White Hunter Black Heart, 1990

A thinly fictionalized account of a legendary movie director, whose desire to hunt down an elephant turns into a grim situation with his movie crew in Africa.

The blurb states: "For a film of "excitement, wit and intelligence" (Rex Reed) the hunt ends here. As both star and director of WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART, Clint Eastwood plays one of his most colourful roles and crafts one of the most acclaimed movies of his 45-year career.

He plays John Wilson, a brilliant driven film director (loosely based on legendary John Huston) determined to turn his new project in Africa into personal adventure hunting a wild elephant. Jeff Fahey, Marisa Berenson and George Dzundza co-star in this rugged, robust movie from the novel by co-screenwriter Peter Viertel, who accompanied Huston to Africa in 1950 to work on THE AFRICAN QUEEN. Filmed on location in Zimbabwe and London, WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART is a bold trek into the heart of adventure". 

Well they would say that I suppose, but there is no "loosely based" about it. Clint's character is meant to be Huston, and the film they are making is THE AFRICAN QUEEN, with Marisa Berenson a convincing Hepburn character (Bogie and Bacall - also on the location - are not as developed here). 

We were discussing THE AFRICAN QUEEN over at IMDB, which got me interested in this, which I had missed at the time, as indeed I had most of Eastwood's films, I just do not find him or his films interesting (apart from the early stuff like PLAY MISTY FOR ME or DIRTY HARRY). Viertel was a fascinating guy too, writer and Hollywood marverick, who married Deborah Kerr, and knew Huston, Hemingway etc. well, as per his fascinating memoir. (His mother Salka was an intimate of Garbo's). There is a strong British contingent here, with Timothy Spall, Alun Armstrong and Richard Warwick, and Fahey is a pleasing presence. Eastwood gets Huston's speech patterns and mannerisms off pat, so its a fascinating look at movie-making, but really anyone not familar with THE AFRICAN QUEEN or who these people were, would be totally at sea. The climax with the elephants is well handled too. Having seen Berenson recently on the stage, see label, it was interesting to see her again here and she too (like Blanchett) sketches a passable Kate. Hepburn's slim  memoir of making the film is a fascinating read too with great photographs. 
Huston returned to Africa in 1957 for another elephant saga, THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN, about saving elephants, not shooting them. 

Romeo & Juliet at The Garrick

To London for the Kenneth Branagh production of ROMEO AND JULIET, co-directed by Branagh, a Shakespeare I am not that keen on and it has been done so many times (at least 6 films?), but the cast of this current production whetted the interest. 

The leads are Freddie Fox (whom I last saw on stage as Bosie to Rupert Everett's Oscar Wilde in THE JUDAS KISS a few years ago, and who has since done TV work like CUCUMBER and films like PRIDE); Freddie stepped in at 48 hours notice (due to the injury of Richard Madden); Juliet is the equally busy Lily James (DOWNTON ABBEY, WAR & PEACE, CINDERELLA), 

Meera Syal gets a lot of value of value out of the Nurse, and Derek Jacobi now in his 80s is a very lively if older Mercutio - he even dances around the stage and seems fully recovered from leg injuries. 

Lady Capulet is that international star since the 1970s Marisa Berenson (DEATH IN VENICE, CABARET), whom I like watching as The Countess of Lyndon in re-runs of Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON (currently on release again after 40 years). She is just as mesmerising and ageless on stage here. 

The production (almost three hours long) does have its longeurs when reams of dialogue have to be delivered, but the essentials grip one and the staging is eye-popping, 

set in a 1950s Verona in the grip of the LA DOLCE VITA era: cue sharp suits, white shirts, sunglasses at night. The Capulet's masked ball is rather like that disco in THE GREAT BEAUTY and it certainly commands the attention. I liked it a lot more than the drab black costumes on a black stage setting of that RICHARD III also seen recently - see Shakespeare label. 

This R&J finishes this week and we then get Kenneth Branagh as John Osborne's THE ENTERTAINER, hardly revived since Olivier did it. 

Barry Lyndon is back ...

A super new trailer for Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON, his 1975 film which perplexed people at the time, but now seems a timeless masterpiece. It is being reissued by the BFI in July, and should win a lot of new admirers when seen on cinema screens. Though I got the blu-ray recently I think I will have to experience it again on a cinema screen, particularly that perfect central sequence where our hero Redmond Barry meets the Countess of Lyndon .... did the 18th century ever look better? as I have written about here before (Ryan O'Neal label). 

For the weekend: a favourite scene ...

I absolutely love this scene from Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON - 1975 - and could watch it over and over (my Blu-ray gets played frequently), for the stunning photography and visuals recreating that 18th century, the throbbing music as the Countess of Lyndon and Barry connect at the gambling table, watched by her son's tutor Reverend Runt (the great Murray Melvin) - and then when they touch and kiss in the moonlight, like two helpless puppets pulled by invisible strings .... the following scenes are wonderful too with more great sets and photography. (see O'Neal label for my full review a while back).

BARRY LYNDON is an award-winning period film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844) by William Makepeace Thackeray. It recounts the exploits of an unscrupulous 18th century Irish adventurer (Barry Lyndon né Redmond Barry), particularly his rise and fall within English society. 

I felt I should have the music soundtrack, but the CD is not available now, except for very silly prices. But what is the music here - is it Schubert's Trio Op 100  for violin, cello and piano? 

Redmond Barry meets the Countess of Lyndon

Hard to believe Stanley Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON is 40 years old this year. I have just been looking at the Blu-ray, its still a towering achievement and certainly one of the greatest costume dramas ever, as Kubrick recreates the 18th Century before our eyes - we certainly liked it at the time. After the enormous success of 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY and the controversy over A CLOCKWORK ORANGE a lot of people were baffled that he next turned to a hefty 18th century novel by Thackeray (who also wrote "Vanity Fair" about another operator making their way through society, though Becky Sharp seemed sharper than Barry, who is often seen as a bit dim here). It seems Kubrick could only get the finance from Warner Bros if he cast his hero from a list of 'names' of the time, but only Robert Redford and Ryan O'Neal were suitable. Redford passed, so Ryan it was. He is actually quite right here, and does what Kubrick needed from him. Marisa Berenson is also perfectly right as the pallid, passive Countess.

An Irish rogue wins the heart of a rich widow and assumes her dead husband's aristocratic position in 18th-century England, or:

In the Eighteenth Century, in a small village in Ireland, Redmond Barry is a young farm boy in love with his cousin Nora Brady. When Nora gets engaged to the British Captain John Quin, Barry challenges him to a duel of pistols. He wins and escapes to Dublin but is robbed on the road. Without an alternative, Barry joins the British Army to fight in the Seven Years War. He deserts and is forced to join the Prussian Army where he saves the life of his captain and becomes his protégé and spy of the Irish gambler Chevalier de Balibari. He helps Chevalier and becomes his associate until he decides to marry the wealthy Lady Lyndon. They move to England and Barry, in his obsession of nobility, dissipates her fortune and makes a dangerous and revengeful enemy.

I love that whole sequence of where they meet at the gambling table (the painted faces, the wigs, the candles burning), after he earlier noticing her in the lawns with her old husband in a bath-chair, with her young son, Viscount Bullingdon, and his tutor, Murray Melvin again, as Reverend Runt. This is a fabulous scene as Barry and the Countess lock eyes over the cards, as that music throbs, and he follows her out on the balcony where they come together like a pair of marionettes whose wires are being pulled by unseen hands ....

Add in the great Marie Kean as Barry's mother, Hardy Kruger, Patrick Magee as the Chevalier, Frank Middlemass, Andre Morell, Leonard Rossiter and Steven Berkoff and others and all the characters are compulsive too. It is over three hours long but one wants to watch it slowly, revelling in what we we see, as the 18th Century conducts itself in war and at the gambling tables, idling their time away. The battles scenes are stupendous too, as drilled by Kubrick, and lensed by John Alcott, with Ken Adam's production design, and that music by Schubert, Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Handel, and traditional Irish tunes by The Chieftians. The candle-lit interiors and seemingly natural lighting of course were sensational and revolutionary at the time, Even now, the candle-lit interiors in the BBC series WOLF HALL are considered too dark and murky! 
It is telling at the end that the date on the money order the Countess is writing for her absent husband is the date of the French Revolution: 1789. Changes would be happening to these idle classes. The end title says it all, as narrated dryly by Michael Hordern.

BARRY LYNDON is a great companion piece to Richardson's TOM JONES, that other sprawling novel and marvellous film about another 18th century rogue!