White Feather, 1955

WHITE FEATHER is a perfect mid-'50s western, which somehow I never saw at the time. I was 10 or so then and seeing all those early 50s westerns with my father: JOHNNY GUITAR (the first film I saw aged 8, what a vivid introduction to cinema), SHANE, THE COMMAND, DRUM BEAT, SITTING BULL, THE GAMBLER FROM NATCHEZ, GARDEN OF EVIL, CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA, THE MAVERICK QUEEN, THE LAST WAGON, RIVER OF NO RETURN, BROKEN LANCE etc. We kids loved anything with covered wagons and Indian attacks on forts, and heroes like Dale Robertson, Clint Walker, Audie Murphy or Guy Madison, or as teamed several times, Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter. 

My father also took me to all those John Wayne and James Stewart westerns, like NIGHT PASSAGE and Ford's THE SEARCHERS, where Hunter had his immortal moment as half-breed Martin Pawley (Wagner had tested for that for Ford would not cast him, it would have been Wagner's first teaming with Natalie Wood if he had).  

WHITE FEATHER: The story of the peace mission from the US cavalry to the Cheyenne Indians in Wyoming during the 1870s. The mission is threatened when a civilian surveyor befriends the chief's son and falls for the chief's daughter.

Wagner is the  lead here, and Jeff is Little Dog, the Indian brave, with Hugh O'Brien as his sidekick.  Debra Paget is the indian princess and stodgy John Lund also features. 

We have covered Jeff Hunter several times before - he is one of "People We Like" - he of course died aged 42 in 1969, Wagner is still here and writing entertaining books, at 86, while Hugh died last year aged 91. Wagner and Hunter appeared in at least 5 films together, as well as the all-star THE LONGEST DAY, while Hunter also did five with Debra Paget - we are very partial to their 1954 PRINCESS OF THE NILE where Deb does one of her torrid dances, and Jeff wears a turban and harem pants, in old Cairo, right. Debra was back out west with Elvis in his first film LOVE ME TENDER in 1956.

WHITE FEATHER though is well done, scripted by western maestro Delmar Daves, but directed by one Robert D. Webb.  

Vertigo poster

Here' an oddity - a poster for VERTIGO which I had not seen before ... was this an original from 1958? Was it ever used?

Midge's place ...

Looking at VERTIGO once again on Blu-ray is  a revelation - like those other Hitchs on Blu, its the music that grabs one - those great scores by Bernard Herrmann - here, and in PSYCHO particularly, they add so much more to the film ....  but now VERTIGO has something else for me: another Apartment We Love - Midge's place - is it  studio? is there a bedroom? overlooking San Francisco. Its just too divine and like Kate Hepburn's fancy New York apartment in DESK SET, or the Harrisons' swish London one in THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE or Jack Buchanan's so tasteful  (pure Minnelli) town house in THE BANDWAGON or of course the perfect mid-50s house created for NORTH BY NORTHWEST - we want to live there. 

I particularly like the ideal little kitchen area where Jimmy Stewart's Scottie makes some coffee - so compact with those ideal shelves and all one would need ...... Barbara Bel Geddes too creates one of Hitch's most sympathetic second female leads as Midge, just like Suzanne Pleshette in THE BIRDS or Diane Baker in MARNIE.

Even reading how the scene where Kim jumps into the bay was shot does not spoil the mood - it was actually a stand-in for that shot, and he jumped into parachute material, and the shot of Kim in the water was a tank shot, so nobody was actually in the ocean - movies, how we love them ! 

Some choice Oscar moments

Remember when the Academy Awards shows were exciting back in the 1970s as we saw the great stars presenting or collecting prizes. Before multi-channel 24 hour TV, these were treats indeed. Here are a few:

Susan Hayward's last public appearance in 1974 on the arm of old co-star Charlton Heston who was propping her up. Hayward was already fatally ill, she would die the next year, but here she is bewigged, medicated and determined to complete her last public outing in style. Watch the surprise on Ellen Burstyn's face as Glenda Jackson - not even there - wins a second Best Actress award for a comedy which I had no interest in seeing ...

I knew James Stewart and Kim Novak had teamed again sometime in the '80s to present an award. Here it is in 1989 .

Ingrid Bergman is choice as usual as she wins Best Supporting Actress for her cameo role in MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, also 1974 - and she had wanted Valentina Cortesa to win, to the chagrin of her fellow co-nominess ...

Faye Dunaway arrives to collect her Best Actress Oscar in 1976. Some wag wrote that the goddess looked like she had been doing drugs and having sex in her limousine before arriving all tousled on stage ...

Deborah Kerr receiving her Honorary Oscar, introduced by Glenn Close, in 1994.

Grant & Stewart -v- Cooper & Gable ...

Cary Grant and James Stewart now seem the most popular and timeless of the classic male stars – maybe each having done 4 films with Hitchcock, which are always on show somewhere, helps? (NOTORIOUS, REAR WINDOW, VERTIGO, NORTH BY NORTHWEST are certainly timeless classics). Whereas Clark Gable and Gary Cooper seem not as popular now and did not leave any late classics for us to mull over –well, apart from the elegaic THE MISFITS for Gable …

Both Grant and Stewart also had runs of popular films in the second half of the Fiftes; Grant squiring the likes of Kelly, Kerr, Bergman, Loren and continuing into the Sixties with the tailormade hit CHARADE, before bowing out in 1966; whereas Stewart also had that good run of Anthony Mann westerns and popular hits like THE GLENN MILLER STORY and ANATOMY OF A MURDER, he too continued into the Sixties playing bumbling fathers in Fox comedies and still busy in westerns.

Gable and Cooper though had gone by the dawn of the Sixties – Gable dying at 59 in 1960, and Cooper aged 60 in 1961. Like Spencer Tracy they seem to have aged rapidly, perhaps after years of hard living. Their later films, while entertaining and popular enough at the time, do not get much exposure these days ... 

Wyler’s FRIENDLY PERSUASION may be Coop’s last big hit, in 1956, we like it a lot and he is perfect in it.. He followed this with LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON which - despite Audrey Hepburn -  was a lesser-seen Wilder (which did not work for me at all), then a Jerry Wald literary adaptation (from O’Hara) for Fox: TEN NORTH FREDERICK, and two tough westerns: Mann’s MAN OF THE WEST and Daves’ THE HANGING TREE, in Rossen’s turgid THEY CAME TO CORDURA in 1959 he and Rita Hayworth are both touching – two beauties ravaged by time (what a difference 20 years makes), and he finished with two Michael Anderson thrillers made in England: he is effective in THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE with Heston, but ill-at-ease as the murder suspect (as if he would kill Deborah Kerr!) in the weak THE NAKED EDGE in 1961.

Gable after some routine westerns scored with Doris Day in TEACHER’S PET, and guyed his older image in the delightful BUT NOT FOR ME with Lilli Palmer and Carroll Baker in 1959, and was then off to romance Sophia Loren (30 years younger than him) in the popular IT STARTED IN NAPLES (left) before returning to the States for the tough shoot of THE MISFITS for Huston. Did all the delays and doing those stunts with the horses bring on his early demise? He certainly looked sadly aged here.

Perhaps if they – Coop and Gable – had the longevity of Grant and Stewart we may have seen more from them and maybe some more classics – not from Hitchcock though, by the Sixties he was using younger actors: Rod Taylor, Connery, Newman. 

Perhaps the Grant and Stewart personas with their constant sense of humour (even in serious roles)  fitted in better with suit-and-tie mid-century America, and those Hitchcocks certainly helped, Gable and Coop seemed more at home at war or out west. Gable used to finish at 5.00pm every day regardless and seemed happy doing mainly routine fare, cast with the likes of Lana Turner, Jane Russell or Ava Gardner. At least his later films got him Doris Day, Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe, and of course he had those constant revivals of GONE WITH THE WIND to keep his brand alive. 

Winchester '73 in 1950

I remembered seeing WINCHESTER '73 as a kid, at one of those Sunday matinees, when us '50s kids saw revivals of older movies (the 1942 costumer, Tyrone Power's SON OF FURY was another favourte), but had not seen it since. Catching it this week it is indeed a classic western, full of great moments and Anthony Mann certainly keeps us watching, as that gun is passed on from owner to owner and back to James Stewart, who won it initially. Stewart and Mann made a great series of westerns, some of which are classics of the genre: THE MAN FROM LARAMIE, THE FAR COUNTRY, THE NAKED SPUR, BEND OF THE RIVER etc. (I like Stewart's 1957 NIGHT PASSAGE too, though it not by Mann). Like Randolph Scott and Budd Boetticher they were a great time, and not just in westerns. (Mann also did that delicious Trash Classic I love: SERENADE in 1956 with Mario Lanza and Joan Fontaine, as well of course as epics like EL CID and FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, he created some great widescreen images.) 

In a marksmanship contest, Lin McAdam wins a prized Winchester rifle, which is immediately stolen by the runner-up, Dutch Henry Brown. This "story of a rifle" then follows McAdams' pursuit, and the rifle as it changes hands, until a final showdown and shoot-out on a rocky mountain precipice. 

Great set-pieces include the Indians attacking the cavalry troop (Tony Curtis, left, has a few moments here as a young trooper) while a pre-hunk Rock Hudson (above) is the Indian chief intent of warfare and getting those new guns for himself. 

Dan Duryea is splendidly repellent as usual, and Steve McNally provides a good final shoot-out with Stewart. Venal Charles Drake is travelling with saloon girl Shelley Winters and they have some good moments too, particularly when the Redskins attack.  Jay C. Flippen and John McIntrye are good support too. 
This remains one western one can enjoy anytime, it would probably get shown more often if it had been in colour. 

Cat people, or bewitched again ....

BELL BOOK AND CANDLE, 1958. A pleasure to see again yesterday. John Van Druten's play [the Harrisons - Rex and Lilli - had done it on the stage] is nicely transferred to screen in '58 by Richard Quine, with his muse of the time, Kim Novak at her zenith here as the witch who cannot fall in love - enter publisher James Stewart who has moved into the apartment above .... Its a lovely look at New York in the '50s, Stewart and Novak are teamed again right after Hitch's VERTIGO. The great supporting cast includes Jack Lemmon (just before SOME LIKE IT HOT) as her warlock brother, Ernie Kovacs as the writer on the lookout for witches, and Hermione Gingold as head witch, aided by Elsa Lanchester at her most ditzy, plus Janice Rule as Stewart's bitchy girlfriend, who it turns out was at college with Kim. Pyewacket the cat is super too. 

This is a great New York movie, and would be a terrific, if long, double bill with BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S -  which also has a great cat. 

Amusingly, this has now been seen in a gay context. Druten it seems was gay, and the coven of witches with their hidden culture and their own nightclub (presided over by la Gingold) could be read as coded for the secret life of gays in '50s New York. "They are all around us" Lemmon happily tells the bewildered Kovacs ... The Zodiac Club too is a great beat haven - in fact gays and beatniks are not too hard to find here in this Greenwich Village. It is tres amusing at the Club when Stewart and Janice turn up, and Kim causes a return of those thunderstorms which plagued Janice so, back at college. It was also Stewart's last as a romantic lead [he is 50 here], he really slipped into character parts with his next, the still terrific ANATOMY OF A MURDER, plus those father parts. [Nice to see him and Novak re-united handing out an award on one of those 80s Oscar shows].

Richard Quine directs with a light touch, ably assisted by James Wong Howe's lovely camerawork making New York at Christmas in the snow, positively enchanting. Daniel Taradash did the script (he also scripted FROM HERE TO ETERNITY) and the nice score is by George Duning. Kim makes a magical rather beatnik witch, always in black and that nice cape for the snow scene - with her shop of primitive art - then at the end when she is human she is in lavender and yellow and her shop is now "Flowers of the Sea" with sea shells - perhaps this, VERTIGO and STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET are her key roles. Pyewacket excels too ..... BB&C remains a welcome treat anytime. 

Vertigo, once again ....

It was on television again, and once again I got mesmerised watching it, particularly as on the BBC it had no commercial breaks, which always ruin the mood of a Hitchcock movie. We had that 'Hitchcock summer' in 2012, as I wrote then - Hitch label - when the BFI ran all the movies, and the BBC helped out too ... Hitch just never goes out of style, no matter how many times one has seen PSYCHO or THE BIRDS or NORTH BY NORTHWEST .... 

 

VERTIGO, now of course "Sight & Sound"'s new Number One Best Film Of all Time, having dislodged CITIZEN KANE, is the most dreamlike movie that turns cinema on its head. San Francisco in 1958 looks marvellous as Scottie (Stewart) drives around following Madeline.

And how do we feel about VERTIGO now? Some do not even regard it as the best Hitchcock. VERTIGO went missing for a long time in the '70s when it and a handful of other Hitch's were out of circulation (in that pre-video age) until he cannily re-released them to cinemas. People didn't see VERTIGO, they remembered it, as Robin Wood said. I love some elements of it - the dreamlike mesmerising early sections as Scottie follows Madeline around that ideal San Francisco, and that stunning transformation scene when Madeline comes back to Scottie, and that spellbinding music score,  its pure cinema obviously but for me NOTORIOUS, REAR WINDOW, PSYCHO, THE BIRDS and NORTH BY NORTHWEST are equally as good, and of course STRANGERS ON A TRAIN.  

One moment in VERTIGO jars for me though - Scottie follows Judy in the street and knocks at her hotel room door, she shows no reaction at all to see the man she had loved and duped suddenly at her door ....  Also, as so often with Hitchcock, the second lead female is often as fascinating as the heroine, think Barbara Bel Geddes's Midge, here, plus Suzanne Pleshette, Diane Baker, Vera Miles ....

I never bothered with THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY much, and in fact not seen it since I was a kid, but its on again this Saturday, so we may appreciate it more, after a programme on the various interviews Hitch did for the BBC over the years, at least Hitchcock always gave good interview. 

Forgotten '60s movies: Dear Brigitte

DEAR BRIGITTE is another of those gloopy comedies 20th Century Fox turned out in the early '60s featuring James Stewart, and directed once again by veteran Henry Koster. Here in 1965 Stewart (plus hairpiece) is the quirky professor and poet, who lives with his family on a riverboat. He always has a smart, spunky wife (its Maureen O'Hara in MR HOBBS TAKES A VACATION in '62, Audrey Meadows in TAKE HER SHE'S MINE in '63 (which I have not seen, but will before too long) and here it is Glynis Johns - last teamed with Stewart in 1951's NO HIGHWAY (also directed by Koster, who also helmed Stewart's HARVEY). There, Glynis was the air hostess helping Stewart's boffin about that dangerous flight ... here, they could be that married couple 15 years later ....

There is also of course a blonde daughter who again (as in MR HOBBS) has Fabian as a boyfriend. Fabian was amusing in HOUND DOG MAN and NORTH TO ALASKA but often ended up playing second banana to older stars like Stewart, Wayne, Crosby etc. Glynis (still here in her 90s) shines here, after her mother role in MARY POPPINS, I met her the next year 1966 when she was doing a play in London, and remember her enormous false eyelashes!  Wonderful Alice Pearce is also amusing here as the lady in the unemployment office with an eye for Professor Stewart ...

In DEAR BRIGITTE the professor's son Erasmus (freckled Billy Mumy) turns out to be a maths genius, attracting the attention of crooked John Williams. Erasmus though has no musical talent but writes letters to French star Brigitte Bardot - surely though he could not have seen many or any of her films? The plot takes us to Paris for the highlight of the film - a few minutes with Brigitte herself who appears very charming and friendly here and she even gives Erasmus an adorable little puppy! It is all pleasant, forgetttable stuff, so forgettable in fact that I had not seen it since its 1965 release and it never showed here again! 

We loved Stewart in the '30s: MR DEEDS and DESTRY; in the '40s: his Macaulay Connor in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, his films with his old pal Margaret Sullavan, his George Bailey in Bedford Falls in ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE; in the '50s with those Anthony Mann westerns, and Hitchcock classics - 1958 saw his last leading man roles in VERTIGO and BELL BOOK AND CANDLE, then 1959 saw the start of his older character roles in ANATOMY OF A MURDER. He did some more westerns: Ford's THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALLANCE is highly regarded (though I never cared for it myself, he seemed too old here for a start), HOW THE WEST WAS WON, SHENANDOAH, and those Fox comedies where he was the bumbling parent - rather an acquired taste now.  The best of his later roles was as the doctor with the equally aged John Wayne in THE SHOOTIST in 1976, where it was touching seeing the two old warriors having a last hurrah. (He died aged 89 in 1997).

Some more Brigitte:  with Robert Hossein in LOVE ON A PILLOW or THE WARRIOR'S REST in 1962 - which was a tedious chore to sit through, while BB and  Henri Vidal in COME DANCE WITH ME, 1959, is an absolute delight, totally charming with BB going undercover as a dance instructer to save her dentist husband from blackmail by scheming Dawn Addams; and with Vidal again and Charles Boyer in UNE PARISIENNE, 1957, another pleasant comedy by Michel Boisrond. 

We liked BB a lot in 1967's TWO WEEKS IN SEPTEMBER, at BB label...

In truth BB's career was winding down by then, 1965 - she had one great movie left, Malle's delightful arthouse hit VIVA MARIA with Moreau, in 1966, and I liked her TWO WEEKS IN SEPTEMBER from '67, but that dreadful Spanish western SHALAKO trashed her and the rest of the cast in 1968, and she had finished with movies by 1973, as she devoted her time to her animal welfare interests. 
BB sang too - I remember having a disk of hers "Sidonie" from the early '60s.

That new Top 50 !

Congratulations are due to "Sight & Sound" that pseudo-intellectual* British movie magazine on their latest list of the best movies ever, which they do every 10 years. By cunningly dislodging CITIZEN KANE from the top spot (where it has been since 1952) they have reaped astounding publicity here, so the new September issue with all the details, which I should be getting today, will surely be a sell-out. They made the evening news here and the internet has been abuzz with comment on the new list.

In case you did not hear, the new number one is VERTIGO - which ties in nicely with the BFI's mammoth Hitchcock season this summer (my previous post on this is at Hitchcock label). Just for the record, here are the other top 50 choices:

2. Citizen Kane / 3. Tokyo Story / 4. Rules Of The Game  / 5. Sunrise / 6. 2001: A Space Odyssey /7. The Searchers  / 8. Man With A Movie Camera  / 9. Passion Of Joan Of Arc / 10. 8 1/2 / 11. Battleship Potemkin / 12. L'Atalante  /13. A Bout De Souffle  /14. Apocalypse Now  / 15. Late Spring  /16. Au Hasard Balthazar  /17= Seven Samurai  / 17= Persona  / 19. Mirror  / 20. Singing In The Rain  / 21= L'Avventura / 21= Le Mepris  / 21= The Godfather  / 24= Ordet / 24= In The Mood For Love  / 26= Rashomon  / 26= Andrei Rublev  /28. Mulholland Drive  /29= Stalker  / 29= Shoah  / 31= The Godfather Part II  31= Taxi Driver / 33. Bicycle Thieves  / 34. The General  / 35= Metropolis  / 35= Psycho  /35= Jeanne Dielman  35= Satantango / 39= The 400 Blows 39= La Dolce Vita  /41. Voyage to Italy  /42= Pather Panchali  /42= Some Like It Hot  /42= Gertrud  /42= Pierrot Le Fou  /42= Play Time  /42= Close-Up  /48= The Battle Of Algiers  /48= Histoire Du Cinema  /50= City Lights  /50= Ugetsu Monogatari  / 50= La Jetee.

We all have our own lists of course, this is pretty standard after all those polls (they have polled over 800 critics and experts), what I like is seeing the individual choices of those polled - and what the next 50 will include. Here though apart from VERTIGO at Nr 1 there is just one other Hitchcock (PSYCHO), no Michael Powell or David Lean, just one Bergman - but at least L'AVVENTURA and VOYAGE TO ITALY have been re-discovered. Pleased to see Keaton, Tati, the Dreyer's and Ozu's - but 4 Godards ? (he is my blind spot...), also just one musical: the predictable SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, and just SOME LIKE IT HOT from Wilder. (I really will have to watch JEANNE DIELMAN soon, its been sitting in my pending pile for ages, along with that other ritzy Delphine Seyrig number DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS...).

The current magazine editor indicates that the intention was to knock CITIZEN KANE off the top spot, they "refreshed" the poll by inviting younger critics and omitting to ask several of the older generation (like Penelope Houston, the original editor of S&S), which seems inconsiderate at least. Its this attitude of "CITIZEN KANE is old hat now, let's have a new number one" which jars. As he says: "I remember hoping last time that Citizen Kane would get knocked off and it never happened, so yes, I was surprised. And delighted."Citizen Kane, which is a lot of bombast and is very theatrical and slightly hammy by modern acting standards. Vertigo is about our inner life." Thus the new opinion-makers try to change received opinion ....

Maybe more comment when I have perused the actual results in full. 

* I liked "Sight & Sound" a lot when it was published quatertly in the '60s and '70s (and have kept a lot of those issues) and did not consider it intellectual at all, like "Films & Filming"  and "Movie" and the American "Film Comment" there were lots in it to read and return to; it did not seem the same though once it went monthly and suddenly seemed self-consciously arty, if not downright pretentious. But magazines and their editors change over the years ...(magazines label). "Sight & Sound" can keep going decade after decade as it has the BFI (British Film Institute) money, while other privately-owned magazines like "Films & Filming" or "Films Illustrated" fold ...

And how do we feel about VERTIGO at number one? Some do not even regard it as the best Hitchcock. VERTIGO went missing for a long time in the '70s when it and a handful of other Hitch's were out of circulation (in that pre-video age) until he cannily re-released them to cinemas. People didn't see VERTIGO, they remembered it, as Robin Wood said. I love some elements of it - the dreamlike mesmerising early sections as Scottie follows Madeline around that ideal San Francisco, and that stunning transformation scene when Madeline comes back to Scottie, and that spellbinding music score,  its pure cinema obviously but for me NOTORIOUS, REAR WINDOW, PSYCHO, THE BIRDS and NORTH BY NORTHWEST are equally as good.

Now that I have got the new issue, the remainder of the Top 100 are:

53 - Rear Window  / North by Northwest  / Raging Bull  / 56 - M  / Touch of Evil  / The Leopard  / 59 - Sherlock Jr  / Sansho dayu  / Le Maman et la Putain  / Barry Lyndon  / 63 - Modern Times  / Sunset Boulevard  / Night of the Hunter  / Wild Strawberries  / Rio Bravo  / Pickpocket  / 69 - A Man Escaped  / Blade Runner  / Sans Soleil  / Blue Velvet  / 73 - Le Grande Illusion  / Les Enfants du Paradis / The Third Man / L'Eclisse  / Nashville / 78 - Once Upon a Time in the West  / Chinatown / Beau Travail  / 81 - The Magnificent Ambersons / Lawrence of Arabia / The Spirit of the Beehive / 84 - Greed / Casablanca / The Colour of Pomegranates / The Wild Bunch / Fanny and Alexander / A Brighter Summer Day / 90 - Partie de campagne / A Matter of Life and Death / Aguirre Wrath of God / 93 - Intolerance / Un chien andalou / The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp / Madame de ... / The Seventh Seal / Imitation of Life / Touki-Bouki / A One and a Two.

- a few unknown to me here, but most of the usual suspects present .... The breakdowns of how many from each decade, or country, interesting too. There is a selection of the individual voting, and directors' choices - the full lists will be available on line at the BFI website as from 15 August. The new look magazine is better designed too.

Otto's Anatomy of a Murder

This is probably the greatest courtroom drama ever made and it features one of James Stewart's finest screen performance and Lee Remick is just perfect as Laura Mannion - not quite a tramp but enjoys her power to excite men - which goes too far one night when she is brutally raped. Controversial in its day for using words like "panties" and "sperm", Otto Preminger's film still enthralls with its close examination of a murder trial - one could see it as a companion piece to his 1962 ADVISE AND CONSENT - reviewed recently here (dramas, gay interest labels). As Michigan hick lawyer and jazz fan (cue Duke Ellington) Stewart is drawn into the case and comes up against flash big town prosecutor George C. Scott (in his breakthrough role). Their courtroom duels and stunts are mesmerising, revealing an America in 1959 leaving its traditional moral values behind as that new decade the '60s dawn, so it has that 1959 look in spades and is a key American film of that year, like NORTH BY NORTHWEST, SOME LIKE IT HOT etc. Its a long film which never dawdles but fizzes along.

The real courtroom judge presides over the case, Saul Bass's credits are exemplary as usual and as the young trailerpark couple Lee Remick and Ben Gazzara (he died last year, RIP label) have perfect chemistry too. Arthur O'Connell has a great role too as Stewart's sidekick redeeming himself while Eve Arden has not much to do but it is great to have her there as their secretary.

The case is interestingly worked out to the final denoument, with Kathryn Grant as a key witness (she soon gave it all up to be Mrs Bing Crosby). A key 50s film then and one of Otto's major works before his work fizzled out by the late 60s. After those two with Kim Novak in 1958 this was really the start of Stewart's character roles. Lee Remick has always been one of my favourites, as per my many posts here on her, I met her in 1970. She left us far too young.

 Ben Gazzara is the hothead army soldier (he slaps his wife around now and then)  who shoots the respected local inn-keeper who raped his wife, then pleads insanity or an "irrrestible impulse". Lee is great as the suggestive tease who leaves you questioning her motives throughout. She and Stewart have some nice scenes together as he coaches her to be less trampy and how to conduct herself in court. There is that great moment when she lets her hair down ... This was a sensational film at the time, I remember getting the paperback, great to see it holds up marvellously over 50 years later.

Christmas treats ...

Starting with a box of macaroons from Paris - the box is a work of art in itself, I feel tempted to hang it on the wall, it has a lovely black cat on it - also a spice & marmalade cake, also from Pierre Herme, Paris. Then dipping in and out of all those old movies on television, catching up with some not seen since I was a kid, and a few old favourites.

NIGHT PASSAGE is a pleasant memory of a '50s Sunday afternoon matinee, this 1957 James Stewart western should have been another of his tough westerns with Anthony Mann, but Mann walked due to script problems, so it was directed by James Neilson. A look at frontier life along the railroad, with train robberies; I remember liking this scene with Stewart and young Brandon DeWilde on the train, also on board was Elaine Stewart (another of this year's departees, aged 80) married to big boss Jay C Flippen! Audie Murphy and Dan Duryea were among the baddies, and Ellen Corby another tough frontier woman.

TARZAN'S GREATEST ADVENTURE from 1959 - not seen this since then but its as effective and violent (effectively directed by John Gullermin) as I remembered - Gordon Scott the perfect Tarzan for '50s kids, Anthony Quayle a terrific villain with young Sean Connery and Niall McGuinness in his gang, along with bad girl Scilla Gabel - Sophia Loren's stand-in on BOY ON A DOLPHIN, and here starting out her own career as a sizzling eurobabe. Scilla was always good value in Steve Reeves epics and movies as diverse as SODOM AND GOMORRAH and my fave MODESTY BLAISE.

THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER - one of those lavish (it says here...) 1977 remakes, helmed by the usually reliable Richard Fleischer (THE VIKINGS, BARBABBAS) this is an idiotic remake of the Erroll Flynn original. Lurid colours and guest stars aplenty: Charlton Heston, the older Rex Harrison, Raquel Welch is mainly silent - the interest for me is the re-teaming of Oliver Reed (rather portly here) and David Hemmings as his evil brother - their hell-raising was taking its toll on them here, since they were young in 1964's THE SYSTEM, a key movie for me then [review at David Hemmings label], showing the 60s just starting to swing. Mark Lester as both the prince and the pauper shows that most perfect child actors (OLIVER) grow up to be very uninteresting indeed, he is lanky here with frizzy hair and there is no difference at all between his two roles ... an amusing time-waster then, not in the same league as the producers' delightful star-stuffed MUSKETEERS films by Richard Lester. Right: THE SYSTEM gang in '64 including Olly and David Hemmings - 2 years later he was the star of Antonioni's BLOW-UP and the icon of the age!

THE SEARCHERS. A classic one never tires of of course, like THE QUIET MAN and VERTIGO, also afternoon or late night delights. More on Ford's classic western at Jeffrey Hunter label - he has that bath scene here with Vera Miles (Mrs TARZAN in real life as she was then married to Gordon Scott!; her pregnancy cost her that leading role in VERTIGO). I shall get around to appreciating Vera in due course. What is jarring about THE SEARCHERS now is the treatment of the squaw Hunter accidentally marries; but to counterbalance that we have those essentially 50s yet timeless scenes with those characters Martin Pawley, Laurie Jurgenson and Natalie Wood's Debbie.

MANSFIELD PARK, the 1999 film of a Jane Austen novel seems to have divided opinions, as a lot of Austen purists hate it. I read the book some time ago, it is not my favourite Austen - that is PERSUASION by a mile, one I can re-read and like all 3 adaptations (costume drama label). The priggish Fanny Price is indeed Austen's least loveable heroine as she relishes her moral superiority over the other young people putting on the play, which she does not approve of. It is a good cast here though, with Harold Pinter (left) as Sir Thomas Bertram whose business interests in Antigua turn out to be slavery, James Purefoy and Johnny Lee Miller as his sons; the marvellous Sheila Gish (right) as Mrs Norris who tries to keep Fanny as the poor relation, and Lindsay Duncan as both Fanny's downtrodden mother and opium-addicted wife of Sir Thomas. Frances O'Connor is a spirited Fanny, but hardly fair to Austen's original.

Finally, a re-view of 1958's A TALE OF TWO CITIES as well, not seen since I was a kid. French actor Paul Guers who did actually look like Bogarde, plays Charles Darnay whom Dirk replaces on the guillotine - Guers has been in some other items I saw recently like Demy's BAY OF ANGELS and THE GIRL WITH GOLDEN EYES (both at French label). This is solid Rank Organisation fare by Ralph Thomas with all those familiar featured players: Rosalie Crutchley, Freda Jackson, Athene Seyler, Christopher Lee, Donald Pleasance etc, all looking splendidly in period.

THIS HAPPY BREED. Another perennial favourite, as I have written about before (Kay Walsh label). Kay excels as Queenie the dissatisfied daughter of Robert Newton and Celia Johnson; and there is that endless bickering between Amy Vaness's mother-in-law and Alison Legatt's spinster sister, all part of the Higgins family in Clapham between the wars. The period detail is just perfect and the emotions are fully engaged, particuarly that scene when the parents in the garden are told of the deaths of their son and his wife, as the camera stays in the sitting room where afternoon tea is about to be served ...

And one discovery: THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE from 2005: "When the Pevensie family are evacuated out to the country, they are unaware of the adventure they will encounter. During a game of hide and seek, the youngest daughter, Lucy discovers a wardrobe which transports her to the land of Narnia. Covered in snow, Narnia is full of weird and wonderful creatures, but is watched over by the evil White Witch. When all four Pevensie children end up through the wardrobe, they discover that it was meant to be, as two daughters of Eve and two sons of Adam must join with the mighty lion, Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) to defeat the evil White Witch". Tilda Swinton is perfect as the Ice Queen/White Witch and James McAvoy (whom I had not though much of) is an adorable faun and the children are just perfect. For a CGI movie I liked it a lot, and Andrew Adamson's direction is also perfect! I shall have to watch the others now ...

The new DOWNTON ABBEY special is indeed a treat, and ticks all the right boxes, and the new GREAT EXPECTATIONS is an odd re-telling, rather different from Lean's version, with Ray Winstone a perfect Magwitch, and Gillian Anderson as a wraith-like younger Miss Havisham. Unusual though to see a plain-jane Estella (who is meant to be a glacial beauty out of the rather ordindary Pip's league), but here Pip with his sculptured cheekbones and pouting lips, is much prettier than her! Pip is Douglas Booth who was one of Isherwood's boys in CHRISTOPHER AND HIS KIND (gay interest label). Now for that BEN HUR re-boot, with Winstone again (as Jack Hawkins). It cannot be a patch on Wyler's classic but may have some cheap laughs!

BEN HUR (2010) actually turned out to be quite interesting, shot in Morocco it looks more like THE LIFE OF BRIAN than a Hollywood blockbuster, and wisely does not try to be - the chariot race for instance is much smaller scale (no circus maximus here) and the ships at war are courtesy of CGI effects and there are interesting script variations from the Wyler film. Winstone is a mumbling Arrius, Hugh Bonneville good as a nasty Pilate, Alex Kingston right as Mrs Hur (the leprosy is also played down), but in all a radical re-working of the original material. Joseph Morgan is a totally underwhelming uncharismatic Ben, but Stephen Campbell Moore (from THE HISTORY BOYS) a rather good Messala.

We will though be still watching the Lean and Wyler originals when these lightweight remakes are soon forgotten - I tuned in to Lean's EXPECTATIONS again yesterday and was bowled over again by how perfect it all was, with that great double act of Martita Hunt and Jean Simmons as the perfect Havisham and Estella, and that marvellous black and white photography, so right for Dickens.