Working my way (again) through this box set. It tries to be objective about all the nations involved, drawing out some interesting facts, and often takes the viewer back to WW1 to try to explain why some of the players did what they did.
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A great 1948 comedy starring marvellous Myrna Loy, that old smoothie Cary Grant and the fabulous Melvyn Douglas. With a cast like that and a script by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, you can’t fail to be entertained, and this HC Potter-directed picture certainly delivers.
The tale of a middle-class family living in a cramped Manhattan apartment, who get gulled into buying a tumbledown dump in Connecticut, it epitomises the optimism of Hollywood after the war (needless to say, despite various disasters, delays and budget overruns, the ending is a happy one) and the three leads, who have great chemistry with each other, are among the brightest stars to have emerged from the 1930s studio system.
Recommended.
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George Lazenby may be a comparatively weak Bond and a pretty wooden actor, but OHMSS has a great deal to recommend it, thanks to Richard Maibaum’'s script and director Peter Hunt. Hunt edited the first five Bonds and was then given the chance to helm Number Six. A great decision, as OHMSS is cinematically, at least, the best of the series. It’s exciting, taut and the action and fight scenes are tense and suitably brutal. Add in Telly Savalas as Blofeld, Diana Rigg as the most interesting and human of all the Bondettes, a thrilling score by John Barry (OHMSS is one of the best ever 007 themes), great locations, a cast of brainwashed lovelies (including Jenny Hanley and Joanna Lumley), some fabulously-staged and shot chases and that final, touching scene when the newly-wed Bond is widowed and you’ve got a scorcher (that’s also reasonably faithful to Fleming’s book). A pity Hunt didn’t get the chance to do another. If a (younger) Connery had been playing 007, it might have been the best of all, better even than Goldfinger.
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Oh dear oh dear oh dear… It’s 1971, Connery has returned and here’s the first big misfire of 007’s career. Sean looks bored, old, fat, balding, sluggish. He’s not interested and neither, it seems, is anyone else - cast (the acting’s dreadful), director, scriptwriter, editor, FX guy, set designer… the only plus points are Charles Gray as Blofeld and, of course, John Barry’s brilliant - as always – score. The plot is feeble, the characters dull, the girls wet and weedy, the villains ropey. Even the gadgets (eg that moon buggy) are just rubbish. One of the very worst 007 movies – especially when stacked up against its illustrious predecessor.
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Fabulous 1946 noir directed by that master of the genre, Robert The Killers Siodmak. The late great Olivia de Havilland plays identical twins; one’s a psychopathic murderer, the other’s a good girl - the trouble is, nobody can tell which is which; not we in the audience and certainly not their psychiatrist (the excellent Lew Ayres). The detective investigating a murder case (Thomas Mitchell – again, excellent) may be starting to work it out though. An engrossing psychodrama and, along with The Snake Pit, ODH’s best film. Lovely B&W photography (by Milton Krasner), and a great script by Nunnally Johnson, too.
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The recently re-released horror classic, Woman In Black.
I read most of the extremely complimentary reviews before ordering, and was really looking forward to being deliciously frightened! I saw the Daniel Radcliffe version 5 years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Well, I’ve never been as disappointed. The reviewers must have all watched a different film. Wooden acting (I really expect more from Bernard Hepton), more ham and cheese than the local delicatessen. Four of us watched it, and there were gales of laughter rather than any sharp intakes of breath!
To anyone tempted my advice has to be, don’t bother - save your £15. My copy is in the charity shop bag already.
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Not forgetting the Mustang is ramped on to 2 wheels to get through the alley and comes out on the opposite wheels!
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James Stewart in Harvey from 1950
If you’ve never seen this comedy-drama, it’s worth a watch for the quality of the cast and the gentle humour which abounds. Well, is he imagining it or not?!
Pure class.
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Burton at his best. Ben Kingsley took notes for his role as Don in Sexy Beast - both films featured Ian McShane.
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Superb.
I hadn’t seen this much-loved 1951 Ealing picture since the 1980s. Watching it again, one can see why it is so fondly rememembered. There’s something quietly, unmistakeably, English about this tale of a meek bank clerk who masterminds a £1 million bullion robbery. The protagonists – Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sid James and Alfie Bass – are all likeable, slightly bumbling amateurs who are clever and resourceful but way out of their depth. All four are superb, as are the rest of the cast. Blink and you might miss a cameo at the start of the movie from a young Audrey Hepburn.
The photography – by Douglas Slocombe – is splendid on the restored version, TEB Clarke’s knowing script hasn’t aged one bit and the great Charles Chrichton directs with understated confidence. If you haven’t seen the picture, you must, it is a delight.
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A vert serviceable thriller (1974) from Richard Lester. In the middle of an Atlantic voyage, the Captain of the liner SS Britannia (Omar Sharif) learns from the cruise line owner (Ian Holm) that a “terrorist” (Freddie Jones) has placed several bombs on board which will be detonated unless a ransom is paid. While the police, led by Superintendent John McLeod (Anthony Hopkins) search for a suspect, a crack bomb disposal team led by Richard Harris and David Hemmings are 'coptered on board to try and defuse the devices. Also among the great cast – Lester has always had the gift of gathering together amazing casts – are Gareth “Blakes 7” Thomas, Cyril Cusack, Michael Hordern, John Stride, Kenneth Cope, Shirley Knight, Clifton James, Caroline Mortimer, and (supplying light relief), Roy Kinnear.
It’s pretty tense, exciting stuff with the bomb guys and police trying to outwit Juggernaut; furthermore the would-be bomber isn’t quite what he seems (but I won’t spoil the plot). It didn’t do that well at the box office as United Artists marketed it as a “disaster movie” à la the Airport series or Towering Inferno, which it’s not. A pity, it’s a decent picture.
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I have a soft spot for Live & Let Die, the first 007 I ever saw (at the cinema in London in 1973, when I was 10 – one of the few times my brother and I went out with my dad). But sentiment aside, it’s a very good Bond.
Roger Moore came straight out of the blocks for his 007 debut – although two years older than Connery, he actually looks younger, and his enthusiasm for his new role, his adeptness with a quizzically raised eyebrow and gift for light-hearted self-mockery brings a much-needed energy to the series after the dud that was Diamonds. Yaphet Kotto as Mr Big/Kananga is a great villain, the drug trafficking theme is a nice change from megalomaniacs trying to take over the world (!), the Blaxploitation/voodoo vibe works, the locations – Harlem, New Orleans, the Caribbean, the Deep South – look great, there are superb car and speedboat chases, one of the best henchman in pincer-handed Tee Hee and of course light relief in the shape of Clifton James as the boorish Sherriff JW Pepper. And there are two other things going for it: the iconic casually-steppng-over-crocodiles-while-dressed-in-a-safari-suit scene; and Macca’s ace theme tune, which might just be The Best Bond Theme Ever (discuss).
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Spooky - I saw this at Leicester Square on initial release, not having seen ‘Diamonds’ but after Goldfinger & FRWL. Memorable for the opening scene, where the body is picked up and the party starts!
Not the best theme for me (Goldfinger wins this with Shirl) but near the top and far better than the Adele and Sam Smith efforts.
The boat chase scene always reminds me of what I could have won on Sale of the Century!
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I remember as a boy cycling over to a friend’s house. It started raining so we were stuck indoors, but his parents had just bought a video recorder - one of the first - and one of the three films available to watch was a recording of Juggernaut. I was gripped throughout, and it has remained a favourite ever since. I bought the blu-ray about a year or so ago and it brought back memories of that rainy afternoon back in the '70s. Still a good film, but a much better picture now…
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Who doesn’t love a good heist/caper movie? Especially one as classy, clever and handsome as this?
Directed by the great Jules Dassin (responsible, in 1955, for the greatest of all heist pictures, the hugely influential Rififi), Topkapi (1964) stars the irrepressible Melina Mercouri as a man-hungry criminal who’s obsessed with an emerald-encrusted dagger in the Topkapi Palace museum in Istanbul; she wants it not for financial gain, but because she lusts after possessing it.
To help her nab it, she enlists her former lover, master criminal Maximillian Schell, who in turn recruits mechanical engineering genius Cedric Page (Robert Morley), a strongman (Jess Hahn) and an acrobat (Gilles Ségal). To help them smuggle explosives into Turkey from Greece, they use small-time hustler and schmuck Peter Ustinov who, through circumstance, becomes an integral part of the robbery team.
I won’t spoil the plot, but suffice to say the robbery is brilliantly planned and executed (thanks to a superb script by Monja Danischewsky, working from a novel by Eric Ambler), and directed with characteristic verve by Dassin. It’s a very clever, witty film that also looks utterly beautiful, thanks to Henri Alekan’s sensational Technicolor cinematography, that lends the film a dreamlike, sensuous quality. There’s also wonderful costuming, delicious dialogue, lovely use of light and location, a great supporting cast and splendid music by Manos Hatzidakis.
But the movie is Dassin’s and Mercouri’s. Dassin as a director always had a fantastic eye for detail, and this picture makes great use of Istanbul, its buildings, its people, the Bosphorous. It’s so full of vignettes and small incidents that one can gain an insight into what life in the Turkish city was like in 1964.
An absolute winner and unreservedly recommended. And it shows up Guy Richie’s mockney crime flicks for the witless dross they are.
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Thanks for your regular posting of films on here Kev, I find your selection excellent with fascinating write ups - and a real trip down memory lane
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