Deborah's Sister Clodagh and Sister Angela

Two of our enduring favourites were screened again recently, and despite having them on disk I had to tune in once again. We simply love Deborah Kerr's two nuns:  the superior Sister Clodagh in Michael Powell's masterwork BLACK NARCISSUS from 1947, when Deborah was all of 26 and in charge of those nuns in that convent in the high Himalyas - as per my other posts of it, so I won't repeat myself, see Narcissus label.

A decade later in HEAVEN KNOWS, MR ALLISON in 1957 she is that much simpler Irish nun Sister Angela alone on that pacific island (it was filmed in Tobago).... as this blurb states:  As World War II rages, tough marine Robert Mitchum is stranded on a desert island with nun Deborah Kerr. Cracking romantic chemistry in this ace John Huston adventure. Screenplay by John Lee Mahin the veteran who scripted that chemistry in 1932's RED DUST and and its 50s remake MOGAMBO as well as the fun western NORTH TO ALASKA (his last credit is a Jean Seberg movie I love MOMENT TO MOMENT in 1965. 

We have written about this before, here - see Kerr, Powell labels - it remains a deeply affecting movie, among Huston's best, I certainly prefer it to his similar AFRICAN QUEEN. MR ALLISON actually has a lot of affinities with Mitchum's RIVER OF NO RETURN in 1954 - people in the wilderness having to survive while surrounded by hostile enemies, and there's the similar scene where there Mitch has to warm up numb Marilyn Monroe, and here the wet sister Angela; they catch and cook a moose in RIVER, its that unfortunate basking turtle in MR ALLISON .... 

Deborh's nuns are as iconic as her governesses (THE KING AND I, THE INNOCENTS) and she worked with Huston several times, also in the silly 60s spoof CASINO ROYALE in 1967 and to great effect in NIGHT OF THE IGUANA in 1964. She and Mitchum had great chemistry together, as also in THE GRASS IS GREENER in 1960 and perfectly in Zinnemann's THE SUNDOWNERS which should have bagged her the 1960 Best Actress Oscar, in fact, as I mentioned before, I would have made it a tie with her and her friend Jean Simmons (not even nominated for ELMER GANTRY where her co-stars Burt and Shirley Jones got their awards) - Liz could still have (deservedly) won in 1966.  It would have been culmination of Deborah's and Jean's great decade, the two British roses who went to Hollywood and were very big stars indeed in the 1950s and early '60s. But it was not to be .... Deb's nuns though remain an evergreen treat. She also teamed with Mitchum again later in that 80s telefilm about an army reunion. of course had great chemistry with frequent co-stars Cary, Burt, Niven, Brynner,  More on her at Kerr label. 

My very favourite film

Take the usual ingredients: a wilful heroine, an unconventional leading man, supporting characters we like and want to see more of, mix in the mystical highlands of Scotland, add in some Scottish castles, Scottish dances and songs, and the result is perfection. 
"Yes, but money isn't everything" ... That is probably the key line in I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING - Powell & Pressburger's timeless romantic fantasy from 1945 (the year I was born). The very independent Joan Webster who wants to marry a rich man travels up to the highlands on her way to the remote island of Kiloran which the millionaire has rented, but a storm forces her to stay on the mainland, at Erraig the house of Catriona (whose husband is away in the Far East, and children at boarding school), the war must be still on. Also staying is a friend of Catriona's Torquil whom Joan realises she is falling for, hence her desire to get away to the island. Navy officer Torquil [who is the real Laird of Kiloran] realising her dangerous plan to go out to sea in the storm helps her but the storm defeats them and the weary travellers arrive back at the house where Catriona puts Joan to bed in her own room with a roaring fire. (how wonderful it seems now to have real fires in bedrooms!). Catriona soon puts Joan to rights as Joan thinks that all these highland people are poor because they have no money so why doesn't Catriona sell her house Erraig, and their neighbour Mrs Crozier could sell her estate Achnacroish and Torquil could sell Kiloran - Catriona thinks about it and then says decisively "yes, but money isn't everything".  
The early scenes are marvellous too, at that fancy restaurant with Joan and her father and her trip by train to the Highlands - this was the real age of rail travel with sleeping compartments and attentive stewards. 

The next morning sees the storm abated, Joan has come to her senses as she sits on the table and says "I can't do a thing with my hair" and wonders where her wedding dress is (it was lost in the storm) to which Torquil replies "a mermaid will get married in it". The boat from Kiloran finally arrives to collect her, but will she have a change of heart? .... enter 3 pipers and the most perfect ending imaginable.

There is also that lovely detour to the Castle of Sorne to visit some snobby neighbours whom the pompous millionaire thinks are the only people worth knowing locally - it is the most perfect location with that high window seat (and young Petula Clark is the daughter) and then there is that lovely interlude at Achnacroish with Rebecca Crozier (Nancy Price) who sees Joan's worth at once and we have the highland dancing as the magic works on Joan. Torquil who is also there explains "highland economics" to Joan - letting Kiloran for three years means he can live there for six - and the millionaire installing a swimming pool means that "money spent is money earned" for the local workmen whom they travel with on the bus. The highlands scenes are marvellously shot, as we visit Tobermoreyand the Western Isles Hotel, and the Isle of Mull. 

These are just some moments from this lovely film, which grows on one at each viewing. The cast are all superb: Wendy Hiller as Joan, Roger Livesey (that voice!) as Torquil (he was not actually at the highland locations due to being in a play in London - his scenes are interiors, with a stand-in for location shots), Nancy Price as Mrs Crozier and that very individual actress Pamela Brown as Catriona, the resourceful woman managing on her own, in that perfect 1940s house, while her husband and children are away (she was Powell's lover at the time and until her death aged 58 in 1975) - her entry here with her dogs and gun and a rabbit presents her like Diana the huntress - as she says "if I don't shoot this rabbit then I don't eat"! She and Torquil are old friends and she soon realises the attraction between him and Joan. Hiller is delightful too as Joan who is used to getting her own way (as set out in the breezy introduction). The climax with the ruined castle and that curse and the highland tune are also just right. I also like the great photography with those great black and white images [like WHISKEY GALORE that other great film shot in Scotland in the '40s]. A film to cherish then, it may well be my favourite film of all. Like THE QUIET MAN or THE SEARCHERS it's admirers are legion and devoted, just like for Powell's others like BLACK NARCISSUS, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH and THE RED SHOES all of which I also love dearly.

Black narcissus

BLACK NARCISSUS was on once again and once again there I was watching it one more time, its a film that never palls and is so richly textured that one discovers new aspects to it. It is probably my Number One movie now among my best/favourite films ever ... as per my previous posts here, see label. Every element is perfect here, I would not want to change a moment of it.

It is on the one hand a very 1940s lurid melodrama set in that convent/harem high in the Himalayas, from the popular book by Rumer Godden. It is also maybe the best of the Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger classics (I also love I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, THE RED SHOES..) as key British films of the '40s. The look of this 1947 film is amazing, so many shots of the convent and the mountains and landscapes are beautiful as are those flashbacks to Ireland in that rich '40s Technicolor, as photographed by ace camerama Jack Cardiff (see also PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, and that desert adventure LEGEND OF THE LOST, plus THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL etc, as per Cardiff label).

This time around I liked that early introduction to the convent as we follow the old Ayah (May Hallatt) around the deserted halls while the mother superior registers her disapproval of young Sister Clodagh being put in charge of the mountain convent. The other nuns are nicely depicted too: Sister Honey, Sister Briony and Sister Phillipa who plants flowers instead of vegetables ... Deborah Kerr at 26 (a decade before her lovely Sister Angela in HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON) is ideal as Sr Clodagh and Kathleen Byron's Sister Ruth comes into her own in the closing scenes as she leaves the convent, puts on that red dress and lipstick and goes in search of Mr Dean, the land agent in the shorts, who has been having an unsettling feeling on both her and Sr Clodagh .... there is that scene in a red mist as Mr Dean rejects her .... the convent at sunset as the nuns search for her, and Sr Clodagh wearily goes to toll the bell .... this is delirious stuff that no matter how often one sees it keeps one enthralled. that stunning cut too and then the aftermath .... 

That ending is perfect too as the nuns leave as the clouds swallow up the convent, and there is that deeply emotional final meeting of Sr Clodagh and Mr Dean when their affection and love is apparant as they have to say goodbye, and she asks him to do one final thing for her ... I love too that shot of the rain starting to fall on those giant leaves as the caravan moves on.  Back around 1980 when I got miy first vhs video recorder BLACK NARCISSUS was one of the first films I taped on those clunky cassettes, so we used to see that scene over and over ... I have not even mentioned Jean Simmons as Kanchi and Sabu as the young general with that perfume "Black Narcissus" from the Army & Navy Stores in London ... and to think it was all created in the studios with some stunning matte shots.

The blue dress and the red shoes

Just one marvellous costume from Michael Powell's THE RED SHOES that 1948 delirious movie - no wonder its a Scorsese favourite - from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger.

This particular costume was designed by Jacques Fath, a completely self-taught designer, learning his craft from studying museum exhibitions and books about fashion. He presented his first collection in 1937, and became - together with Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain - one of the three dominant influencers of postwar haute couture. 
In 1954, he died of leukemia. Thankfully he got to design some costumes for movies, He dressed Kay Kendall in GENEVIEVE and ABDULLAH THE GREAT.  She would have been ideal for his fashions (and she too died of leukemia in 1959 - as per my posts on her, Kendall label.). 

He also created this lovely outfit, in a wonderful shade of blue/sea green, for ballerina Moira Shearer. I love that dreamy scene where she wears it ascending those stairs to meet the ruthless but charismatic impressario Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) who will offer her that dream role in "The Red Shoes" ballet .... see Michael Powell/Jack Cardiff labels for more on this fantastic film, its a 1940s dreamworld where Jack Cardiff's Technicolor seems positively psychedelic - as in BLACK NARCISSUS. Moira Shearer is perfect here too - though she was later a victim of Powell's PEEPING TOM!  (right: Kay in GENEVIEVE).
Walbrook is a Person We Like here; he died in 1967 and is buried opposite Kay Kendall in that charming Hampstead cemetry I have written about here before - Walbrook label.

RIP, continued ...

England's "Daily Telegraph" has an obituary on Austrian actor Carl Boehm (or as they spell it, Karlheinz Bohm), who has died at age 86. Boehm (born in 1928, the son of conductor Karl Boehm) died on 28 May. He is of course best known as the PEEPING TOM of Michael Powell's notorious 1960 shocker.
 
Boehm was also very popular in the 1950s in the German SISSI films, as Emperor Franz Joseph opposite teenage Romy Schneider as the Austrian Empress Elizabeth. They made 3 SISSI films (there is a compilation film FOREVER MY LOVE). He also played Beethoven for Walt Disney (which I remember seeing as a kid), and co-starred with Dolores Hart in the 1963 comedy COME FLY WITH ME, as well as playing one of the Grimm Brothers in THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM, and in Minnelli's FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, both 1962. His career revived in the 1970s with 4 films for Rainer Fassbinder, the best of which was FOX AND HIS FRIENDS (see German label). He later become involved in charity work in Ethiopia - leaving his 4th wife, an Ethiopian, to survive him.
PEEPING TOM will endure as long as PSYCHO in cinema annals as among the key films of 1960, not least for Boehm's interpretation of the killer cameraman. 

Gordon Willis (1931-2014), aged 82, defined the look of Seventies thriller cinema - think KLUTE, THE PARALLAX VIEW, THE GODFATHER films, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, several Woody Allen films including ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN, STARDUST MEMORIES. I have just got Hal Ashby's 1970 THE LANDLORD (review soon) which he also lensed.  He served in the Air Force during the Korean War, and his later films looked so individual and unsettling due to his lighting technique of using shadows - "shadows and light".

Peeping Tom, 1960

Another visionary director: Michael Powell. I was surprised to see Michael Powell’s notorious shocker PEEPING TOM get an outing on British television, even if on a minor horror channel, bet it was a surprise for regular views of its usually tepid fare. 

Though I have the dvd it was marvellous to watch it again, starting with that lurid opening with Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) following that prostitute (“It will be two quid”) into that alleyway off Oxford Street, London, as he films her with his camera with its spike and mirror so she can watch her own death …. This of course outraged people at the time, and supposedly finished Powell’s career. Like PSYCHO, also 1960, it re-defined the horror film and remains stunning cinema. Likewise that sequence with dancer Moira Shearer, from Powell's THE RED SHOES, followed by the amusing scenes at the film studio where Mark works, as we wait for the body to be discovered ...Like Hitch with PSYCHO Powell plays with our expectations of fear and dread, laced with humour.

Boehm is terrific and the others – Anna Massey, Maxine Audley, Moira Shearer, Shirley Ann Field, and Brenda Bruce – are perfectly cast too. The plot is too well known to mention much here: loner Mark is obsessed with the effects of fear which dates from when his scientist father experimented with him when he was a child, now he has to kill and record his actions, as he gets to know that nice girl who lives below him, but her blind mother is suspicious as she hears him pacing around upstairs. The glamour photo industry of the time is nicely caught too, as a friend says, producing a glamour shot “You don’t get that in “Sight & Sound”! It captures that 1959 era nicely, what with the newsagent shop secretly selling porn, and the 'glamour' photography industry.

Black Narcissus, once more...

BLACK NARCISSUS was on once again and once again there I was watching it one more time, its a film that never palls and is so richly textured that one discovers new aspects to it. It is probably equal to BLOW-UP now among my best/favourite films ever ... as per my previous posts here.

It is on the one hand a very 1940s lurid melodrama set in that convent/harem high in the Himalayas, from the popular book by Rumer Godden. It is also maybe the best of the Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger classics (I also love I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, THE RED SHOES..) as key British films of the '40s. The look of this 1947 film is amazing, so many shots of the convent and the mountains and landscapes are beautiful as are those flashbacks to Ireland in that rich '40s Technicolor, as photographed by ace camerama Jack Cardiff (see also PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, and that desert adventure LEGEND OF THE LOST, plus THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL etc, as per Cardiff label).

This time around I liked that early introduction to the convent as we follow the old Ayah (May Hallatt) around the deserted halls while the mother superior registers her disapproval of young Sister Clodagh being put in charge of the mountain convent. The other nuns are nicely depicted too: Sister Honey, Sister Briony and Sister Phillipa who plants flowers instead of vegetables ... Deborah Kerr at 26 (a decade before her lovely Sister Angela in HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON) is ideal as Sr Clodagh and Kathleen Byron's Sister Ruth comes into her own in the closing scenes as she leaves the convent, puts on that red dress and lipstick and goes in search of Mr Dean, the land agent in the shorts, who has been having an unsettling feeling on both her and Sr Clodagh .... there is that scene in a red mist as Mr Dean rejects her .... the convent at sunset as the nuns search for her, and Sr Clodagh wearily goes to toll the bell .... this is delirious stuff that no matter how often one sees it keeps one enthralled. that stunning cut too and then the aftermath .... 

The nuns leave as the clouds swallow up the convent, and there is that deeply emotional final meeting of Sr Clodagh and Mr Dean when their affection and love is apparant as they have to say goodbye, and she asks him to do one final thing for her ... I love too that shot of the rain starting to fall on those giant leaves as the caravan moves on.  Back around 1980 when I got miy first vhs video recorder BLACK NARCISSUS was one of the first films I taped on those clunky cassettes, so we used to see that scene over and over ... I have not even mentioned Jean Simmons as Kanchi and Sabu as the young general with that perfume "Black Narcissus" from the Army & Navy Stores in London ... and to think it was all created in the studios. 
Soon: another late '40s Technicolor treat: Ealing's SARABAND FOR DEAD LOVERS.

1940s British favourites

One more look at British movies - those 1940s classics I have discovered (being a child of the '50s) and cherished over the years ... BLACK NARCISSUS may even overtake BLOW-UP as my favourite film of all time, and I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING is one I have to see regularly too (just to spend time with Wendy Hiller, Pamela Brown, Roger Livesey, Nancy Price), and one can look at Lean's GREAT EXPECTATIONS any time and still be amazed by that amazing black and white photography ....and I simply love THIS HAPPY BREED, and the amazing sets for Michael Powell's A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH and THE RED SHOES. Lean's 1948 THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS has been a recent discovery too, a stunning melodrama the equal of BRIEF ENCOUNTER. More on these at labels below ...

Wendy Hiller and that great Scottish castle interior

That British '40s certainly belonged to Powell & Pressburger, David Lean, Carol Reed - and also those Ealing films like SARABAND FOR DEAD LOVERS, WHISKEY GALORE, KIND HEARTS & CORONETS, IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY, as well as those early '40s war efforts like 2,000 WOMEN and of course IN WHICH WE SERVE. BLITHE SPIRIT is still magical too, and of course the Gainsboroughs and those Anna Neagle films - even now one gets a delirious thrill from super tosh like MADONNA OF THE SEVEN MOONS or CARAVAN - the heyday of Stewart Granger and James Mason, as well as Ann Todd, Celia Johnson, Flora Robson and that enchanting young Joan Greenwood, among others.  All nicely complementing the American noirs and musicals of the period and all those vehicles for Davis, Crawford, Stanwyck, Hepburn - with or without Tracy. 

Bickering relations in THIS HAPPY BREED

James Mason - ODD MAN OUT

That marvellous beach (Barra in Scotland) in WHISKEY GALORE

 Soon: More People We Like: Peter Finch, Alan Bates, David Warner, Flora Robson.

Dirk at war again ....

A perfect Bogarde pose!

This time as Major Patrick Leigh Fermor [see Books, Greece labels] in ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT in 1957, the last of his 50s wartime capers - THE WIND CANNOT READ being mainly a (doomed) love story set in India. We are in Crete this time, in this final collaboration between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger - who after those great '40s films I love like BLACK NARCISSUS, I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, THE RED SHOES, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH etc hit a lean patch in the '50s: THE TALES OF HOFFMAN was not a success and neither was the rare OH ROSALINDA! (which I now have a copy of to watch, review soon). They then did THE BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE in '56 and ILL MET in 57.



Dirk plays Patrick Leigh Fermor, who died this year - I did a obit notice at the time - and it is based on the true story of how during the war he was living with the partisans in occupied Crete and how they kidnapped a German general and got him off the island and on a ship to Cairo. It is boys-own stuff really and for a war film there is a surprising lack of action. so it's another World War II mission story, and there have been dozens. It IS more civilised than most. Bogarde leads the cast with Marius Goring as the general who comes to respect his captors. The likes of Chrisopher Lee and Cyril Cusack are in the background.

The star on set - with the Rolls in the background ...