Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

I’ve been putting off watching this oddity for a long time because I didn’t feel that a comedy would play to the strengths of either director John Huston or star Humphrey Bogart, especially a comedy which has the reputation of being self-indulgent.  Co-writers Huston and Truman Capote apparently intended it as a spoof of ‘The Maltese Falcon’.  Since it doesn't obviously take aim at film noir tropes, t he only connection I could see to the earlier Huston film is the presence of Bogart and of Peter Lorre, and that the character played here by Robert Morley bears some resemblance to that played by Sydney Greenstreet. OK, let’s try to summarise the plot, such as it is. Morley is in charge of a disparate gang of misfits who have developed a scheme to make a fortune from mining uranium in Africa, and Bogart is helping them to acquire the land they need on the cheap. Whilst waiting in an Italian port for a ship to take them to the dark continent they get to know Mr and Mrs Chelm, a ...

This is one of those quirky small scale films that Powell and Pressburger seemed to excel in.  . It’s 1943 and we’re among an odd collection of scientist types who are beavering away somewhere in the bowels of Whitehall, working on weapons research or who knows what, one of whom is Sammy, the main protagonist.     He's in constant pain from an artificial foot, which makes him prone to grumpiness and to self-pity.  It also means he is often tempted to resort to alcohol. It's not a film that is overly full of dramatic incident, but there are two story arcs to follow. One concerns a dastardly new German weapon dropped from the sky: a small cylinder which contains a booby-trap bomb which goes off if anyone is foolish enough to handle it clumsily. The climax of the film is an eerie and suspenseful sequence on Chesil Beach where Sammy has the unenviable task of defusing one of these bombs.   The other, more interesting, story arc concerns Sammy and Susa...

This 1951 adaptation of a Joseph Conrad novel is a real mess.  That being said it does have a few admirers, and I derived some pleasure in trying to work out why none of it was working. Maybe the source novel is unfilmable, or perhaps it just isn't very good - it certainly comes across here as second-rate Graham Greene. Exotic location?  Check. Flawed protagonist?  Absolutely. The protagonist, Willems, is a big problem because as played here by Trevor Howard he is a scoundrel with no redeeming features - he is lazy, selfish, bad-tempered, boorish, and self-pitying. The other main characters don't offer much either. Ralph Richardson plays Captain Lingard who befriended Willems when he was a boy, and who is prepared to help Willems when he has to flee Singapore having been caught stealing money from his employer.   The bulk of the film takes place at a trading post which Lingard owns.  The sea captain is the only one who knows how to navigate the approac...