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.

Snapshots of Britain

Kay and Bonar at the DANCE HALL

HOLIDAY CAMP - 1947
DANCE HALL - 1950
PLAY IT COOL - 1962
SOME PEOPLE - 1962

Ken Annakin's HOLIDAY CAMP in 1947 is post-war England in aspic, with working-class families going on holiday to the new holiday camps as the new age of leisure dawned after the war, its almost a historical document of that era. Flora Robson has a great role here as the lonely spinster yearning for her love lost in the war, only to discover he is the holiday camp announcer but is now blind, and happily married and does not remember her. Esma Cannon (later in the CARRY ONs) as her twittery friend fares less well, as she falls prey to Dennis Price's murdering conman. The Huggett family (from the radio) are enjoying themselves, led by father Jack Warner and mum Kathleen Harrison, with daughter Hazel Court, Jimmy Hanley and Diana Dors as well as Patricia Roc also pop up. Below: Mr and Mrs Huggett get used to being on holiday, Dennis Price with murder in mind, and Dame Flora - noble as ever. 

Its an enjoyable time capsule now, as is:

DANCE HALL - Charles Crichton's 1950 portrait of 4 working class girls who work in the local factory and let off steam at the Saturday night dance (the Chiswick Palais). This is a roll-call of ‘50s British showbiz with a very varied cast here: the girls are young Petula Clark, Natasha Perry, Jane Hylton and the rising Diana Dors. Its a fairly grim look at working class life, but lots of fun too. Donald Houston and Bonar Colleano are among the men they attract, Kay Kendall pops in for a minute, as do Eunice Gayson and Dandy Nichols, Sydney Tafler is the dance hall manager and dear old Gladys Henson is Petula's mum who gives her an awfully old-fashioned dress to wear at the dance contest! Dors is great fun as the good-natured blonde with an eye for a hunky fella! Parry is torn between stolid Houston and wide boy Colleano, while Hylton remains a spinster. 
10 years later SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING would be a new male-dominated update on working class life, as the '60s dawned, but this 1950 version is just as pleasing and relevant now. This and HOLIDAY CAMP are as essentially '40s and early '50s British as IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY, POOL OF LONDON, THE BLUE LAMP, HUNTED etc. - those movies where the likes of Jack Warner and Jimmy Hanley were bobbies on the beat or dependable guys next door, and Canadian Bonar Colleano (of the circus family, he died in a car crash in 1958, aged 34) was the not to be trusted wide boy or American G.I. in England, and young Bogarde was a spiv with a gun before graduating to war hero roles.

Factory girls

Diana lets rip on the dance floor

PLAY IT COOL. A hopelessly square 1962 British musical showing the pop scene at the time, showcasing pop idol of the time Billy Fury in his movie debut. We liked Billy then, an authentic rocker with a great look and voice (“Halfway to Paradise”) who died too young, aged 43 in 1983. 
He and his jolly gang (Michael Anderson Jr, Keith Hamshere, Jeremy Bulloch, and a very young David Hemmings) are en route to Gatwick Airport when they decide to help out a runaway heiress (don’t laugh, this isn’t the 1930s) – Dennis Price plays her oily father and others roped in include Mr Showbiz: Lionel Blair and his dancers. 

Statue of Billy in Liverpool

There is a twist number, the twist was big at the time – and American Bobby Vee gets to sing, as does Helen Shapiro, the school girl singer of the time (I was an early teen then, and loved her songs). Michael Winner directs and keeps it all moving. This pop scene though, along with the Cliff Richard films (THE YOUNG ONES, SUMMER HOLIDAY) and those earlier Tommy Steele, Frankie Vaughan, Adam Faith ones,  was swept away the next year, when The Beatles exploded in 1963, and 1964’s A HARD DAY’S NIGHT showed how to make a pop movie which also captured the moment perfectly.

SOME PEOPLE – more pop from 1962. I remember this one vividly, being 16 at the time. This is a lively look at teenagers in a suburban city – Bristol – with a lead role for Kenneth More as the well-meaning choirmaster with that church hall where the kids can play their instruments. It features the then up and coming Ray Brooks (THE KNACK) and a gormless David Hemmings (4 years before Antonioni made him an icon of the 60s in BLOW-UP), Anneke Wills who wears her jeans in the bath to shrink them, Angela Douglas (who married More). 

David Hemmings, centre

The bored teenagers are only interested in motorbikes and music and are convinced society has no use for them, but are hardly rebels without a cause. Kenny More soon gets them playing – this was all part of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards Scheme, which features here. The music is catchy though and it all looks nice in colour. Clive Donner – another under-rated 60s director – helms it, he also directed the Hemmings starrer ALFRED THE GREAT in 1969, after his like WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT? and THE CARETAKER, and that other look at teenagers in a suburban city HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH in swinging '67. What is interesting here is the contrast between the options for teenagers in 1962 (in pre-Beatles England) and 5 years later, at the start of the hippie and psychedelic era in 1967 in HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH ... it was a different world for them then!

More early '60s British movies:

TWICE ROUND THE DAFFODILS. This 1962 comedy, adapted from a play, is a CARRY ON in all but name, produced by the regular team Peter Rogers and Gerald Thomas. Of interest now mainly for that supporting cast of familiar faces. We join 4 patients who arrive at a hospital for tuberculosis patients (they are still allowed to smoke though!) – RAF type Donald Sinden with an eye for the ladies, funny man Lance Percival, boorish Wesh Donald Houston who is in denial and refuses to accept he is ill – one wants to reach for the mute button every time he starts ranting, and young Andrew Ray. Already on the ward are Ronald Lewis and snobby Kenneth Williams whose only visitor is his dowdy sister Joan Sims. Head nurse is Juliet Mills, and others include nurse Jill Ireland, Sheila Hancock as a loyal girlfriend,. Nanette Newman as the glamorous one who has found someone else with a sports car. The patients are getting better when they can walk twice around the daffodil patch … a slight amusement, matinee fodder perhaps, which shows that the 1960s had yet to begin at Pinewood. 

THE VERY EDGE. This long forgotten 1963 thriller has suddenly been re-discovered – the BFI are screening it in April, but thanks to a fellow correspondent here I have got a ‘screener’. It’s a taut thriller (filmed in Ireland), a Raymond Stross production starring his wife Anne Heywood again as the happy housewife, looking after her husband Richard Todd and her ideal early ‘60s home, who is stalked by a deranged stranger – young Jeremy Brett, terrific here. He follows her around the supermarket and attacks her in her home causing her to miscarry her child. Worried policeman Jack Hedley notes the stranger will be back. Our worried couple move home, but its no use. 

Brett soon has her in his power again as she tries to fight back. We end up on the roof as our brave heroine has to outwit him before help arrives. Add in Nicole Maurey as Todd’s super-efficient secretary with a yen for him, as his and his wife’s marriage falls apart and tension is maintained to the very end. A routine thriller perhaps, but certainly watchable now. With Pauline Delaney, Gwen Watford, Maurice Denham, Barbara Mullen and Patrick Magee, and ably directed by journeyman Cyril Frankel.We liked Heywood recently in that revived I WANT WHAT I WANT from 1972 - Heywood label - where she is a transexual ...

Top female singers of the last 50 years ...

My 1969 BBC ticket for "The Dusty Show"

There is a lively debate going on at the Datalounge.com gossip site, which I have been contributing to, on the Top 5 female singers of the last 50 years, so those established before then (such as Peggy Lee, Ella, Judy, Lena, Sarah, Billie, Doris etc) are excluded ....

Leading the pack, with my assistance, are these ten: 

Barbra (if only for those first early albums in the early '60s showing how different and stunning she was) and then the stage and screen FUNNY GIRL / Aretha (if only for those great Atlantic years) / Joni (that classic sequence of '70s albums) / Dusty Springfield / Annie Lennox (those great Eurythmics tracks and videos, that solo album DIVA which I practically wore out / Whitney / Dionne / Karen Carpenter / Nina Simone / Donna Summer - and I have been trying to big up Joan Armatrading, but the Americans don't seem to know her ...

Honorable mention: Etta James / Janis Joplin / Laura Nyro / Sade / Carole King (if only for TAPESTRY, another album that became part of one's life) / Carly Simon / Petula Clark / Cleo Laine / Nancy Wilson / Shirley Bassey / Diana Ross / Tina Turner / Roberta Flack / Mary J Blige / Tracy Chapman / Amy Winehouse / Janis Ian / Patsy Cline / Bobbie Gentry, and I would have to add: German diva Billie Ray Martin, Regina Belle, and disco gals like Kelis,  Ultra Nate, Adeva, Rosie Gaines, Joyce Sims, Erikah Badu, Angie Stone, Shara Nelson and Janet Jackson (again if only for THE VELVET ROPE, and those terrific remixes, all the way back to "What have you done for me lately").  Some like Janis or Amy Winehouse only lasted a few years, but their legacy is huge. Sade is an interesting case - not much output, an album and tour once every decade, but we still like and play her a lot, and again, what a style icon. I love how she performs PARADISE slinking around the stage in that electrifying tour dvd.

Funny how today's girls like Beyonce, J-Lo, even Madonna are not seen as great singers - despite some great songs and video moments. I personally don't care for Tina Turner, Whitney. Bassey or Diana Ross much myself, but they have to be included in the mix.  There just does not seem to be a comparable list of male singers ... 

Oops, a few more I like and used to play a lot: K D Lang, Linda Ronstadt, Kiri Te Kanawa, Alicia Keys, Gladys Knight ..... and of course recently there was no getting away from Adele or the reclusive Emile Sande (is there any programme she has not been on?) - this could go on and on.

Super troupers

Veterans Barbra Streisand and Shirley Bassey with new girl Adele in the middle - at the recent Hollywood Oscars when all three sang as well as they ever did ... Adele with the SKYFALL theme, Bassey at 76 wowed them with a stunning "Goldfinger" while Streisand delivered a powerful "The Way We Were" in tribute to her pal Marvin Hamlisch who died last year (RIP label).

Barbra is now 70 - I was 20 when I saw her on stage in FUNNY GIRL in London in 1966, from the front row, yet! So she would have been 23 then ... my affection for her has waxed and waned over the years (her A STAR IS BORN being a low point) - but here we are, better than ever ...

Another trouper, on television here this week, is 80 year old Petula Clark, promoting a new album, which I already have, "Lost In You" with that stunning new slowed down "Downtown", as Pet said its not a happy song at all, but a wistful one about loneliness. Petula of course was a child star in the '40s, entertaining the troops, and appearing in films. She is the little girl (right) in my perennial favourite I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING (Petula label), 1945, and was also Sid Field's daughter in LONDON TOWN, Kay Kendall's debut in 1946.  

She is a nice teen in DANCE HALL in 1950 as one of the 4 girls who go dancing every week (Petula label). Then she was a '60s pop star both in the UK and in France and also very popular in America with all those hits - I vaguely remember she caused a sensation in those different times when she and Harry Belafonte touched each other in a tv special! I like her a lot in Francis Coppola's FINIAN'S RAINBOW, perhaps the oddest musical of all? where she does a marvellous "That Old Devil Moon", and she squares up nicely to Peter O'Toole in the musical remake of GOODBYE MR CHIPS in 1969. Pet has continued through the decades, we saw her live in concert 3 or 4 years ago, and - unlike Julie Andrews - she still has the voice, as good as ever it was. Wish I had seen her in THE SOUND OF MUSIC tour or in SUNSET BOULEVARD!

Another blonde British singer - Dusty Springfield, alas no longer here, but tonight is Dusty night on BBC4 - where there are documentaries, all her BBC appearances, an episode of her TV specials - with guest Scott Walker, left. (I saw one of her tv shows being recorded in 1969 at the old Golders Green Hippodrome, memorable as the first number went wrong and Dusty had to re-record it so she was stomping around the stage in a strop! They will probably be showing her Pet Shop Boys appearances too tonight, including that great one at The Brits in 1988, when she was Diva incarnate, (above, with Neil Tennant).

Other troupers: I see Jack Jones is on his farewell tour. Back in the late '60s I liked his light throwaway style, the Michael Buble of his day? - particularly that album with "A Day in the life of a fool" and other hits like "Wives and Lovers".

 

Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues also has a new solo album out - how we liked that sound in the '60s and '70s, as iconic now as the Pink Floyd or Fleetwood Mac. I have ordered Justin's new one ... a documentary too on tonight on British blues guy Stevie Winwood, another of my favourite rock voices ... 
 
Another returning veteran is of course David Bowie, breaking a long silence and causing major headlines. There is an exhibition at the V&A Museum, London, opening on March 23, and that new album THE NEXT DAY is out on March 11. I shall pre-book it next, and must look out for that new video with Tilda Swinton .... As the "Daily Telegraph" said: "He has timed the release of singles and an album to regenerate the reputation of David Bowie, so that this would not be merely an exhibition romanticising a star in decline ...". 
I have just got a re-issue (with 3 extra tracks) of his 1974 YOUNG AMERICANS, which I used to have on cassette - its a terrific soul record with David in powerful voice (plus Luther Vandross on backup vocals)  and an interesting contrast to the Berlin records. Meanwhile the hyperbole over the new album is going into overdrive, with lengthy reviews in the quality papers. Bowie's long silence ensured he became a mythical figure, almost as if he were dead. He is now widely recognised as England's greatest solo rock star, with an oeuvre second only to The Beatles! It seems the new album is "richly satisfying, and by the standards of today's charts, it is genius" - so says Tim DeLisle in The Mail. I will find out for myself next Monday when the new album will be delivered.

"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 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 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.

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 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 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 brace of rabbits 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.