A freezing afternoon double bill .....

Ideal viewing for our continuing big freeze here - it will be a wintery Easter too.

THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES - another one I had not seen since its release in 1965, though its always on tv here especially around holiday time. I thought nothing of it at the time, being a teenager - but its a delight now, Ken Annakin's comedy of the London to Paris plane race in the early 1900s. All the funny little planes and all that stunt work looks great now, as is that cast - another of those star-filled films of the time (like THE VIPS, THE LOVED ONE, OPERATION CROSSBOW, AMOROUS ADVENTURES OF MOLL FLANDERS etc).

James Fox and Sarah Miles are re-united from THE SERVANT, see below, she plays her usual saucy minx in period clothes, he is the upright English chap, Stuart Whitman the brash American, Alberto Sordi the Italian, Jean-Pierre Cassel the amorous Frenchman, Gert Frobe the German, Robert Morley the newspaper owner, Terry-Thomas is the rotter, with lots of cameos from the likes of Flora Robson as a resourceful nun, Fred Emney, Cecily Courtneidge, etc.

This was followed by the Merchant-Ivory A ROOM WITH A VIEW from 1985 - how we liked this at the time (one of my date movies in Brighton), one of their best films and the first of their E M Forster triple, followed by MAURICE (time for a re-view of that soon) in 1987 and then HOWARDS END - the definition of the much derided heritage cinema,
but they are all marvellous costume dramas, like their THE EUROPEANS (Lee Remick), THE BOSTONIANS (Vanessa Redgrave), HEAT AND DUST (Julie Christie, Greta Scacchi), QUARTET (as reviewed here, Maggie Smith label), as well as their earlier oddities like SHAKESPEARE WALLAH or SAVAGES. What a fascinating team they (director James Ivory & producer Ishmael Merchant, with scriptwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala ) were and the many stories of how they made those films and attracted all those casts, on meagre budgets ....

When Lucy Honeychurch and chaperone Charlotte Bartlett find themselves in Florence with rooms without views, fellow guests Mr Emerson and son George step in to remedy the situation. Meeting the Emersons could change Lucy's life forever but, once back in England, how will her experiences in Tuscany affect her marriage plans?

Maggie Smith and Judi Dench are perfection of course as the spinster aunt and the novelist Miss Lavish, Florence looks marvellous, the period detail looks perfect, there's wonderful Fabia Drake, Daniel Day Lewis as the prissy Cecil Vyse, Rosemary Leach, Denholm Elliot and that amusing scene where the Reverend Beebe (portly Simon Callow - I almost said Cowell !) joins George and Freddy (Julian Sands and Rupert Graves) for a naked swim as the ladies walk by .....  England and Italy both look great and the soundtrack and music and captions are ideal, as of course is Helena Bonham-Carter as Lucy Honeychurch. It all ends very satisfyingly with our couple back at their room with a view and the spinster aunt happy for them in her single bed. It all though makes one want to run off to Florence right now ...

There was another ROOM WITH A VIEW, a tv version in 2007 right, scripted by costume veteran Andrew Davies (also responsible for the great BBC 1995 PRIDE & PREJUDICE and the filleted new version of BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, see Costume Drama label). There is no ambiguity about the Reverend Beebe (Mark Williams) in this one ("not the marrying kind" according to Forster), he chats up Italian youths and has a leer in his eye as joins the boys stripping off .... Cecil in this one is James Fox's son Laurence .... like the recent tv version of SENSE & SENSIBILITY it amuses but is not as good as the film. It did though tack on a meaningless coda showing Lucy back in Florence in the '20s, George having perished in WW1!

THE SERVANT (see below) bandwagon rolls on - Wendy Craig is now on morning television tomorrow discussing the movie and its revival ..... will Miles and Fox also be seen more drumming up publicity ... ?

Festival in Cannes

FESTIVAL IN CANNES. This Henry Jaglom film from 2001 seemed rather appropriate at the moment, so I pulled it out of the “to see sometime” pile. It is like Altman-lite as we dip in and out of various people at Cannes - the story is silly, there seems to be no script as they seem to improvise a lot, are the characters real or fake? Anouk Aimee is Millie Marquand a mature French actress looking for a good role. Greta Scacchi is another actress who has written a script which she wants to direct with a good role for Millie, while Ron Silver is the hot-shot producer (who is financially overstretched) who also needs Millie to cement the deal for a big movie he is putting together where Tom Hanks will only commit if Millie plays the small role of his mother. So which will Millie choose? Advising her is her ex-husband Maximilian Schell, who wants to direct the film. Then there is Kaz (Zack Norman) who comes across as a major creep but says he is a producer with a $3 million to spend – but is he really? Both the men hit on various women (that is what producers do, right?) as everyone tries to hustle a deal. Anouk and Max Schell seem bemused by it all and play along gamely – nice to see her on screen again, as alluring as ever. Scacchi also seems to be improvising a lot and seems very amused by it all (though the very idea of Anouk Aimee as Tom Hanks's mother...!).

Shot at the 1999 Festival others who pop up include Peter Bogdanovich, and Faye Dunaway with her son Liam, all it seems keen to be on camera. An amusing trifle then, with a very nice poster and some Charles Trenet and Piaf on the soundtrack. Altman fans should like it – the end credits include an apology to Tom Hanks! [Scacchi is currently playing Bette Davis on stage in London in "Bette and Joan", to good reviews – I am seeing it before it closes in June].

"Bette and Joan" in London

We are back in 1962 on the set of Robert Aldrich's new film WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? where Bette Davis and Joan Crawford sink their differences and work on this low-budget movie which they hope will get them back on top .... Their legendary feud is now the subject of a new play just opening in London, titled - yes - BETTE AND JOAN, we will have to see if it is worth checking out. It's presumably based on that deliciously trashy read "Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud" ... it must be daunting stepping into such well known shoes!

Greta Scacchi and Anita Dobson (Angie from hit tv show EASTENDERS) play the ageing stars and should at least have the look right. They were on television yesterday discussing it and seem to be having a lot of fun with it. Below: Greta lets rip as Bette as Baby Jane - and the real thing!

Vile Bodies

A few more literary adaptations - Evelyn Waugh this time, Waugh has now been filmed almost as much as E.M. Forster!



BRIDESHEAD REVISITED – I recorded this 2008 version out of curiousity last week but then decided I did not need to see it, but then I wondered just how bad it could be, so it certainly made for fascinating viewing. The main question though is: Why? Why bother to remake a classic and fillet it down to a 2 hour running time? The bare bones of the story are there but so many characters (like Anthony Blanche and Mr Samgrass) are just glossed over that it makes no sense. We still have Castle Howard though. A few lines of the original pop up here and there, like Carla’s line on how charming the English are with their male romances – Greta Scacchi is effective here. There is no point in making comparisons with 1981 the 11 hour BBC version. I often complain about movies being over-lit but this one seems curiously underlit with lots of interiors looking very gloomy if not almost dark.

Matthew Goode (glimpsed as the dead lover in A SINGLE MAN) is the rather dull Charles Ryder while Ben Whishaw (acclaimed for his Hamlet on stage) makes for a rather petulant, camp schoolboy Sebastian, certainly not as fascinating as Anthony Andrews in the original BBC production. All the subtlety of the original has been removed – Emma Thompson’s Lady Marchmain is just a dragon lady (without any of the subtlety of Claire Bloom's original) – she gets one good moment though when she turns her thwarted rage and withering disdain on Charles, and then a bit later we are told she has died, as though her character has been dispensed with. Despite the occasional nude swim there seems to be nothing going on between the boys and Hayley Attwell is simply not charismatic enough for Julia Flyte. Scripted by Andrew Davies and directed by Julian Jarrold. It reminded me of that dreadful 2005 film PRIDE & PREJUDICE by Joe Wright, again with the story simplified and streamlined and utterly without merit. I threw my disk of that in the bin, but at least didn’t purchase this BRIDESHEAD!

BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS – A much better Waugh adaptation (from his “Vile Bodies”) and as scripted and directed by Stephen Fry in 2003, this is delicious entertainment with just the right touch. Add in a whole roll-call of thespians and nice period detail and it all works a treat. We are back in the 1930s again as James McAvoy as the gossip columnist Mr Chatterbox works for newspaper magnate Dan Ackroyd. Mr Chatterbox is banned from Lady Metroland’s party but sneaks in and files a full report on their cocaine-fuelled existence before gassing himself. Stephen Campbell Moore (THE HISTORY BOYS) is a replacement Mr Chatterbox while he tries to retrieve his manuscript and woo Emily Mortimer. The cast is a dream: David Tennant, Jim Broadbent, John Mills [sniffing cocaine in probably his last screen appearance], Peter O’Toole, Harriet Walter, Imelda Staunton and wonderful Julia McKenzie as Lottie Crump, the landlady always trying to get guests to pay their bill. Even the small parts are perfect like Bruno Lastra as the very camp waiter. There are also Stockard Channing as the evangelist, Michael Sheen, Margaret Tyzack and others, and again the bright young things of the 1930s have to face World War II. I enjoyed it hugely. "Vile Bodies" is classic Waugh and as not well known as "Brideshead" liberties could be taken (I dimly recall a BBC production with Vivien Pickles as Lottie). Can we ever get to see that '68 film of another Waugh: DECLINE AND FALL, and of course Tony Richardson's THE LOVED ONE? - that A HANDFUL OF DUST was well done too.

Recent tv choices...

Apart from the great new series MAD MEN and GLEE, some choice old movies have re-appeared, thanks to TCM UK.

BUNNY O'HARE - this Bette Davis film from 1971 was just a memory of catching it once and disbelieving how bad it was, now here it is again, and it seems even worse seeing Bette and Ernest Borgnine (a long way from their THE CATERED AFFAIR back in '56) as the elderly bank robbers dressed as hippies robbing banks throughout the American southwest. It just looks very cheap and tatty, and Jack Cassidy is quite unpleasant as the sleazy police chief. Bette and Borg rob banks in retaliation for the banks' foreclosing on her, and provide funds for her grasping children. Unfortunately her final expletive is here downgraded to a less offensive one. Not as bad though as LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS, but then what is? Bette's worst film. (I saw her in person at London's National Film Theatre the next year (in '72) when she got a great reception and brought the house down, at least she was back in good company by the time of DEATH ON THE NILE IN '78!).

WHITE MISCHIEF. Michael Radford's 1988 drama passed me by but was an engrossing experience to see now, with that great cast and the unsolved murder mystery of what really happened back in the '30s among that dissolute community of rich folk out in Kenya among the colonial expatriates. Its handsomely mounted showing the casual racism and promiscuity as newcomers Joss Ackland and his pretty new wife Greta Sacchi set temperatures rising. Local rake Charles Dance and Greta fall in love to the chagrin of Ackland (great to see him in a leading role here), and Sarah Miles who had considered Dance her own. Geraldine Chaplin, Susan Fleetwood, John Hurt, Murray Head and a young Hugh Grant are also involved, as well as Trevor Howard in one of his last roles. Sarah Miles has a great scene at the morgue as she leaves her very special imprint on the corpse, and I loved her greeting at the dawn of another beautiful day! Greta impresses as the very '40s vamp, as carnal and lovely as a young Lana Turner.

THE LOUDEST WHISPER or THE CHILDREN'S HOUR. This 1961 Wyler film has been long unseen here, but now that TCM UK has acquired some United Artists titles its been shown a few times. Its of course the famous Lillian Hellman play (first done by Wyler in the '30s) about the 2 school teachers accused by a spiteful deceitful child of being lesbians. This of course means the closure of their school and they are regarded as outsiders. Its hokum now but well mounted by Wyler with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley McLaine as the leads, James Garner as Hepburn's bewildered beau, Miriam Hopkins back as McLaine's silly aunt and best of all, Fay Bainter (who was in Wyler's JEZEBEL) who is monumental as the child's aunt and who causes the downfall of the school, and then when she finds out the real truth has to come to apologise... the lynchpin of the story is that Martha (McLaine) realises she really does love Audrey Hepburn that way, so there is only one solution for her. [Shirely later did recant about this in the documentary THE CELLULOID CLOSET, but it must have seemed par for the course back then].

Good though to see some United Artists titles being dusted down, like a batch of Woody Allens [ANOTHER WOMAN, ALICE, SEPTEMBER], Billy Wilders [I won't though be watching IRMA LA DEUCE], and do I really want to see YENTL or THE WHALES OF AUGUST again (painful enough seeing the decline into old age of Lindsay Anderson, Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, Vincent Prince, Ann Sothern just the once...).

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS - Charles Jarrot's 1971 film looks well mounted, but is really the kind of historical film I do not care for, being one of those dull, reverential, ploddingly directed costume dramas with no cinematic flair whatsoever as lots of thespians stand around mouthing reams of dialogue, more a pageant than a film. They may use real settings but it just looks wrong: very overlit, and the costumes look brand new, as though they arrived that morning. Scenes are like tableaus with no dramatic progression. The cast do what they can - Glenda Jackson had a huge hit in the BBC series ELIZABETH I over six hours, but her Virgin Queen is a caricature here, Vanessa Redgrave as Mary is tremelous and lovely as she deals with Patrick McGoohan, Timothy Dalton, Nigel Davenport, Ian Holm. Trevor Howard is Cecil, Elizabeth's advisor. Interesting to see again but just dull dull dull.

THE VIRGIN AND THE GYPSY. 1970 - a pleasant reminder of when England had a film industry - this, a kind of follow-up to WOMEN IN LOVE, was the kind of movie that played at local cinemas, usually as part of a double feature. Interesting to see how well made it was with great period detail of the 20s as lackluste Joanna Shimkus [sort of a lesser Jacqueline Bisset] returns to her family's vicarage somewhere in the North of England - this is D H Lawrence country. Father is stuffy vicar Maurice Denham and Kay Walsh is as ever splendid as the spinster sister Cissy, forever at odds with the young people, and Fay Compton is the spiteful old granny. Bored Yvette (Joanna) spots the virile gypsy - Franco Nero, attractive as ever here (with his bare chest and waistcoat), who with his woman (Imogen Hassall) and baby have their caravan nearby. Local youths express interest in Yvette but she has no time for them. Honor Blackman and Mark Burns are the scandalous unmarried couple who befriend her, and nature soon take care of things as a flash flood sweeps through the countryside sweeping decorum away as Yvette and gypsy finally get together. As directed by Christopher Miles [Sarah's brother] its all very enjoyable and engrossing, rather like those other films of the era like THE TRIPLE ECHO or those Ken Russell or John Schlesinger films.