at one point she suspects might be Billy himself. To add insult to injury her fellow students aren’t very sympathetic but then again they are a remarkably unpleasant bunch.  The film starts off with the brutal murder of a couple of students, but no one the next day sho...

This is the third variation on ‘The Lady Vanishes‘ theme which I have watched (the others being 'Flightplan' and 'Fractured'. This one is set in 1889 Paris at the opening of the Great Exhibition.  One of the strengths of the film is the period detail and costumes so that one definitely feels one is there. Another plus is the central performance of Jean Simmons as Vicky, a tourist whose brother Johnny, and room (!), mysteriously disappear overnight.  To add to her distress the somewhat sinister Madame who owns the hotel, together with all the staff, claim that Vicky was alone when she arrived the previous day. The following scenes in which, among other things, she tries to enlist the help of the British Consul and a Chief of Police, and occasionally collapsing into tears, might have been tedious with another actress but not here. The white knight who comes to Vicky's rescue is George (a perfectly cast Dirk Bogarde), a Brit trying his hand at this new-fangled Impressi...

This, the fourth instalment, is generally reckoned to have reinvigorated the franchise after a couple of missteps. Fair enough, but this film is far from perfect, even if it does provide the template for the two much better films which immediately followed, It divides very clearly into three acts, set in Moscow, Dubai, and Mumbai, and without the middle of these and the gobsmacking stunt work up the Burj Khalifa, the film’s problems would be much more evident. For starters, the IMF team here is rather lacklustre.  Luther is scarcely present, and instead we have Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton.  Neither brings much to the party notwithstanding that the latter does look stunning in a green dress in Mumbai.   The villain is deadly dull (especially compared with Philip Seymour Hoffman in the previous outing), and it’s beyond ridiculous that Ethan has so much trouble overcoming him physically in their climactic fight. This is director Brad Bird's live-action debut, which p...

Sometimes translating a literary classic to the modern day ends up simply being gimmicky but in this case transplanting Jane Austen’s Emma to a US High School works a treat. Emma is now Cher, the spoilt and self-confident daughter of a wealthy litigator who has very strong views on everything, especially in respect to the fripperies of life such as fashion.  The outfits she and her friend Dionne wear are a constant delight. Cher (right) and her friend Dionne (dig that hat) Dionne is a character for which there is no equivalent in the so urce novel but who rightly has been added for extra comedy value and to give Cher someone to bounce off.   It’s a skilful adaptation from writer-director Amy Heckerling which generally aims to streamline  the novel by removing characters such as Jane Fairfax and Miss Bates.  Making the Frank Churchill character gay is a nice touch.  For the first half of the film Cher's shallowness is in danger of making her an irritating ch...

This is one of Buster Keaton's last short films, made in 1923.  Disappointingly he doesn’t spend much time in the balloon.  Even more disappointingly there’s not much of a story to it, just a collection of sketches, mainly of Buster and a female character trying to get by in the wilds, which aren’t very funny or inventive.  And there’s an unsettling moment where Buster seems to shoot dead a big grizzly bear.  And in the viewing I attended, a heavy rock music soundtrack (by a Brazilian composer Amon Tobin) had been added which seemed inappropriate; I would have preferred something gentler and more pastoral for the outdoor scenes. 'The Balloonatic' was supporting something entitled 'REM x Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr' which combines my favourite Buster Keaton film with a soundtrack comprising REM tracks from the 'Monster' and 'New Adventures in HiFi' albums. Some thought had clearly gone into the sequencing of the tracks so that although I’m not convinc...

About a third of the way in I was feeling that this Jane Austen adaptation was OK but all a bit lightweight. Emma is happily arranging everyone’s lives to her satisfaction, absolutely confident that she is always right. In the case of her recently acquired best friend, Harriet, who is new to the area, Emma’s influence is potentially disastrous, causing Harriet to turn down an offer of marriage from a suitor, Robert Martin, whom Emma considers to be too low on the social ladder. Other than this though there was not a lot to report.  Bill Nighy was being Bill Nighy as Emma’s dad and Johnny Flynn was hovering in the background as George, a childhood friend of Emma's (I think - his status was rather unclear to me) who disapproves of her haughtiness and interfering ways. Thankfully though things pick up with the introduction of several new characters, notably Frank Churchill who Emma has her eye on, and the mysterious Jane Fairfax who is annoyingly accomplished and opaque. I’m not sure ...

This 1965 film couldn't be made now.  Imagine asking an American audience to sit through 150 minutes of assorted characters on an ocean voyage doing nothing much, other than performing some sort of allegory as to the nature of human existence, where the two biggest roles go to an Austrian actor and a French actress! Even in the 1960s it can't have seemed a very commercial proposition, except that it is an adaptation of a 1962 bestseller.   Given that it takes place in 1934 on a German passenger ship going from Mexico to Germany, via Spain, I was expecting Nazism to crop up, and indeed it does. There is a German salesman, Lowenthal, who is Jewish, so naturally he is excluded from sitting at the captain's table at mealtimes.  Prominent among the German passengers who do enjoy the honour of sitting there is a businessman, Rieber, played by  José Ferrer, who dominates the conversation, loudly  extolling the virtues of nationalism and eugenics.   The c...

This is a 1949 film about US bombing of targets in Europe in World War II which is almost entirely set on a n air base in England, there being no action to speak of apart from a bombing sequence near the end which skilfully integrates actual combat footage from the war. I'm making the film sound dull but quite the opposite, I found it curiously gripping thanks to the excellent screenplay which explores the subject of leadership:  how best to get the 'maximum effort' from your men, and how much we can reasonably expect by way of sacrifice. The answer to the second question seems to be to drive people until the point that they either commit suicide (as happens here, off-camera) or suffer a nervous or mental breakdown. The person doing the driving is General Frank Savage (played by Gregory Peck) who gets the job of knocking into shape a USAAF group which is underperforming, possibly because the previous commander got too close to his men.  Savage is made of sterner stuff, appl...

Count me in for any film with the same premise as in ‘The Lady Vanishes’ i.e. someone vanishing but whose existence is then denied by everyone except the unfortunate protagonist. In this variation, a daughter, Peri, (accompanied by her mother) is taken for a CAT scan at a hospital, and then disappears.  At least that is what her father Ray claims, despite all the hospital staff denying that his daughter was ever admitted, whilst there is a record of Ray being admitted that day for a head injury. Peri is at the hospital in the first place because she suffered a potentially fatal fall at a nearby gas station, which we see happen early on, although there is a significant ambiguity as to how badly she is injured. Ray manages to get a couple of passing cops involved and to be fair to them they do a competent job of trying to get to the bottom of things.  This comes down to either Ray is suffering from delusions, or there is something sinister going on involving the harvesting of bo...

On the face of it this film noir looks promising: it has  a decent director (Robert Siodmak) and cast (Burt Lancaster, Dan Duryea), and some critics do like it. On the other hand some critics don’t and (spoiler alert) I am with them. In fact I don’t think anything about this film works.   For starters there's a love triangle at the heart of the story which I never bought for one moment, in which Yvonne de Carlo plays a tepid femme fatale who both Lancaster and Duryea are supposed to be in love with, obsessively so in Lancaster's case.  Her character is so underdeveloped that when there's an  indication towards the end that she might have been planning to betray Lancaster all along, rather than opportunistically, it's really hard to care, so it doesn't much matter that we never do find out what she was up to, if anything.   Siodmak has a nice visual style but he can’t get any dramatic tension going, partly due to a meandering screenplay,   I perked...

This romantic comedy was the directorial debut of Billy Wilder, who also co-wrote it.  Later in his career he would achieve comedy immortality with the idea of men masquerading as women, in ‘Some Like It Hot’.  Here to rather less comic effect he has Ginger Rogers pretending to be a 12-year old in order to pay the train fare home.   Not that it’s a bad film; quite the contrary it has its fair share of funny lines and the somewhat farcical plot is neatly developed and then resolved. It features an unusual setting in the second half, of a military school.   Considering that Wilder is often criticised for being tasteless he manages to avoid all the pitfalls inherent in the basic setup, he even gets away with Susan and the Major, Philip, (played by Ray Milland) sleeping in separate beds in a railway compartment.  I was amused that when Susan says she has been warned about strangers Philip thinks that merely introducing himself gets over that problem. But this h...