Undertow

UNDERTOW, 2009. This is another movie with scenes to sob to, and also a prime 'gay interest' title. I am thinking twice about a 'gay interest' label though - does that mean its of interest to nobody else but gays, or maybe that gays are not interested in anything else? Perhaps 'gay theme' would be better ? or maybe remove the whole gay tag ?

Whatever ... here we have a BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN type drama from Peru. Yes, we search the world for new gay items of interest: Mexico (DONA HERLINDA AND HER SON), Germany (FOX AND HIS FRIENDS), France (WILD REEDS), Italy (LOOSE CANNONS) etc as well as the UK (WEEKEND) and USA (A SINGLE MAN) - as detailed at - yes - the gay interest label. UNDERTOW surfaced on our enterprising BBC4 channel late last weekend.

An unusual ghost story set on the Peruvian seaside; a married fisherman struggles to reconcile his devotion to his male lover within his town's rigid traditions. 

The debut feature from Javier Fuentes-Leon appears to address issues of masculinity, sexuality, faith and family with audacious honesty, against a Latin American macho background (where the men only watch football on tv while their women watch the soaps). Fisherman Miguel is duplicitious as he cheats on wife Mariela with visiting gay painter Santiago.  Then Santiago drowns and reappears as a ghost whom only Miguel can see (don't laugh...), so he feels he can happily continue living with his pregnant wife who is about to give birth, and with his lover whom nobody else sees ... Santiago though has left lots of paintings of Miguel at his house and the villagers soon realise what Miguel has been up to with the painter they did not like and who did not fit in, so Miguel is then ostracised by his friends. Santiago can only rest if his body is found and given proper burial by the man who loved him - Miguel though does find the body but keeps it hidden so he can continue his double life ..... and then one day the body is found. Can he find the courage to stand up to his macho culture and Santiago's family and claim the body and give it a loving burial?  This may seem like a bizarre fantasy but is played out in nice visuals, the poor village looks a treat with those nice colours, and yes our hero (?) does the right thing - and earns the respect of his villagers ... his wife is not so pleased though as she leaves with their baby, but perhaps she will be back.

One either responds to this totally in which case it will be quite involving and moving, or not. The 3 leads are exemplary: Cristian Mercado as Miguel, Manolo Cardona as Santiago and Tatiana Astengo is marvellously multi-faceted as the confused wife Mariela who slowly begins to suspect her husband is involved with the painter. Life in the village is no fun for Santiago - while he was alive - as the natives don't like him and he can only see Miguel in secret, then he has to hang around when he is dead too .... one telling moment has Mariela returning home to find her husband and baby asleep on the sofa with the tv soap channel on - wearily she turns it over to the football channel and slumps down beside them ...

I always felt about BBM, involving though it was, that the 2 cowboys should really have run off to San Francisco (or some other city) and opened a jeans store - lots of other country boys did, why stay when they could not be themselves and avoid making their wives unhappy. Likewise here, we can't really approve of Miguel cheating on his loving wife .... he cannot though keep up the pretence as he begins to fall apart. It's beautifully filmed though in a stunningly picturesque Peruvian fishing village. It features tender and complex performances by the actors in the lead roles, and wonderful authentic performances by native residents of the village location. The story delivers a powerful study in internal conflict, grief, redemption, and the power of love, and being true to oneself.  Now for that Israeli EYES WIDE OPEN ...

'40s British noir: It Always Rains On Sunday

Britain's Ealing studios, best known for their pre-and post-war comedies, also did some terrific dramas. One of the most successful examples was IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY, from 1947, by Robert Hamer, one of their top directors whose next film was their biggest hit the very black comedy KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS in '49. London's BFI has now restored this one, it has had a run at their National Film Theatre, and a new restored dvd, with some good extras.  I remember seeing it once before on tv, and my best friend Stan liked this one a lot. 

Original artwork

On a dreary weekend in London's East End, the fates of two families and other characters are intertwined by passion, ambition, and ultimately by crime. Rose, An obviously desperate housewife Googie Withers, wakes up next to her dull husband George (Edward Chapman) and has to cope with her resentful stepdaughters, Vi (Susan Shaw) and Doris (Patricia Plunkett). Vi is stepping out with a married man, musician and store owner Morrie Hyams (Sydney Tafler), while Morrie's well-connected gangster brother Lou (John Slater) takes an interest in the more innocent Doris. Meanwhile, the police are after escaped convict Tommy Swann (John McCallum, Googie's husband), who's also Rose's former lover. He is on the run from Dartmoor and holes up in the family's bomb shelter as he expects Rose to help him - its Sunday and the rain pours and pours. This is late 1940s Britain in aspic. As Tommy hides out upstairs in the bedroom the affairs of her stepdaughters are coming to a head, while the crooks are running out of patience and options... 

As the BFI blurb says:  Chronicling a March Sunday in the lives of a Bethnal Green family it centres on the dilemma faced by Rose, an ex-barmaid bored by her older husband and burdened with two grown-up stepdaughters, when an old flame breaks out of Dartmoor and turns up demanding food and a few hour's refuge. Around this central core Hamer creates a credibly caustic portrait of an East End blighted by poverty and populated by all manner of folk striving, honestly or otherwise, to get by.

This is a fascinating chronicle of Britian in the '40s in that era of austerity: the old fasioned kitchen, just like in 1944's THIS HAPPY BREED or 1947's HOLIDAY CAMP, the tin bath - lots of families did not have bathrooms but just outside toilets, and still had to use a tin bath in the kitchen .... thankfully the '50s was not too far away and soon all these mean streets would be demolished as the post-war boom got underway .... this was still a dark rainy underworld of spivs and wide-boys. They are all here: Sydney Tafler, Alfie Bass, John Slater, Jack Hanley and good cop Jack Warner, before he went on to get shot (by Dirk Bogarde) in HUNTED and resurrected for DIXON OF DOCK GREEN ...Googie who died last year aged 94 was an essential '40s British star and had a long career, in tandem with her husband McCallum. She was in Hitch's 1938 THE LADY VANISHES and the '43 comedy I like ON APPROVAL (with Bea Lillie) and her last credit was SHINE in 1996. In the '70s she had a hit tv series WITHIN THESE WALLS as a prison governor. 

Watching IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY is a pleasure now, it is also a great London film, up there with 1950's POOL OF LONDON and DANCE HALL or BLOW-UP or A PLACE TO GO (London label) in showing a vanishing city before the new metropolis took over. 
Review soon of Ealing's other great romantic drama SARABAND FOR DEAD LOVERS ... with the great team of Stewart Granger and Joan Greenwood and a terrific performance by Dame Flora Robson in 1948.

Movie scenes to make you sob: Cynthia & Co ...

SECRETS & LIES. 1996 and I am alone in a strange city, a few months after a bereavement. One afternoon after doing some business down town I pop into the cinema to see a current release, Mike Leigh's highly acclaimed SECRETS AND LIES, a Cannes Festival winner. I loved his early television films like ABIGAIL'S PARTY and NUTS IN MAY where Alison Steadman made her name. His new one though kept me transfixed as I laughed and cried along with Cynthia and her dysfunctional family... it was a really uplifting experience.

Cynthia is a working-class British woman whose life has been a long series of painful disappointments. She's single with no romantic prospects and a dead-end job at a box factory. Her daughter Roxanne works as a street sweeper and is chronically bitter. Cynthia helped raise her brother, Maurice who is doing well as a photographer, but she rarely sees him and blames his snooty wife, Monica. One day, Cynthia receives a phone call from a woman named Hortense, who claims to be the daughter Cynthia put up for adoption years ago. Cynthia initially reacts with panic, but she agrees to meet Hortense and is surprised to discover that she's a successful optomerist - and that she's black. Cynthia is soon convinced that Hortense is just who she claims to be, and they quickly form a friendship that gives Cynthia a new source of emotional strength. However, when Cynthia decides to introduce the family to her new "friend," it forces them to confront the lies and evasions that have kept them apart all these years. Largely improvised as usual by director Mike Leigh and his cast, SECRETS & LIES features standout work by Brenda Blethyn  (who earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (who was nominated as Best Supporting Actress), Timothy Spall and Phyllis Logan (now Mrs Hughes the housekeeper in DOWNTON ABBEY). Other Leigh regulars like Alison Steadman pop in briefly  ...

Blethyn's Cynthia is a marvellous creation who stays with one long after the film as one worries about her. Her scenes with her sullen daughter are both funny and affecting. and the scene where she meets Hortense at the cafe is priceless. Cynthia is sure she has never been with a black man, so how can she have a black daughter? Hortense though changes her outlook so now how to introduce her to her family? Spall is marvellous too (isn't he always?) and has that great emotional outburst at the climax as poor miserable Monica also reveals her secret. Leigh's recent and sadly-overlooked ANOTHER YEAR (2000s label) in 2010 affected me the same way and again will not easily be forgotten, particularly Lesley Manville. Imelda Staunton too of course delivered that powerhouse Oscar-nominated performance as Vera in Leigh's maybe too downbeat VERA DRAKE. Seek them out if you do not know them.

Movie scenes to make you sob: Susan & R J

A wet afternoon watching WITH A SONG IN MY HEART again, a good print on TCM (UK) with that lush Fox colour of the period (1952) and those Fox contract players like their reigning star Susan Hayward (Marilyn was coming up behind...), Rory Calhoun, David Wayne, and Thelma Ritter terrific as usual as Clancy, the nurse from Flatbush, who looks after our injured songbird Jane Froman - its Froman's voice we hear as Susan lip-synches. Its a big, bright, brash, camp biopic like how they used to do them then, and Susan delivers as usual. 

I liked it a lot when I saw it as a kid, and it builds to a great climax with all those songs about America. Froman was injured in a plane crash, so we follow her recovery, as old hand Walter Lang directs. The scene that gets me is with young Robert Wagner, just starting out here. 
He sits on the piano which Jane is attached to, in his first appearance. No wonder it set him on the path to stardom ... then later he is the shell-shocked soldier she sings to when entertaining overseas and she brings him out of his shell as they both cry. The audience must have sobbed too ... I certainly did. We love Susie here at the Projector, as per other items on her ... Wagner never appealed to me that much, we certainly preferred his Fox fellow contract player Jeff Hunter .... he is a 'People We Like' on here too ...

Westerns I love: Trooper Hook

TROOPER HOOK - I really liked this 1957 western when I saw it as a kid so nice to see it again 50 years later. Its a rather neglected wesern now, perhaps it would be screened more if it were in colour? I like Barbara Stanwyck's other '50s westerns too (CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA, THE MAVERICK QUEEN, THE FURIES (a recent discovery, as per Stanwyck label), 40 GUNS, THE VIOLENT MEN), this is a nice black and white one made the year after THE SEARCHERS and is also about a woman being rescued from living with the indians - here though its a mature woman with her son by the Apache chief Nanchez (Rudolfo Acosta). Joel McCrea is the Trooper Hook of the title who has the task of taking Cora and her son back to her husband as they travel though Indian territory on a stagecoach which also has Senorita Susan Kohner, cowboy Earl Hollimann, and the splendidly venal Edward Andrews on board). 
 

Stanwyck is very compelling as Cora and plays it mainly silent as she re-adjusts to civilisation. Nanchez is also in pursuit as he wants his son. John Dehner is the husband who wants his wife back but not her half-breed child ... its tense and nicely resolved and its one of Stanwyck's better '50s films, all wrapped up in 80 minutes and there is even a Tex Ritter theme song! Directed by Charles Maquis Warren (?).

Garbo: the divine woman

She is billed as "GARBO in THE PAINTED VEIL" - the one name is enough. This though is a rare Greta Garbo film - it is not in that box of 6 Garbo classics which one had to have (ANNA CHRISTIE, MATA HARI, QUEEN CHRISTINA, CAMILLE, ANNA KARENINA, NINOTCHKA) . I of course also have GRAND HOTEL, that "GARBO SILENTS" box with FLESH AND THE DEVIL and I quite like her last film the 1942 TWO FACED WOMAN where she does that sensational rumba ... and now THE PAINTED VEIL, made in 1934, just after QUEEN CHRISTINA.

In Austria, Katrin is lonely after her sister's marriage and she agrees to marry her father's research associate Dr. Walter Fane. Fane takes her to China but constantly ignores her in favour of his medical research. Lonely Katrin has an affair with Jack Townsend of the British Embassy. When it is discovered by Walter he becomes very bitter. Fane travels to fight a cholera epidemic and Katrin goes with him and helps. They grow closer together than ever before but Walter is knifed in a riot incited by the burning of a cholera infested town. Now their new found happiness will depend on Walter's survival. 

THE PAINTED VEIL is of course from the Maugham novel and piles on the melodrama as the tale of love and redemption unfolds against that exotic background. Garbo though is sensational here - not just a remote goddess but a real flesh and blood creature. Like her Swedish Queen she also kisses her sister passionately as she leaves for her marriage, leaving Katrin alone .... On a whim to see faraway places she marries earnest, but dull Herbert Marshall and quickly feels neglected as his duties keep him busy. The Chinese backdrop is nicely conveyed with regulars like Warner Oland (from Marlene's SHANGHAI EXPRESS), George Brent as the cad lover isn't as wooden as he is in the Bette Davis films, Herbert Marshall is just right as the very correct husband (he had a return to the far east with another unfaithful (and how) wife, Bette Davis, in THE LETTER in 1940, also by Maugham - and Marshall played Maugham in the 1946 THE RAZOR'S EDGE!).

Greta has some terrific costumes like that turban she wears and the nurses's outfit. She is gowned by Adrian, and directed by Richard Boleslawski. Again, its that voice that enthralls and that remote quality, she remains one of the greatest stars. This one we like a lot. There was a dreadful 1957 remake, which I remember seeing at a Sunday matinee (ideal kids viewing!) with Eleanor Parker (hardly a Garbo) titled THE SEVENTH SIN. Naomi Watts also played the role in the 2006 version, which at least was filmed in China, like that last version of Duras's THE SEA WALL. 

 
(As well as FLESH AND THE DEVIL the TCM "Garbo Silents Collection" also includes THE TEMPTRESS from 1926, THE MYSTERIOUS LADY and what is left (9 minutes) of the lost THE DIVINE WOMAN from 1928. I can't let these go unwatched for too much longer ...that only leaves 1932's AS YOU DESIRE ME to see of her major movies, where she is blonde (right) and of course MARIE WALEWSKA with Boyer as Napoleon in 1937, though I have seen that one a few times. I like too those portraits of her by Cecil Beaton in the late '40s when she continued to look marvellous as she aged. Of course she and Dietrich (we love Marlene too) were the great European exotics of the '30s rivalling the all-American Harlow, Lombard, West ...

Amusing story about Maugham, the feted writer of the time, in Hollywood and visiting the set of DR JECKYLL & MR HYDE where Frederic March was emoting. Somerset sits there watching the scene unfold and says out loud: "which one is he now?"!

Theatre treats

New year will have some new treats for London theatreland:

Another production of Harold Pinter's OLD TIMES - I have seen 2 previous ones: Liv Ullmann, Michael Gambon and Nicola Pagett in the 70s or 80s, and Julie Christie (Theatre label), Leigh Lawson and Harriet Walter in the 90s. This one should be good too with Kristin Scott Thomas and Rufus Sewell - 12 week run starts in January at, where else?, the Harold Pinter Theatre.

The new poster for the new London run of THE JUDAS KISS which has been a huge success in its initial run (when I saw it at the Hampstead Theatre, as per my review, Theatre label). This will run from January to April at the Duke of York's Theatre.

There is also a new limited run of Peter Nichols' classic play PRIVATES ON PARADE which will make an ideal birthday present in February, with Simon Russell Beale in the role of Captain Terri Dennis the very flamboyant drag queen (which Dennis Quilley created and  immortalised in the 1983 film with John Cleese).

The members of SADUSEA (Song And Dance Unit South East Asia) fall in and out of love while trying to dodge Malayan Communist bullets in the late 1940s. Not only that, they have to contend with a loony, bible bashing Major who creates far more danger than any of the jungle inhabitants. Only gay captain Terri Dennis seems capable of coping with him but even he isn't aware that their sergeant is selling arms to the natives. 

And the return of MIDNIGHT TANGO, the terrific dance show by Flavia Cacace and Vincent Simone - the real stars of BBC's dance show STRICTLY COME DANCING. Watching them do the Argentine tango is sheer bliss ... (Phoenix Theatre).

R.I.P.s

Cornel Lucas (1920-2012). Just like Jack Cardiff was the great British lensman and pioneer of Technicolor and photographed those Powell & Pressburger classics like BLACK NARCISSUS, RED SHOES as well as PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN - his contemporary Cornel Lucas was the great stills photographer for that age of glamour at the Rank Organisation. 
He photographed all the main stars of the late 40s and 50s, including some great shots of Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, Jean Simmons, the young Anouk Aimee, Dirk Bogarde, Diana Dors in that mink bikini in Venice (it was rabbit, actually), and the Rank starlet (and a favourite of mine) Belinda Lee, whom he married in 1955. Their marriage only lasted 3 years though, she was killed aged 26 in a car accident in 1961 - Cornel though lived to be 92. Such is the hand fate deals us ... Lucas though was one of the great stills photographers, up there with the likes of Eve Arnold or Bob Willoughby (see labels).
Below, his stills of Dors, Bogarde, Marlene, Katharine Hepburn, Belinda Lee, above left.

 

Joe Melia (1935-2012). Another stalwart of the British stage, television and screen. Best known as the photographer in the film of OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR, he was also in PRIVATES ON PARADE and was the mime killed by Rosella Falk in MODESTY BLAISE. Like Victor Spinetti, who also died this year, he was of Italian parentage, and was a fixture on the London stage (A DAY IN THE DEATH OF JOE EGG, Tony Richardson's THE THREEPENNY OPERA with Vanessa Redgrave), as well as films like FOUR IN THE MORNING, TOO MANY CROOKS.

Bill Tarmey (1941-2012) forever Jack Duckworth in the long runnging soap CORONATION STREET. As the gruff, henpecked husband of Vera Duckworth (Elizabeth Dawn) for more than a quarter of a century, Tarmey became half of one of the most famous couples on British television. As portrayed by Tarmey and Dawn, the bickering Duckworths inherited the mantle of Stan and Hilda Ogden as the Street’s most ramshackle couple: he the perpetual layabout, she the formidable, but ultimately forgiving, scold. Bill was also a singer, having emerged from the tough school of the northern clubs and cabaret circuit.  I once had a dance with his screen wife Vera when she was appearing in the clubs in London in the '80s. 

Clive Dunn (1920-2012), also 92, one of the last of the DAD'S ARMY regulars. He was Lance Corporal Jones and was supposed to be at least 70, but when in 1968 Dunn won the role, the actor was only 48. He also had a pop hit:  "Grandad", a ballad of such sickening sentimentality that it rocketed instantly to No 1.

Fantasies: Kerwin, Ray & Dynamation ...

After all those blondes last week (as below), a brunette: and he is Kerwin Mathews, star of some very pleasing fantasy films with those great early special effects (before CGI) by the legendary Ray Harryhausen. I certainly recommend THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD in 1958 and THE 3 WORLDS OF GULLIVER from 1960, both perfect of their type. This kind of fantasy cinema passed us by a lot at the time, but I remember particularly liking MYSTERIOUS ISLAND in '61 with that giant crab, and honey bee, and of course Michael Craig and Joan Greenwood and Michael Callan and Herbert Lom as Nemo.

 

Kerwin was one of the 5 AGAINST THE HOUSE (Kim Novak label) which I saw recently, he did quite a few for Columbia back then (THE GARMENT JUNGLE) before joining the fantasy world of Harryhausen and producer Charles H Schneer. In THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, Sinbad travels to the island of Colossa to save a beautiful princess. He and his men are confronted by all manner of evil beasts, including marauding cyclopes, fire-breathing dragons and a swashbuckling skeleton. It is a delightful special effects extravaganza made in an era long before computer animation and movies with nine-figure budgets. Kathryn Grant (who left acting to become Mrs Bing Crosby)  is delightful too as the princess who is shrunk to tiny size, all part of the evil plotting by Torin Thatcher as the sinister magician with his own agenda ....Nathan Juran keeps it moving nicely.

THE 3 WORLDS OF GULLIVER is just what it was meant to be - an entertaining family-friendly fantasy adventure, lacking Swift’s bitterness and complexity, but still possessing some satirical jabs as the satire has been leavened by farce. Again a splendid cast of characters support our hero: Peter Bull, Gregoire Aslan, Charles Lloyd Pack, Noel Purcell, as well as Jo Morrow and Lee Patterson. Gulliver's love interest is the lovely June Thorburn - the forest queen of 1959's charmer tom thumb - who was killed in a plane crash in 1967. 

The special effects that let Gulliver be a giant in Lilliput and tiny in Brobdingnag are by the reigning genius of the day, Ray Harryhausen, but writer/director Jack Sher's 1960 film wisely uses them only in the service of the story. There are several charming moments, including Gulliver singing, and the effects, though obvious now, must have delighted children back then, unused to computer games and CGI stunts. I liked it a lot, it is nicely plotted and the effects charm, as do the leading players. It remains an intelligent adaptation, if abridged and lighthearted, of a great classic, that stands on its own for entertainment.

The dvd has some great special features including an almost an hour long documentary on Ray Harryhausen (left) and how he developed his Dynamation and stop-motion animations, covering all his successes like the very popular JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND and the follow-ups to SINBAD with John Philip Law and Patrick Wayne, and the 1981 all-star CLASH OF THE TITANS which we liked a lot.

PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER is grimmer fare from 1962 (part of a Hammer 4-pack which includes DEVIL SHIP PIRATES, TERROR OF THE TONGS and THE STRANGLERS OF BOMBAY, again long unseen but we remember them from that 1959/early '60s glut of Hammer films - see Horror label. Kerwin is a straightforward lead here, where Christopher Lee menaces the town looking for treasure with his gang of pirates including Oliver Reed and Peter Arne who have some good moments.Watch out for the piranhas ...

Kerwin continued in films (THE DEVIL AT 4 O'CLOCK with Tracy and Sinatra in '61) until 1977, including playing that French secret agent OSS 117 (taken over by Jean Dujurdin), I would like to see his 1960 peplum SAPPHO VENUS OF LESBOS. In his later years he became an antiques dealer in San Francisco and died in his sleep in 2007, aged 81. He somehow kept his male partner of 46 years a secret, in an era when everyone knew or guessed about Rock and Monty and Tab and Tony Perkins and .... He never minded that most of his movies have long been forgotten and those that endure are considered campy cult classics and seems to have been a thoroughly charming fellow. I wonder what his JACK THE GIANT KILLER is like?