War weekend 2: In Which We Serve

IN WHICH WE SERVE. The old warhorse from 1942 remains one of the great war films and is still affecting and emotional now, it is simply one of the great British films of the 1940s (along with THE WAY TO THE STARS, THIS HAPPY BREED, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, and of course Lean's later BRIEF ENCOUNTER). (See my comments on those at 1940s/War/British labels).

We follow the men of the “Torrin” which has been torpedoed and is sinking, as they cling to a life raft and see the ship and their lives in the various flashbacks, covering all of society from the high command to the regular sailors and their families. David Lean and Noel Coward directed, from Coward’s script and Noel also played Captain Kinross. His clipped manner is perfect here as is his rapport with his men. All those war clichés were new here – the captain scribbing down dying sailors’ last words for families back home, the coward who redeems himself etc. We have young Richard Attenborough, and John Mills, with Michael Wilding, while Celia Johnson is the perfect navy wife toasting her rival, the ship, 

while Kathleen Harrison is Bernard Miles’ wife, and Mills marries Freda played by Kay Walsh. That scene with the bombs falling on the women still delivers a punch. Young Daniel Massey is Coward’s son (he went on to play Coward in STAR!) while Juliet Mills is the baby. IN WHICH WE SERVE will remain an English classic, a film which can be enjoyed on many levels and repays repeat viewings, the stiff upper lip manner may have been parodied since, but its really affecting here. That scene of Kinross and family on the downs watching the planes above is so perfectly 40s.

People We Like: Kay Walsh

Following on from THE WITCHES, below, here's a piece I did back in 2009 on Kay Walsh: 

Kay Walsh: there’s an actress who doesn’t get much attention these days, but she was one of the most fascinating English actresses from the ‘30s right into the ‘70s (along with Glynis Johns, Ann Todd, Margaret Leighton, Pamela Brown etc) mainly in character roles, with quite a few classics to her name, and also some writing credits. Her best-known role is as the original Nancy in David Lean’s 1948 OLIVER TWIST. I would say her best role though was as Queenie Gibbons in Coward and Lean’s THIS HAPPY BREED in 1944. She was married to David Lean throughout the 40s, and had co-starred with Alec Guinness and John Mills about 5 times each - so she certainly mixed with the best!

Born in London in 1911 Kay was in films by the late 30s. Coward and Lean’s first film IN WHICH WE SERVE in  1942 is her 17th credit and her first important role, as Freda, John Mill's pregnant wife, who the other women make sit under the stairs as the bombs fall… The whole cast is marvellous in this still-engrossing classic war film.

THIS HAPPY BREED in 1944 continues the Coward and Lean tradition, in this richly humorous and moving tale of the Gibbons family between the wars, another traditional stiff-upper-lip saga for the war years, but it certainly works and holds up now, with fascinating colour, art work and well-rounded characters. Celia Johnson is superb of course as the mother, matched by Kay as Queenie, the rebellious daughter. There is also the enjoyable bickering of the spinster sister living with them and the cantankerous old mother in law who relish their spats, while young John Mills courts the wayward Queenie.

Giving it a modern interpretation, one could also say that Coward writing as a closeted gay man in the 40’s depicts Queenie as a coded gay role – unable to settle for suburbia, she runs off with someone unsuitable and becomes estranged from the family, the mother in particular not forgiving her. Queenie eventually redeems herself and returns married to dependable John Mills and is forgiven. It gets me every time. THIS HAPPY BREED though however one sees it remains a key British film and 40s classic. Another John Mills film THE OCTOBER MAN followed in 1947, an engrossing British noir with Mills on the run from a murder he did not commit. Joan Greenwood is the heroine here, and Kay the good time girl which she captures perfectly.

OLIVER TWIST in 1948 remains the classic it was from the start and Walsh is a startlingly vibrant Nancy - below. She was Mrs Lean at the time (they divorced in 1949) and she is one of the credited script writers here. She was it seems involved in writing and casting on his films of the time.

Hitchcock’s STAGE FRIGHT in 1950 may be one of his lesser classics but is still a fascinating entertainment with a great cast of the time, Kay fits in as Nellie the dresser for Marlene Dietrich, whom heroine Jane Wyman pays to replace for a few days so she can investigate Dietrich’s involvement in the murder which Richard Todd is on the run for. Jolly good fun.

Kay & Dirk - CAST A DARK SHADOW, 1954

Another with Guinness, LAST HOLIDAY, also in 1950 was followed by her segment “Winter Cruise” in ENCORE in 1951, a trio of Somerset Maugham stories, where she is the spinster on a cruise who never stops talking driving everyone to distraction. After roles in THE MAGIC BOX and HUNTED in 1952, she had a good part in YOUNG BESS as the loving servant of the young queen, well played by Jean Simmons. Its more of a pageant though than an engrossing period film. Several roles later brought the 1958 hit Alec Guinness film THE HORSE’S MOUTH, scripted by Alec and directed by Ronald Neame, with a solid role for Walsh as Coker, the barmaid, in this study of a somewhat tiresome rogue painter, reputedly based on Stanley Spencer. 

REACH FOR GLORY in 1962 is an interesting film by Philip Leacock, based on the novel “The Custard Boys” by John Rae (which I read and enjoyed when a teenager) about teenage boys longing to be soldiers and involved in the (second world) war in a small English town and the violence that ensues. Kay and Harry Andrews are the bickering parents. Its long been unavailable but I did track down a copy recently on the internet, so it was a pleasure to reacquaint myself with it after 40+ years!

After A STUDY IN TERROR in 1965 came the enjoyable hokum that is THE WITCHES – this 1966 Hammer Film is Joan Fontaine’s last credit and Kay co-stars as the improbably named Stephanie Bax, a leading light in the English village where Joan takes up a teaching position after encountering problems with witchcraft in Africa which led to her nervous breakdown. Kay has great fun here and relishes the camp factor while Joan works that quizzical look of hers and the raised eyebrow, and guess what …. this village too is over-run with witches as Joan gradually realises and stumbles on the local coven … A delirious treat all round.
 
Later roles included co-starring with a subdued Bette Davis in CONNECTING ROOMS in 1970, the spinster aunt in the engrossing THE VIRGIN AND THE GYPSY – an interesting one to see again now, and as Mrs Fezziwig in the Albert Finney SCROOGE, and in Peter O’Toole’s THE RULING CLASS in 1972. These are just the ones I have seen – she was quite busy, as per her imdb profile, until her retirement in 1981.

Kay died aged 94 in April 2005, a week before her old co-star John Mills, aged 97. They had both lived to tremendous ages and were certainly two stalwarts of the British cinema which they were part of from its early days onward.

Hocus Pocus

A 1966 Hammer Horror "ripe for rediscovery" AND an even more delirious Eurotrash farrago ...

THE WITCHES. Believe it or not this 1966 Hammer Films farrago is another of those being restored and screened at the London Film Festival. I had not seen it since its 1966 release, but remember my pal Stan and I finding it hilarious. It suddenly cropped up over the weekend on a minor cable channel devoted to horror films. It is of course Joan Fontaine’s last cinema film and I understand she set up the project herself – only to find herself out-acted by her co-star, Kay Walsh (Nancy in Lean’s GREAT EXPECTATIONS among other great roles). 

Joan is Gwen Mayfield, a graciously genteel teacher who has a breakdown while teaching in Africa as she falls foul of a local witchdoctor. Back in England she gets a new position as headmistress of a school in an ideal quaint Olde English village run by local author Stephanie Bax (Walsh) and her sometimes vicar brother Alec McEwan. Walsh takes command of the picture and seems to come on like a predatory lesbian - perhaps she thought the only way to play this preposterous material was to camp it up to the limit? Gwen settles in but begins to notice odd things and the villagers and pupils seem odd too, and there is that black cat … plus the flock of sheep who obliterate telling footprints, knocking over Gwen in the mud. Before long Joan’s raised eyebrow works overtime as she begins to realise there is a coven of witches in the village and they are planning a human sacrifice: the still virginal teenage girl (Ingrid Boulting). Gwen though is hospitalised by doctor Leonard Rossiter, and we have to wait until she escapes for the over the top climax. 

Enter Stephanie, boss witch supreme, in her witch robes and that curious head-dress with antlers and little birthday candles lit on it – how did she manage those doing that long campy dance of hers? The villagers (including Duncan Lamont, Bryan Marshall, and the boy from THE INNOCENTS Martin Stephens - now that was a real chiller, as per label) have a very British orgy as they writhe, cover themselves in slime, and the the virgin is brought out. Quick thinking Gwen realises how to stop the ceremony and turn the evil back on Stephanie (who foolishly had told her what to do earlier..).Need I go on? This is a delirious farrago, a totally enjoyable piece of nonsense, from Hammer Films, written by Nigel Kneale (of QUATERMASS fame) and directed by Cyril Frankel. It really should have been marketed as a comedy rather than a Hammer horror. The Film Festival brochure describes it as a film “that is ripe for rediscovery” – it is certainly ripe!

FANGS OF THE LIVING DEAD. More comic thrills in this 1968 Eurotrash vampire saga, also known as MALENKA. Model Sylvia Morel (Anita Ekberg – several years after her glory period) inherits an old castle somewhere in Central Europe, so of course she goes to see it, arriving at the inn in a fetching orange pantsuit with matching cape. At the mention of the castle and her connection to it the yokels freeze and fall back as a carriage arrives to take her there. So far, so BRIDES OF DRACULA …. Who is the strange nobleman who only appears at night, and that bevy of beauties she suspects are vampires …. 
She changes outfits in her room and emerges with a totally different hairstyle complete with ringlets. This is daft Eurotrash of the highest, or lowest depending on your view, order. Anita seems to be enjoying herself while going through the motions. Malenka of course was the original vampire, killed some centuries ago, who turned all her family into vampires and they now want Sylvia, who looks just like her, to join them … As a reviewer said on IMDB, it plays like “a Mel Brooks parody of a Gothic horror movie”. Directed by Armando de Ossorio.

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.

Christmas treats ...

Starting with a box of macaroons from Paris - the box is a work of art in itself, I feel tempted to hang it on the wall, it has a lovely black cat on it - also a spice & marmalade cake, also from Pierre Herme, Paris. Then dipping in and out of all those old movies on television, catching up with some not seen since I was a kid, and a few old favourites.

NIGHT PASSAGE is a pleasant memory of a '50s Sunday afternoon matinee, this 1957 James Stewart western should have been another of his tough westerns with Anthony Mann, but Mann walked due to script problems, so it was directed by James Neilson. A look at frontier life along the railroad, with train robberies; I remember liking this scene with Stewart and young Brandon DeWilde on the train, also on board was Elaine Stewart (another of this year's departees, aged 80) married to big boss Jay C Flippen! Audie Murphy and Dan Duryea were among the baddies, and Ellen Corby another tough frontier woman.

TARZAN'S GREATEST ADVENTURE from 1959 - not seen this since then but its as effective and violent (effectively directed by John Gullermin) as I remembered - Gordon Scott the perfect Tarzan for '50s kids, Anthony Quayle a terrific villain with young Sean Connery and Niall McGuinness in his gang, along with bad girl Scilla Gabel - Sophia Loren's stand-in on BOY ON A DOLPHIN, and here starting out her own career as a sizzling eurobabe. Scilla was always good value in Steve Reeves epics and movies as diverse as SODOM AND GOMORRAH and my fave MODESTY BLAISE.

THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER - one of those lavish (it says here...) 1977 remakes, helmed by the usually reliable Richard Fleischer (THE VIKINGS, BARBABBAS) this is an idiotic remake of the Erroll Flynn original. Lurid colours and guest stars aplenty: Charlton Heston, the older Rex Harrison, Raquel Welch is mainly silent - the interest for me is the re-teaming of Oliver Reed (rather portly here) and David Hemmings as his evil brother - their hell-raising was taking its toll on them here, since they were young in 1964's THE SYSTEM, a key movie for me then [review at David Hemmings label], showing the 60s just starting to swing. Mark Lester as both the prince and the pauper shows that most perfect child actors (OLIVER) grow up to be very uninteresting indeed, he is lanky here with frizzy hair and there is no difference at all between his two roles ... an amusing time-waster then, not in the same league as the producers' delightful star-stuffed MUSKETEERS films by Richard Lester. Right: THE SYSTEM gang in '64 including Olly and David Hemmings - 2 years later he was the star of Antonioni's BLOW-UP and the icon of the age!

THE SEARCHERS. A classic one never tires of of course, like THE QUIET MAN and VERTIGO, also afternoon or late night delights. More on Ford's classic western at Jeffrey Hunter label - he has that bath scene here with Vera Miles (Mrs TARZAN in real life as she was then married to Gordon Scott!; her pregnancy cost her that leading role in VERTIGO). I shall get around to appreciating Vera in due course. What is jarring about THE SEARCHERS now is the treatment of the squaw Hunter accidentally marries; but to counterbalance that we have those essentially 50s yet timeless scenes with those characters Martin Pawley, Laurie Jurgenson and Natalie Wood's Debbie.

MANSFIELD PARK, the 1999 film of a Jane Austen novel seems to have divided opinions, as a lot of Austen purists hate it. I read the book some time ago, it is not my favourite Austen - that is PERSUASION by a mile, one I can re-read and like all 3 adaptations (costume drama label). The priggish Fanny Price is indeed Austen's least loveable heroine as she relishes her moral superiority over the other young people putting on the play, which she does not approve of. It is a good cast here though, with Harold Pinter (left) as Sir Thomas Bertram whose business interests in Antigua turn out to be slavery, James Purefoy and Johnny Lee Miller as his sons; the marvellous Sheila Gish (right) as Mrs Norris who tries to keep Fanny as the poor relation, and Lindsay Duncan as both Fanny's downtrodden mother and opium-addicted wife of Sir Thomas. Frances O'Connor is a spirited Fanny, but hardly fair to Austen's original.

Finally, a re-view of 1958's A TALE OF TWO CITIES as well, not seen since I was a kid. French actor Paul Guers who did actually look like Bogarde, plays Charles Darnay whom Dirk replaces on the guillotine - Guers has been in some other items I saw recently like Demy's BAY OF ANGELS and THE GIRL WITH GOLDEN EYES (both at French label). This is solid Rank Organisation fare by Ralph Thomas with all those familiar featured players: Rosalie Crutchley, Freda Jackson, Athene Seyler, Christopher Lee, Donald Pleasance etc, all looking splendidly in period.

THIS HAPPY BREED. Another perennial favourite, as I have written about before (Kay Walsh label). Kay excels as Queenie the dissatisfied daughter of Robert Newton and Celia Johnson; and there is that endless bickering between Amy Vaness's mother-in-law and Alison Legatt's spinster sister, all part of the Higgins family in Clapham between the wars. The period detail is just perfect and the emotions are fully engaged, particuarly that scene when the parents in the garden are told of the deaths of their son and his wife, as the camera stays in the sitting room where afternoon tea is about to be served ...

And one discovery: THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE from 2005: "When the Pevensie family are evacuated out to the country, they are unaware of the adventure they will encounter. During a game of hide and seek, the youngest daughter, Lucy discovers a wardrobe which transports her to the land of Narnia. Covered in snow, Narnia is full of weird and wonderful creatures, but is watched over by the evil White Witch. When all four Pevensie children end up through the wardrobe, they discover that it was meant to be, as two daughters of Eve and two sons of Adam must join with the mighty lion, Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) to defeat the evil White Witch". Tilda Swinton is perfect as the Ice Queen/White Witch and James McAvoy (whom I had not though much of) is an adorable faun and the children are just perfect. For a CGI movie I liked it a lot, and Andrew Adamson's direction is also perfect! I shall have to watch the others now ...

The new DOWNTON ABBEY special is indeed a treat, and ticks all the right boxes, and the new GREAT EXPECTATIONS is an odd re-telling, rather different from Lean's version, with Ray Winstone a perfect Magwitch, and Gillian Anderson as a wraith-like younger Miss Havisham. Unusual though to see a plain-jane Estella (who is meant to be a glacial beauty out of the rather ordindary Pip's league), but here Pip with his sculptured cheekbones and pouting lips, is much prettier than her! Pip is Douglas Booth who was one of Isherwood's boys in CHRISTOPHER AND HIS KIND (gay interest label). Now for that BEN HUR re-boot, with Winstone again (as Jack Hawkins). It cannot be a patch on Wyler's classic but may have some cheap laughs!

BEN HUR (2010) actually turned out to be quite interesting, shot in Morocco it looks more like THE LIFE OF BRIAN than a Hollywood blockbuster, and wisely does not try to be - the chariot race for instance is much smaller scale (no circus maximus here) and the ships at war are courtesy of CGI effects and there are interesting script variations from the Wyler film. Winstone is a mumbling Arrius, Hugh Bonneville good as a nasty Pilate, Alex Kingston right as Mrs Hur (the leprosy is also played down), but in all a radical re-working of the original material. Joseph Morgan is a totally underwhelming uncharismatic Ben, but Stephen Campbell Moore (from THE HISTORY BOYS) a rather good Messala.

We will though be still watching the Lean and Wyler originals when these lightweight remakes are soon forgotten - I tuned in to Lean's EXPECTATIONS again yesterday and was bowled over again by how perfect it all was, with that great double act of Martita Hunt and Jean Simmons as the perfect Havisham and Estella, and that marvellous black and white photography, so right for Dickens.

Cult Movies: Reach for Glory

Hardly ever seen now, Philip Leacock's 1962 film REACH FOR GLORY is the film version of a highly praised novel "The Custard Boys" by John Rae, a headteacher at Westminster College, in 1960, with the blurb: "During World War II, teenage boys in a small English town are consumed with jingoism and brutal war games, hoping dearly that the war won't end before they can fight in it. John, one of the younger members, is increasingly torn between these peer group values and his deepening homoerotic friendship with Mark, a gentle Jewish refugee whom his gang has ostracized as a sissy and a coward." It is rather suggestive of LORD OF THE FLIES, leading as it does to tragedy, and starts with the boys chasing and killing a cat. The main adults are the estimable Harry Andrews and Kay Walsh as hero John Curlew's parents, and Michael Anderson as Lewis Craig, the bullying leader of the gang, as the boys are encouraged in their war games, but love and affection are very suspect - life during wartime! The worst thing here is to be a coward, as John realises, coping with his blustering father (Andrews) and his deepening friendship with the Jewish boy Mark Stein.

Leacock was a very prolific director, very good with children, who in the '50s directed films like THE SPANISH GARDENER [review at Dirk Bogarde label], and later went on to a successful career in American television with the likes of THE WALTONS, DYNASTY and FALCON CREST. This though is a nice small little back and white film, which I managed to catch once as a supporting feature, but have now got a dvd copy. It's been well worth the wait.

I read the book as a teenager, and as it was about teenagers, it was fascinating - like the novel of ALL FALL DOWN by James Leo Herlihy.