Its that time: Christmas in Connecticut or France ?

Some seasonal viewing: a '40s Hollywood christmas tale, or a recent French look at another dysfunctional family during the holiday season ?

CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT: Released the last year of WWII in 1945 (I was born that December), the film is full of subtle patriotic gestures and holiday nostalgia but never sinks to sentimentality. Stanwyck is sexy and sassy as always and is a lot of fun here. She is a cooking columnist who's built up this whole image of living on a small Connecticut farm with husband and baby cooking all these marvelous delicacies. Trouble is she's unmarried, childless, writes her column from her apartment in New York and doesn't know how to boil water. But her writing is a hit with the public. Trouble comes when she's hijacked into cooking a home Christmas dinner for a war hero sailor played by Dennis Morgan who gets to sing a couple of songs as well. Her publisher Sidney Greenstreet likes the idea so well that he invites himself to the dinner. So with borrowed farm, baby, and Reginald Gardiner who'd like to make it real with Stanwyck she tries to brazen it through. S.Z. Sakall adds a great deal of Hungarian malaprop & double-entendre humor in support as Babs' true source of culinary talent & Una O'Connor is hilarious as Gardiner's obnoxious Irish housekeeper. A nice treat then.


A CHRISTMAS TALE: Fancy another French family dysfunction drama? Rather like Assayas's SUMMER HOURS (reviewed at French label), only this one is two and half hours long in the company of some unsumpathetic people as the Vuillard family gathers: parents Junon and Abel, a daughter Elizabeth and her son Paul, Henri and a girlfriend, Ivan, his wife Sylvia and their young sons, and cousin Simon. Six years before, Elizabeth paid Henri's debts and demanded he never see her again or visit their parents' home. Paul, at 16, has mental problems and faces a clinical exam. Junon learns she needs a bone marrow transplant if she's to live beyond a few months: thus the détente bringing all together. Two family members have compatible marrow, but the spats, fights, cruel words, drunken toasts, and somewhat civilized bad behavior threaten all; plus Junon may simply refuse treatment.

It turns out to be an overly long and incredibly talky dysfunctional family drama, by Arnaud Desplechin, led by a chilly Catherine Deneuve as the dying matriarch (such a contrast to her sunny role in the delicious POTICHE (yes, also reviewed recently at French label). She's dying of a rare kind of cancer, and the spectre of that eventuality plus the proximity of brothers and sisters who haven't seen each other for a while and have scores to settle puts everyone in a reflective mood. It rather strikes home if you too have brothers and sisters who do not see or have much contact with each other .... Melvil Poupaud (so effective in Ozon's TIME TO LEAVE - yes, its at the french label) scores as the youngest son.



We also of course have the perennial IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE with Jimmy Stewart running through Bedford Falls in the snow as he gets his life back, and THE MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (the Maureen O'Hara-Natalie Wood one) and '54's WHITE CHRISTMAS though how many times can one watch that? and of course theres always those recent christmas perennials like ELF and BAD SANTA and GREMLINS. I was pleased to catch up with favourites Lee Remick and Angela Lansbury in the glutinously sentimental tv film A CHRISTMAS STORY: THE GIFT OF LOVE from 1982, and dear Loretta in CHRISTMAS EVE one of her final roles in '85, as the rich old lady with not long to live re-uniting her family, assisted by ailing Trevor Howard. If that does not get you crying for christmas nothing will ! Perfect viewing anytime though, and particularly at this time of year, is the 1952 film of the play THE HOLLY AND THE IVY, a perfectly British treat with Ralph Richardson, Margaret Leighton and Celia Johnson all sublime (and yes see Richardson, Leighton or Johnson labels for review); and let's not forget the lovely if rarely seen HOLIDAY AFFAIR from 1949 with Janet Leigh having to choose between Robert Mitchum or Wendall Corey! It should be a holiday staple too.

Actors 2

A lovely still from Antonioni's L'ECLISSE, 1962, with Alain Delon. The link below, if you copy to your browser, features a terrific page of animated stills of this and other movies like TAXI DRIVER, BLADE RUNNER, 2001, LOLITA etc with brilliant animation of the stills. Enjoy!

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2011/09/cinematographs_living_breathin.html

10 great male performances: (or my favourites at any rate)

Robert De Niro - TAXI DRIVER & RAGING BULL (and his sax player in NEW YORK NEW YORK!)
Dirk Bogarde - THE SERVANT / MODESTY BLAISE / DEATH IN VENICE
James Mason - A STAR IS BORN
Maurice Ronet - LE FEU FOLLET
Peter Finch - SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY / THE TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE
Anton Walbrook - THE RED SHOES
Ralph Richardson - THE HEIRESS
Montgomery Clift - WILD RIVER
David Hemmings - BLOW-UP
Cary Grant - NOTORIOUS
Gary Cooper - FRIENDLY PERSUASION
James Dean - EAST OF EDEN
and sneaking in Jack Lemmon as Daphne in SOME LIKE IT HOT - Tony ain't bad either!

3 very British treats

THE ASTONISHED HEART, 1950, written by Noel Coward who also scored the music and he stars too as the psychiatrist contentedly married to Barbara (Celia Johnson). Barbara meets her old school friend Leonora (Margaret Leighton) by chance and they become friends again. There is an initial coolness between the husband and Leonora but soon passions are raging beneath those stiff upper lip exteriors as they embark on an affair. The wife though does not seem to mind too much and even encourages the lovers to go away together. Is she waiting for it to run out of steam and he will return to her? I knew nothing about this 1950 rarity so the ending is a surprise. It is all redolent of that older age of film-making, easy to spoof now, with the upper-class accents, the high life in Mayfair (complete with butler and cook) as Coward and Leighton do the rounds of nightclubs and restaurants, ordering their stingers and trying the samba. The two ladies are of course splendid as ever (with Leighton, as gowned by Molyneux, the height of late 40s chic), but it is odd seeing Coward with his clipped vocal delivery and mandarin appearance as the clever man torn between two women [he was perfect though with Johnson in IN WHICH WE SERVE] … it seems Michael Redgrave was set to star initially. Coward’s pals Graham Payn and Joyce Carey are in support, and co-director is Terence Fisher who helmed those Hammer classics. A very intriguing oddity then - essential though not to know how it is going to end....

Much more conventional is THE HOLLY AND THE IVY from 1952. Adapted from a play and directed by George More O’Ferrell it is a “heartwarming tale of an English minister and his family reunited at Christmas time” so why isn’t it a Christmas perennial? Ralph Richardson is the rather bumbling minister but he hardly seems old enough to be the father of daughters Celia Johnson and Margaret Leighton (again) or son Denholm Elliott. Celia is the dutiful daughter who stays at home to look after him but she longs to leave and marry reliable John Gregson who has an offer of work abroad. Also returning home is Leighton as the wayward daughter in London whose life has gone wrong – she has taken to drink after the loss of her wartime lover and the death of her child. As son Denholm rails to the minister, he cannot be told the truth about them, but he turns out to be very human and understands perfectly as solutions are found to suit everyone. Add in two maiden aunts (one very bitter about losing her own chances of marriage by having to look after aged parents) and suave Hugh Williams and the stage is set for a nice drama played out with the snow falling on that perfectly quaint English village. I loved it.



Back to 1945 (the year I was born!) for THE SEVENTH VEIL, an enormous hit at the time and one can see why. It's a delirious melodrama, classily done, which pushes all the right buttons: lots of music, heightened emotions and great roles for James Mason and Ann Todd. Todd starts as a convincing 14 year old in pigtails, in thrall to her ward Nicholas (Mason with that cane…). She becomes a famous pianist but is always under the Svengali-like spell of her lame cousin/guardian and mentor until she attempts suicide by jumping off a bridge. Enter the doctor (Herbert Lom) who tries to unlock her secrets and her phobia about playing again. Lom discovers the severely shy young woman's repressed need for love, and her guardian's overbearing need to live his life's dream through her and her talent as a pianist. By the end her three suitors (the band-leader she wanted to elope with, before Nicholas whisked her off to Paris, and the painter who fell for her as he painted her, as well as the brooding Nicholas) are all waiting to see which she will choose – but it is not really a surprise. Lom, in a long and varied career, went on to play the psychiatrist in a successful tv series THE HUMAN JUNGLE.



Todd, with her odd Garbo quality, is fascinating as ever here, and no wonder Mason was soon on his way to Hollywood. Todd though remains virtually unknown of all the major British actresses of the ‘40s – was she too patrician or aloof for the moviegoers to take to their collective bosoms? Directed by Compton Bennett, with an Oscar-winning script by Muriel and Sydney Box.

Sidney Lumet RIP

Sidney Lumet [1924-2011] was indeed one of the most prolific directors ever since he began making movies in 1957 with 12 ANGRY MEN. Like John Frankenheimer and others he began in the golden age of live television.

He worked in lots of genres throughout the 60s - THE FUGITIVE KIND, THE PAWNBROKER, THE HILL, FAIL-SAFE, THE GROUP, THE DEADLY AFFAIR, THE SEAGULL, BYE BYE BRAVERMAN, then there was the failure of the cod-Antonioni THE APPOINTMENT which would have emptied cinemas if it ever played in them - but Lumet certainly hit some peaks in the '70s with MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS and those great New York movies like DOG DAY AFTERNOON and SERPICO, and of course NETWORK, followed by THE VERDICT and PRINCE OF THE CITY. Another theatrical one was his film of the hit play EQUUS in '77. THE WIZ though seems to have been a misfire - I had no interest in seeing it or a lot of his later films.

Always terrific with actors and staging - the murder in THE DEADLY AFFAIR for instance - it is a terrific legacy of solid middle-brow, thought-provoking enterainment with some great performances [Signoret, Finch, Dunaway, Holden, Brando, Magnani, Steiger, Mason, Pacino etc], (I trust that does not sound too patronising).



Here are a few I cherish: STAGE STRUCK from '58 with a nice role for Joan Greenwood; the film of Arthur Miller's A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE with Raf Vallone and Jean Sorel, the 1959 drama THAT KIND OF WOMAN, not seen until a year or two ago - where kept woman Loren has to choose between soldier Tab Hunter or wealthy George Sanders - only flaw for me was it said it was 1944 but what we see on screen in pure 1959; and the ensemble in LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT in 1962 where the 4 cast members won the Venice Film Festival acting prize, providing perfect late roles for Katharine Hepburn and Ralph Richardson.

A Rattigan double bill

A terrific early '50s double bill of Terence Rattigan adaptations - I thought I would steal a march on the London NFT (National Film Theatre) with their mini-Rattigan season in April, it being Rattigan's centenary year (as it is also Tennessee Williams]. Several Rattigan productions are already on their way to being staged here - a new version of FLARE PATH opens shortly by Trevor Nunn (this was the basis for the great 1945 THE WAY TO THE STARS) [my review of this favourite is at War label], and there is also a new production of CAUSE CELEBRE and Terence Davies has made a new version of THE DEEP BLUE SEA (the 1955 Vivien Leigh film being curiously unavailable for years [though I did source a copy last year]. So it seems Rattigan is back being in favour again. I saw him give a lecture back at the NFT in the early '70s when he was as spry and dapper as ever. His great successes of the '50s and those scripts he turned out in the '60s for films like THE VIPS, THE YELLOW ROLLS ROYCE and that remake of GOODBYE MR CHIPS had all been quite successful, though his type of well made plays had temporarily gone out of fashion with the arrival of the 'kitchen sink' dramatists.

I had not seen THE SOUND BARRIER before and it is a revelation. Totally engrossing and marvellously filmed by David Lean, as meticulous as ever, with great depths of controlled feeling and emotion, depicting the breaking of the sound barrier. This may have been done by pilot Chuck Yeager back in 1947 (as shown in THE RIGHT STUFF), but this drama excels as driven industrialist Ralph Richardson and his equally driven test pilots Nigel Patrick and then John Justin take the controls of those aircraft. We get great aerial photography, no obvious process shots, and those aircraft like the Comet are lovingly filmed. Ann Todd (Mrs Lean at the time) excels here, as she does in Lean's 1948 THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS (another great discovery recently) as Richardson's daughter who has already seen her brother (Denholm Elliot) die in a plane crash trying to please his father, and now her husband is also going to try to smash the sound barrier. That excellent actor John Justin is the other pilot - with that ideal home life with Dinah Sheridan to whom Todd flees when she can no longer stay with her tyrant (or is he?) father. The drama is nicely resolved and there is a nice detour with a trip to Egypt - quite a novelty then I imagine. It is just a perfect early 50s British film, with those actors like Richardson, Patrick and Todd at the top of their game, as of course was Lean and Rattigan.

THE BROWNING VERSION is Anthony Asquith's sterling 1951 film of Rattigan's play, again superbly cast with Michael Redgrave in perhaps his best film role (along with Losey's TIME WITHOUT PITY in 1957) as the schoolmaster Crocker-Brown, with Jean Kent as his unfaithful wife and Nigel Patrick again (as insouciant as ever) as her lover.
Once a brilliant teacher, Redgrave has turned into a desiccated, unfeeling pedant, despised by his colleagues and feared by his pupils, apart from young Taplow. Ill-health has prompted his early retirement, but it is apparent that his departure will go unmourned, in contrast to that of his attractive wife (Jean Kent). Dismissed as outdated and irrelevant after the Angry Young Men of the mid '50s rendered his middle-class scenarios unfashionable, Rattigan was a master technician of drama, and his dialogue and pacing are faultless. I like that long terrific scene with Redgrave and Patrick where the latter regrets his affair with the spiteful wife and tries to make amends, but Redgrave knows well how unsatisfied his wife is and how it is his fault. There is so much restraint and control here it is quite affecting. There was a 1994 remake but like those lightweight recent remakes of Wilde's THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST and AN IDEAL HUSBAND they are just not in the same league as the 1952 and 1947 originals.

'60s treats (continued)

Catching up with some 1969 extravaganzas (and a '75) I didn't bother with back then...

It’s a return to that bawdy, lusty 18th century with LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS, Peter Coe’s 1969 film of a stage show with songs, though the songs are gone here, as this vainly follows THE ADVENTURES OF MOLL FLANDERS (already reviewed here) in trying to capture the success of TOM JONES. It ramps up the squalor of the era and plays like a CARRY ON on speed – all it has going for it really is that cast. It basically follows the misadventures of three sailors on shore leave: Lusty (Jim Dale), Shaftoe (Tom Bell) and Ramble (Ian Bannen) who are all looking for some action – willing to provide it are Susannah York (Hilaret) who is rather underused here, Vanessa Howard (Hoyden) and Glynis Johns (Mrs Squeezum). Fabulous Fenella Fielding has the Joan Greenwood role as Lady Eager, allowing herself to be seduced at the theatre and ensuring her seducer has the correct window to call on later – Kathleen Harrison and Roy Kinnear are also funny as Lord and Lady Clumsey, and Roy Dotrice is the Gossip. Other familiar faces include Arthur Mullard, Peter Bull, Fred Emney and its good to see Georgia Brown (the original Nancy in the original OLIVER) as the local strumpet. Top billed though is another extraordinary performance by Christopher Plummer as Lord Fopington with a grotesque wig and what looks like a false nose and who can barely walk he is so effete. Shot in Ireland it is an amusing trifle to see at this remove.

THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN – this and Attenborough’s OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR must have kept the British acting fraternity busy during that busy year 1969, as again, most of them turn up here, led by Laurence Olivier as Lord Dowding. Ralph Richardson has a splendid set-to squaring up to German office Curt Jurgens, and those valiant airmen include the likes of Robert Shaw, Michael Caine, Ian McShane, and Edward Fox, with Nigel Patrick, Michael Redgrave, Harry Andrews and Trevor Howard as assorted officers. Christopher Plummer and Susannah York are the married couple of forces personnel who can never find time to be together – good to see York reunited with Kenneth More (from THE GREENAGE SUMMER) and then of course there are those planes and the dogfights in the skies over England in 1940 as airmen wait to get airborne and there is that “Battle in the Air” by William Walton for the climactic fights. As produced by Harry Saltzman and directed by Guy Hamilton it is all high, wide and handsome and remains stirring stuff. Some odd lapses of period detail though – Shaw and McShane exit from a house with a very modern glass door, hardly the type used in 1940 and though the other women in the background have period hair and dress, Susannah York looks like she strolled in off the Kings Road with her very ‘60s hair and make-up. Frankly, the kind of film I did not bother with when young back in 1969 but fascinating to catch up with now, if only for that cast.



THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN cries out for the epic treatment it deserves but does not get it here, but this 1969 film of the hit Peter Shaffer play remains curiously fascinating. As the blurb puts it: “Driven with the desire to find the mythical Kingdom of Gold, conquistador Fancisco Pizarro (Robert Shaw) sets sail for the Americas seeking riches beyond any man’s dreams. Far from being a land of savages, Pizarro encounters the magical Inca empire and their fabled leader Atahualpa (Christopher Plummer). The initial mistrust and suspicion between the two men is replaced by mutual faith and respect –emotions not held by other members of Pizarro’s exploration party, who are purely intent of claiming the Inca gold for themselves”. Empires collide indeed in this telling of the epic story of civilisations and beliefs clashing during that strange period of history when the Old World discovered the wealth of the New and began to savagely convert them to the Church, while of removing all that gold.

I have a personal interest in this one, as when I was 20 and new in London in 1966 one of my first theatrical experiences was seeing the original spellbinding production up in the cheap seats at the Old Vic with Robert Stephens incredible as the Inca king Atahualpa opposite Colin Blakely’s Pizarro. It was splendidly staged with the conquest of the Inca empire suggested and mimed, which works in the theatre but the film does not have the budget to show it. It is though efficiently directed by Irving Lerner and produced by Philip Yordan. Again, the cast is the thing as here Robert Shaw is the grizzled conquistador Pizarro, with Nigel Davenport, Michael Craig, Leonard Whiting (Zeffirelli’s Romeo) as young scribe Martin, James Donald as the Spanish king, Andrew Keir as the bloodthirsty priest and topping it all a totally extraordinary performance once again by Christopher Plummer as the Inca Atahualpa. His many admirers who saw this on account of his Captain Von Trapp must have been startled by his appearance here, toned and buff and gleaming with those costumes and the birdsong way of speaking and moving. It is totally daring and compelling. It boils down to a two hander between Pizarro and the king while the rest of the conquistadors wait to loot and pillage and melt down that gold, which we see happening in the background. It does quite well actually on a budget suggesting the might and splendour and strangeness of the Inca empire which did not resist the onslaught of the ravaging newcomers. The invaders have to kill Atahualpa but he believes he will rise again from death the next morning when the sun arises and Pizarro desperately needs to believe him, so instead of being burned his body is kept whole ... this was all stunning in the theatre, but somehow less so in the film, but then it was conceived for the theatrical medium. Shaffer of course wrote AMADEUS and EQUUS and this is more of the same with great language and ideas.

CONDUCT UNBECOMING was a stage play and a talky one at that, being basically a courtroom drama concerning the honour of a regiment in India in the days of the British Empire. Michael Anderson opens it out a bit and there is some location shooting but it does get rather stodgy. Again, it is the cast that holds the attention – Trevor Howard and Richard Attenborough as senior officers, Christopher Plummer and Stacey Keach as military personnel, James Donald as the doctor, Susannah York as the widow of the regiment’s hero who claims she has been assaulted (but has she really?) by young wastrel James Faulkner who just wants to be sent home. It falls to reluctant Michael York to defend him and discover the rather laboured truth. This one sank without trace back in 1975 and now one just wanted it to hurry up and finish.