Rope (1948)

Look, the forties have been going wonderfully well - 'The Third Man' (1949) for goodness' sake, and 'Les Enfants du Paradis' (1945) - and I've enjoyed the decade so much, more consistently than any of the others, indeed - that I didn't want to spoil things now.  1948 was the sole empty year of the forties (heck, the only unfilled year between 1940 and 1996, at the time of writing), and I didn't want to ruin the decade with something poor, or even something promising but mediocre.  So I chose Hitchcock's 'Rope', because I know it to be good.

Now, that isn't a problem in itself, many of the films I've watched I've known and loved and chosen for their familiar merits - but this won't be the only Jimmy-Stewart-Hitchcock-thriller-set-in-a-single-room that I've seen for The Penciltonian, though this and 'Rear Window' (1954) have very little else in common.  So do pardon me cherry-picking this film to fill the gap.  Such an indulgence seems permissible as a reward of sorts, since I'm down to the last five empty years.

I suspect he would humour anyone's aunt at a party,
in such a way as would amuse him.

Like many of the best films, 'Rope' is experimental enough to be interesting, but conventional enough to be watchable (or should those be the other way around).  The great novelty, of course, is that the whole film (after an establishing shot) is told in a single, unbroken shot, with the camera roaming to show us details, rather than the convention of various angles edited together.  It's a tactic used far more lavishly - ridiculously so - in 'Russian Ark' (2002), which is told from the point-of-view of an unseen central character, whereas here the camera stands only for the audience.  We're the ones watching this murder story.

When I first saw it about a decade ago, I was surprised by a couple of things that now seem utterly unsurprising.  First, it was made in 1948 - and the only Hitchcock I knew back then was 'Psycho', from 1960.  I was surprised, as the two years seemed incredibly distant one from another (though, as a mathematician would tell you, they're only twelve years apart).  1960 is very nearly the modern day, or so I thought, but the forties were practically Victorian.  I'd hitherto thought of Hitchcock's career as a tiny, intense thing, all occurring in a short blurt the length of a decade, like the Beatles albums.  It was the first time I started to tie films to their years, a process which led, eventually, to The Penciltonian.

'And what would you say to some champagne?'
'Helloooo champagne'.

The second thing that struck me was that it was that it was in colour.  Perhaps I had a notion that the world didn't go into colour until 'Doctor Who' did in 1970, or in the sixties at the earliest.  I'm closer to the truth now: after some odd experiments, colour happened in a big way in 1939, but was so expensive that the onset of war made it disappear again, except for the most spectacular pictures.  Colour was on and off for a while, and only became the standard about fifty years ago.  I suspect it was affordable in 'Rope' because of the relatively low budget - the film is a play, on one set, and without many fancy effects - and because, by the nature of the movie, I suspect relatively little film-stock was needed: the shots were few, and thoroughly rehearsed, and there were no alternative angles to worry about.

It is, as I say, a very fine film, and one which has aged well - there's the merit of a filmed play.  It regards two young men who, as the camera starts to roll, have just strangled their friend, purely because they could.  We see the remainder of their evening, as they throw a polite party, with the corpse's hiding place as a serving-table.  At any point it seems they could be discovered, or else give themselves away.  To an extent they seem to want to be discovered, and praised for their daring.  It's extremely tense, highly dramatic, but at the same time witty and very fun.  James Stewart is always worth watching, and all parts are enjoyably brought to life, except David, of course, who is dead to begin with.

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The Third Man (1949)

A few weeks ago I saw a very enjoyable amateur production of 'Travels with my Aunt', enjoyable because of the story: at every point I wanted to know what happened next.  Certain revelations were easy to predict, but I couldn't guess where they would lead the characters, and whenever I thought I had my head around it some complication would throw the plot in unexpected directions, and make the resolutions I expected far further away.  It wasn't just easy schlock, it was a morally complex and clever work of plotting.  Since the details, the characters and their dialogue were likewise very appealing to me, I praised Graham Green, who had penned the original novel, and resolved to re-watch 'The Third Man', as he wrote both the novel and the screenplay.

It's a British film about an American in Vienna, at a time when it was a divided and international city, a bureaucratic tangle, filled with crime, trouble and outlandish camera-angles.  It's an excellent noir, and I very much like noir, so long as it's excellent.

I like this shot of a bridge.  It looks so much more modern than
most of Vienna as we see it.  The city and the film seem to be
on the border between the old world and the present day.

My first viewing of the film was immensely satisfying, trying to work out the central mystery of the eponymous Third Man.  Subsequent viewings have been no less enjoyable, regarding the performances, the lighting and cinematography and the ingenuity of the story.

I feel a little guilty that I only have positive things to say about the film - I could probably be of far more interest if I condemned it, but it pleases me too much - a beautiful thriller with a great plot - it resists sentimentality and the temptation to grant a comfortable ending.  As it transpires, I've really enjoyed all the films I've watched from the 1940s (except the German ones, oddly enough, despite loving Weimar Republic cinema).  The great surprise of The Penciltonian is that this has turned out to be the best decade for films.  'Went The Day Well' (1942), 'Double Indemnity' (1944), 'Les Enfants du Paradis' (1945), all amazed me.  Of course, I haven't looked at 1948 yet, so perhaps it will al go wrong from here.

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The film, if you'd care to watch it from some optical media. And you might like 'Third Man', a song by The Duckworth Lewis Method. They're very good, you know.

Das Herz der Königin (1940)

Zarah Leander IS Mary Queen of Scots.

There are plenty of English-language films about foreign history - 'Nicholas and Alexandra' (1971), for instance, about the death of the Tsar of Russia, or almost any film about Jesus, so I've long been curious about foreign films about English history.  Are there Indian films about Cromwell, or Russian biopics of Queen Victoria?

'Das Herz der Königin' is exactly what I'd been looking for - a film made in Nazi Germany about Mary Queen of Scots' imprisonment and (spoiler) execution by Queen Elizabeth of England.  It's a bit of history I don't really know, as it wasn't on the syllabus in my youth.  I read the first half of Antonia Fraser's biography of Mary last year, so have a vague understanding of the queen and her times, but since I didn't ever finish the (good and thorough) book, the end of Mary's life is something I first learned about from this film.

I think this may be Rudolf Klein-Rogge, who I've much enjoyed in Fritz Lang's
'Metropolis' (1927), 'Die Nibelungen' (1924), and the Dr Mabuse films (1922, 1933)

The history is something like this: England and 'Schottland' were completely separate nations back then, and their queens, Elizabeth and Mary, were cousins who always wanted to meet.  Catholic Scotland believed Mary was the real heir to England's throne, as, refusing to recognise Henry VIII's divorce, they considered Elizabeth illegitimate and thus an ineligible heir.  Mary went to France for a bit (which in those days was next-door to Scotland) to marry a prince, who died.  When she came back to Scotland it was no longer as Catholic as she was (for, having had Catherine de Medici as a mother-in-law, she was Catholic indeed).  Everything went pretty badly for her until she was locked up by the English for some reason (in the middle of Sheffield, though you wouldn't recognise it in those pre-tram days), and was beheaded for something like treason.  She and Elizabeth never met, except perhaps a little bit in this movie.  The fruit of her loins became king of both England and Scotland, uniting the island of Great Britain, so that's a sort-of happy ending for you.

Zarah Leander, Nazi Germany's great diva, plays Mary, and gets a number of sad-sounding songs, though their contents could be intensely jolly for all I know, as I was watching the film in German without subtitles, so had no idea what anybody was saying.  Nonetheless, Leander gives a pleasant performance, though some count it as her worst.  I've long been curious to see her in action as Maria and Pauline Simon in my beloved 'Heimat' (1984) go to see her in the 1938 film of the same name, and admire her greatly.

Sorry, German language, I've no idea what you're trying to tell me.

The whole film looks very fine, giving us a splendid, very clean picture of history.  Big Tudor costumes: doublets, kilts, ball-gowns and jerkins.  Plenty to envy, and want to wear.  We can tell it's set in England and Scotland, as there's Norman architecture and lots of capotains, a hat I very much enjoy.

I think I would have found the movie more enjoyable, not to mention more intelligible, had some subtitles been available to me.  It would probably make the film's anti-British bias more evident, which in pictures is only apparent in the chilly horridness of Königin Elizabeth's performance.  Who knows what allegations lie within the dialogue?

P.S. Because I only realised a year ago, I shall clarify: Mary Queen of Scots isn't the same person as 'Bloody' Mary, Queen of England, they merely shared a forename, a century and a lineage.  This all happened about 450 fears ago, shortly before Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Guy Fawkes, the revolution and the interregnum (in that order).

P.P.S. While watching the film, my chair broke and I fell over backwards.  It was hilarious.

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Look, it's not out on video, but you can find the film on Youtube.  Or better, why not read Antonia Fraser's biography of Mary?  It's really good.  I only didn't finish it because I'm lazy.

Münchausen (1943)

I've seen films made during wartime from Britain, America and France, so I was very keen to find one from Germany.  I'm aware there were other countries involved in World War II, but these are the four we see in 'The Longest Day' (1962), which seems a fair criterion for The Penciltonian.  'Münchausen' is a lavish comedy made by order of Joseph Goebbels, to prove that Nazi Germany could rival anything Hollywood could produce.

The film tells the story of Baron Hieronymous von Münchausen, the famous teller of tall tales (or as he's presented here, man of bizarre adventures).  He rides on a cannonball, wins the love of the Empress of Russia, and travels to the moon, where he learns that time works quite differently to how it does on Earth.  It's a story that suits the colour and ambition on display here, and the inventive film-craft available in the country that produced 'Metropolis' (1927).  It's a lavish tale, intended to rival 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Gone With the Wind' (both 1939) for splendour, so accordingly the movie is full of the most astounding hats, costumes and model shots.

The Baron meets the fastest man in the world

At first it seems we're watching the Baron in the 18th Century, but we soon learn that an apparent descendant of his is holding a costume ball, so the old-fashioned costume and music give way to automobiles and electricity, and what seems to be a black character played by a white actor turns out to be a white character whose make-up comes off easily.  There's a pleasing artificiality to the film, right from the start, which excuses some of the fantastical stylisation of the rest of the film.  The modern day Münchausen tells the story of the famous Baron, and we flash back to all manner of unlikely adventures.

The body of the film is full of the bizarre antics and prop comedy I'd expect from 'The Goodies': a wardrobe of clothes get rabies and attack our hero, a bugle is too cold to sound a note but once it warms up indoors it plays incessantly until stamped to pieces, and a giant pastry is opened to reveal a dwarf playing a tiny harpsicord.  It's a very silly film, but it's more fun than funny.

Münchausen, in a fez, meets a eunuch in I-don't-know-what-that-hat-is-but-oh-my.

Hans Albers plays Baron Münchausen, and gives his best performances in quiet close-ups rather than the wild action sequences.  I'm inclined to think he's a bit too old for the role: this is a character who wishes for, and gets, the gift of ageless immortality for as long as he wants it.  He looks about sixty, so seemingly has eternal youth without the youth.  It's like watching the latter half of the Roger Moore era of James Bond, with a hero running around and seducing women a fraction of his age.  Münchausen even meets an aged Giacomo Casanova, the implication being that Casanova has grown too old to be chasing women, while the Baron has retained his mojo.  The women grow older while Münchausen stays the same, and one is forced by her family to join a convent, a fate from which the heroic Baron notably doesn't save her.

It's an lively and watchable film, but doesn't quite live up to the movies it seeks to trump.  It gets more interesting as it goes on, with a memorable trip to the moon where a babies grow on trees, and people's heads galavant without bodies, and fashions are just amazing.  There, Münchausen's trusty servant ages to death over the course of a few days, and the film suddenly seems less ridiculous, and really rather sad.  "The moon is a rather exhausting star," as the Baron notes.  It this film, death (in males, at least) seems to be something that should be chosen.  Dying suddenly in the heat of battle seems acceptable, but choosing mortality seems to be the ideal.  Since the film was ordered into existence by the minister for propaganda, I wonder how close that was to the dominant philosophies of forties Germany.

On the moon, a friendly disembodied head with amazing hair sits on a flower.

I'm glad to have sought this film out, as, though I've watched a great many German films for this Penciltonian project, there was a large gap between the early films of the twenties and thirties, and the later ones from the eighties onwards.  My knowledge of the nation's output seemed to disappear with the rise of Nazism, and wasn't restored until decades of apparently awkward post-war Heimatfilm had gone by.  Perhaps that was for the best, in terms of quality: I've been watching films from the best eras of German cinema.

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Great Expectations (1946)

I'd meant to watch David Lean's 'Oliver Twist' (1948), but put the wrong disc in the machine and watched this instead.  I would have been happy with either, and I'm glad, as I know this story less well, to the extent that I'd forgotten a number of twists towards the end.  I very much like Dickens, despite having read very little of his work.  I like his stories, which I have seen adapted often enough to convince me of his merits as a storyteller, and I like his titles, his name, his face and his beard.  I have read 'Great Expectations' (though I always feel compelled to call it 'Great Big Expectations'), and I've read 'A Christmas Carol' more than once, and delight in its phrasing.  'A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every December the 25th!'

The story is slightly more Harry Pottery than I'd recalled: our hero is a young orphan being raised by an intolerable relative (though Mrs Joe is as much a Thenardier as a Dursley), before being visited by a large and scary man (the bald Abel Magwitch, rather than hairy old Hagrid) and offered escape from his uncomfortable and rather tedious life.  In each case he comes into an unexpected inheritance and is urged to travel to London and get himself some decent clothes.  Pip becomes a lawyer, not a wizard, and his battles are (mainly) less violent than Harry's, but as a backstory it worked as well in 1860 as it did in 1946, and still gets the audience on-side today.

Young Pip contemplates Mr Pumblechook's gigantic pie.

I've mentioned before how impressed I am by all the 1940s films I've been watching.  Every other decade has its duds, its highs and lows, but the six films I've watched from the forties have been uniformly excellent, with the talking picture now being well-enough established for the films to lack for nothing.  Forties film-making seems to have a particular style, with its academy ratio, its monochrome, its polite hair and well-spoken performances, and the stories told in the decade's films seem to suit this style extremely well.   This film makes a rather fine companion to the previous year's 'Les Enfants du Paradis' (1945), English and French films set in nineteenth centuries of comedy and sadness, gainful employment, crime, love and beauty.  I could say a great deal more about my love of that particular film, and a surprising amount of it applies here as well.

I praised the direction of David Lean's 'Doctor Zhivago' (1965) recently, and I'm content to say he had a considerable flair even this early.  Some flourishes are quite overt: a novel use of voiceovers to show Pip's memories of earlier scenes, or to put the voice of his paranoia into the mouths of a herd of psychomachiac cows, for instance; or a scene in which the shrill Mrs Joe opens her mouth to exclaim, not in words, but in parps and blurts of incidental music.  Other touches are subtler, for instance when there's a change of actor in the lead, as the child Pip (Anthony Wager) is replaced by the adult Pip (John Mills) - we hear our grown-up protagonist before we see him, and watch the shadow he casts while working the forge with Joe before he's eventually summoned before the lens.

Finlay Currie IS Balthazar.  Oh, but that's in 'Ben-Hur' (1959).
Here he's ABEL MAGWITCH!

Because it's Lean at the helm, naturally there's a role for Alec Guinness, who I've learnt to expect in dramatic roles, but who here plays the comedic role of Herbert Pocket, a camp young fellow with whom Pip lives most happily.  It's wonderful to see such a different, such an energetic performance from Guinness, but it's curious to see him in so relatively minor a role.  Later in his career I'd expect to see him playing, if not Pip, perhaps Miss Havisham, though I would not mean to wrest the role from Martita Hunt.  She gives a terrifyingly strong performance of an excellent character: Miss Havisham sits, resplendent in cobwebs like some Wintery queen of Narnia.  She says she has sick fantasies: to be precise, a desire to bring in children to have them break one another's hearts.  She's a horrid sort, and garners too little redemption too late.

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Went the Day Well? (1942)

This time last year I watched 'Went the Day Well', a brilliant film about a village which slowly realises it's been the bridgehead for a Nazi invasion. When I started watching 100 years of films for The Penciltonian I thought it a pity I'd watched it so recently, as I truly can't imagine anything could better stand for 1942.

Well, here I am watching it again.  I'm up to the forties in my viewing of 'Heimat' (1984), and this weekend went to a 1940s fayre at Kelham Island Museum, so found myself with an ample appetite for such a tale of the Home Front.  It's charming, genuinely dramatic and utterly British, without being grotesquely so.

Some First Scene Guy points out a rarity: a memorial with German names on't.

The film opens with a man talking directly to camera, showing the audience around a churchyard.  The events of the film are history: it's peacetime, and the war is over after 'Hitler got what was coming to him'.  The man clues us in to what's coming - that this is the only piece of British soil the Nazis captured.  We spend the remainder of the film in a flash-back, that we might see how this invasion came to occur and be beaten.  What seems to modern eyes a historical 'what if' would have seemed alarmingly plausible at the time.  The film was made in 1943, when this sort of invasion was still very much on the cards, and victory in World War II was not inevitable.

The first scene assurance that we win, both the war and the battle of Bramley, gives the impression that everything will tend toward triumph, that we're in for an optimistic tale in which the Brits trounce the Jerries at every turn.  On the contrary, the charming village suffers moments of unspeakable violence, as the merry home guard are mown down by machine gunners, and in return, as good humoured people of the village take what crude arms they can against the foe, even when it will clearly cost them their own lives. Again and again, people we like, main characters who look set to make it to the end, just die - sometimes protecting others, sometimes futilely, failing to deliver the news to the outside world. There's a constant tension between the agreeable pluck, the Blitz spirit, and the brutally serious nature of the war. Watching this at the time would have been encouraging in part, but terrifying.

Mrs Fraser (Marie Lohr) is the admirablest character.
Her final scene drifts into my mind with some frequency

I'm surprised 'Went the Day Well' isn't more often spoken of, as I'm inclined to value it very highly.  I hadn't heard of it at all until my friend Rob (who also recommended as 'Taxi Driver' for 1976) told me it was something I would particularly enjoy.  Perhaps it's just a film that tends to my own specific tastes, but I doubt its appeal is really that limited.  So why not watch it, and spread the word?

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It's an excellent film, and you should totally watch it.  See what Thora Hird looked like in her youth, why not?

Peer Gynt (1941)

The Bøyg!

I claimed a while back that I'd never seen a film made in the forties that wasn't excellent. It seems I misspoke, as a half-decade ago I saw this low-budget silent film of Ibsen's once-famous play.  It isn't by any means wretched, indeed it's quite a work of art, but I wouldn't call it the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole world.

I was watching then for its star, the seventeen-year-old Charlton Heston. Watching it now, to stand for the year of 1941, it seems more interesting, and rather innocuous: a silent film in the forties! Made so late, it's able to stand on its own merits, not joining with the fevered rush for grander scale that we saw at the end of the twenties, nor hampered by the need to set up microphones.

Peer Gynt works rather well as a silent film. Notoriously, Edvard Grieg wrote incidental music for the original play which was too loud to include alongside dialogue, but too good to miss out. The solutions, I suppose, were to present the thing as a ballet - rather a pity when you could have Ibsen's dialogue - or, at last, as a silent film, with Grieg's music throughout, and a with well-judged amounts of intertitles.

There is, by the way, no chance that you don't know the music I'm talking about.

A child Peer begat in his imagination turns up in the real world

When I first saw this, I didn't know the story of Peer Gynt, and assumed, for the first half, that this was just a tale of a lusty jerk called Peer who goes around bothering people a bit.  I was surprised and excited, then, when Peer goes inside a mountain and discovers the Bøyg, a massive flying head.  Alarmingly, though the rest of this is a silent film, the Bøyg speaks its dialogue aloud.  Like 'Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors' (1964), a pastoral story of rural romance turned out way weirder than I'd given it credit for.

The first half is, I think, extremely good.  For the film's back-end, I had to turn to the Internet to find out the plot, a few key points of which seem to be absent.  Gone from the play is the suggestion that Peer has lived his life as a troll, and his climactic encounter with the devil and eventual death.  As it is, there's no reunion with Solveig, which strikes me as rather a pity, and the story pretty-much ends with Peer meeting a button-moulder, who critiques him as a person, and, it seems, as a fictional character.  It's an appropriately odd end, but no real way to resolve the story or the themes.  It all looks very nice though.

Featuring Lake Michigan as Morocco.  Here, 'Sir Peter Gynt' gives a picnic.

My favourite intertitle, since this is a silent film, reads as follows: 'Peer returns to a Norway of chaos and desolation'.  Before remembering that the film is indeed Norwegian in setting, the slide caused me to entertain the notion that 'a Norway' was the generic term for a chaotic and desolate locale.  Since then, I've been seeking opportunities to apply the phrase: 'since you got those kittens, the place has been a Norway of chaos and desolation', 'since the regular arson attacks began, the Sheffield ski-village has been a Norway of chaos and desolation', or 'they need to get someone in to sort out those public toilets: they're a bit of a Norway'.

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On this DVD set, in a quality that is mediocre yet sufficient, one may find this 'Peer Gynt' and Bradley and Heston's other notable collaboration, a rather fine 'Julius Caesar' from 1950.  There are also a number of episodes of 'Studio One', a series which cut classic novels and plays down to 52 minutes and shot them as-live on video with a multi-camera set-up.  It's a bit strange, being so used to America's glossy TV output, to see some that wasn't shot on film with a single-camera, but there's plenty to enjoy in these very concise productions of 'The Taming of the Shrew', 'Wuthering Heights', 'Jane Eyre', and my favourite 'A Bolt of Lightning', in which he plays James Otis, who said "no taxation without representation," and threw the Boston Tea Party.  It's out of print at present, but if it comes back and you share my strange fascination with the acting style of Charlton Heston, you may like to give it a go.

Double Indemnity (1944)

Neff hides in the back of the car

I was left rather worried for the fate of the talking picture after last week's 'The Lives of a Bengal Lancer' (1935), which made spoken dialogue seem so static, so much an interruption to the real business of incident and character and running around.  I'm glad to say my faith in non-silent movies has been restored by 'Double Indemnity', an excellent noir thriller, and a tremendously fraught and satisfying work of drama.

The film is bookended by insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), narrating a confession of sorts into a dictaphone, for his colleague Keyes to find.  He has committed a murder, and intends to get the story straight.  The body of the film, then, is told in flashback.  Despite the fact that we already know the murder will be committed successfully, the film is incredibly tense, the characters' plotting constantly frustrated or threatened with discovery.  We know the murder will happen, and we want it to happen, and fear for the two conspirators.

Phyllis and Neff, after the event.

So, Walter Neff falls into a plan to murder the husband of Phyllis Diedrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) and reap the reward of a life-insurance policy.  Initially he wants nothing to do with it, but he's too clever to resist - he knows he could get away with it - and Phyllis is a truly beautiful woman, a femme fatale (is there such a thing as an homme fatale?), too beautiful to ignore.

The murder itself isn't shown.  The shot cuts away to Phyllis's reaction, and the death is left to the viewer's imagination.  Indeed, we never even see the body, though Phyllis and Neff manhandle it into position for discovery.  At the point of death, Mr Diedrichson disappears entirely from the film's pictures, and what could be schlocky or grizzly is allowed to be functional, tense and dramatic, the emphasis on the murderers, not on the body.

The magnificent Edward G. Robinson

The highlight of movie is the Edward G. Robinson's brilliant performance as Keyes, the head of Neff's office, with a legendary instinct for bogus claims and deceit of any sort.  If you watch as many Charlton Heston films as I do (though it seems unlikely) you'll know Robinson from 'The Ten Commandments' (1956) and 'Soylent Green' (1973).  If not, you'll likely know an impersonation of him, the basis for Police Chief Clancy Wiggum in 'The Simpsons' (1989-2089), whose look and vocal performance were based on the actor.

Robinson gives an excellent character performance - charismatic, energetic and contemplative, his whole body serving his dialogue.  The whole film is worth watching for his performance (though even without it the film would be worth watching, its direction exquisite, its dialogue fast, witty, American poetry).  Keyes is a very close friend to Neff, and matches or exceeds his intelligence, so the question soon becomes, not 'will they get away with the murder', but 'how can they hide the truth from Keyes'.  Eventually, of course, the question is why Neff ends up confessing into a dictaphone.

I think you should give this film your time and attention, so I've been careful not to spoil anything that isn't established in the first five minutes.  This was one of the most enjoyable viewing experiences of the project so far (which, by the way, is roughly half-way through), and I hope you find it as exciting as I did.


P.S. Since I'm currently going through decade by decade, I knew the next update had to be from the fifties.  It was nearly 'Touch of Evil' (1958), but that would give us two films noir in a row, so I instead went with something entirely different, 'The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad' (also 1958).

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It's a very good film.  You should watch it some time.

Les Enfants du Paradis (1945)

Not sure if this is a romantic or a cynical statement.  Maybe both?

This film was made in German-occupied Paris in 1945, at a time when the authorities forbade the production of films any longer than ninety minutes.  Consequently, 'Les Enfants du Paradis' masquerades as two films, or as a film and its sequel, which are always to be shown as a double bill, thus giving us one long story which just happens to have credits before and after its intermission.  Premiere Epoque: 'Le Boulevard du Crime', Deuxieme Epoque: 'L'Homme Blanc'.  I knew I was onto a winner as soon as the words 'The Boulevard of Crime' came onto the screen.  It stirred something within me.  This is one of the most excellent films I've ever met, and I count it a great pity that it's not more widely watched and celebrated.

The story is set in the Paris of the 19th Century, at a time when there were two types of theatre: the classy sort with dialogue and wealthy audiences; and the Pantomime - not the Panto of modern Britain, but a mute sort of melodrama, somewhere between mime, ballet and cartoon, to which the poor flock for their entertainment, and, on a good day, get to see unplanned physical fights break out among the cast on stage.  The 'paradis' of the title, by the way, is the uppermost circle of audience seating, which in the UK is called 'the gods'.

Shakespearian charmer Frédérick Lemaître, and the elusive Garance

Much of the film is set in and around these two sorts of theatre, especially The Funambules, which can only afford a licence to stage pantomime.  Rising to prominence is the truly brilliant Baptiste, who when we first see him witnesses a robbery on the boulevard and reports what he saw to a policeman, communicating only through the medium of excellently enjoyable mime.  Baptiste is a clown of the truest and best kind, like a 19th Century Chaplin: hilarious, but tragic, sentimental and beautiful.

It's an interestingly stylised work, perhaps drawing inspiration from the theatres it describes.  When I first watched it, I wondered whether this was a melodrama of sorts, with everything 'writ large', since some characters seemed at first to be types: the optimistic charmer with theatrical ambitions, the villainous cad with the moustache and the murderous manner, and so on.  As it goes on, though, the characters show themselves to be far more interesting, and far more real, making intelligent decisions at odds with my expectations, and showing themselves to be much more nuanced than they first appeared.  Though told very colourfully, even joyfully, this is a world of real human mistakes and rectifications, passionate but destructively asymmetrical love-affairs.

Lacenaire is kinda the villain I've always wanted to be, except...

Much of the story revolves around Baptiste, who is the first truly great mime performer, the first to compare with the greatest of actors, whose performances are convincingly heartbreaking or cruel.  He falls passionately, too passionately, in love with Garance, a courtesan who matches him for beauty, and who stands out as an unusually interesting and independent female character for this era of films, not at all cold, but never dependent on the male characters, nor ever under their power except for a dark period between the two films.  I'm often surprised by the merits of female characters in the older films I've viewed, especially compared to the stereotypes that come up in more recent, more popular works.  I ought to praise the script here, which is uniformly excellent in dialogue and in the engaging, entrancing story that unfolds in a manner fresh, amusing but ultimately terrible.  I must also add Jean-Louis Barrault and the mononymous Arletty to my list of actors worth watching in anything, though of course there are, of course, many more excellent performances in this double film, but these two deserve special attention.

The film also follows Lacenaire, who somehow manages to be the film's villain without ever really opposing the film's heroes, and Lemaître, a chancer who leaps into acting on a whim, and finds himself excellently popular.  Lemaître has a dream of acting some Shakespeare (oh, you know, that British guy who wrote all those brutal and vulgar melodramas), and tears apart lesser writers, memorably ad libbing a new ending to a disappointing play, refusing to die on cue, and taking the whole audience with him into a magnificent condemnation of the playwrights.

Baptiste and Garance

The four characters all prosper, in some way or another, whether growing in fame or in notoriety, or getting married and having children, but with the wrong person.  None of them seem to find any great security, though Baptiste and Lemaître seem to draw a lot of their skill at performance from their volatility - though this leads to the odd duel or cancelled performance.  Many fine and upsetting things ensue, and twists I yearned for refused to arrive, or are terribly undermined by more complicated, more painful answers.  In the end, in the midst of the bustling carnival, Garance slips away forever into the crowd, and Baptiste, in desperate pursuit of his true and obsessive love, finds himself fighting helplessly through a sea of revellers, all dressed as his famous stage persona.  It's a desperate scene, and a distressing end to a character.  I don't like to spoil endings, but this moment is just a small fraction of the conclusion to the film, and the many stories of the two theatres.

Despite having seen this only twice, I'd happily claim it as one of my favourite films, and even in translation one of my favourite scripts to anything.  Despite its tragic turns and complications, few films make me so happy as this, and very few are so suited to my tastes.  Said François Truffaut, "I would give up all my films to have directed Children of Paradise".  As a writer of sorts, I'd happily say something very similar of the screenplay.  Off-hand, I'd be hard-pressed to find something I'd more happily be responsible for than this.  Its lightness of touch, its sense of freedom, beauty and delight is all the more notable for the fact it was filmed in an occupied country in the midst of a war.


P.S. It turns out the actors I praised are both in 'The Longest Day' (1962), which I accidentally bought from a charity shop last year, so I imagine I'll be slipping that in somewhere later in the project.  Is it any good?

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I'd urge you to watch this film some day.  It's extremely good, and it saddens me to think something so good, so well-made, so enjoyable, with these performances and this dialogue, is as good as unknown in the UK.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

I'm not sure whether I ever believed in Father Christmas, whether I simply played along, taking the whole thing to be a game of pretending.  It was a long time ago, and my memory doesn't stretch to my early childhood, but I don't recall ever believing in my heart that this mysterious figure really climbed down my chimney (but through the help of such chimney-cleaning films as 'Mary Poppins' (1946) and 'The Water Babies' (1978) I must have believed chimneys to be climbable, at least for infants - so maybe I thought it feasible).

In 'Miracle on 34th Street' - that Christmas classic - Doris Walker (Maureen O'Hara) doesn't believe in Father Christmas, and has raised her daughter Susan to likewise doubt the existence of the jolly fellow, never telling her any fairy-tales, discouraging her imagination.  I suspect the audience are meant to dislike Ms Walker for this sentiment - and, this being the 1940s, for being a divorcee and strong independent woman.  The 21st Century liberal in me is wary of seeing her lifestyle condemned, while the 16th Century Puritan in me (I am both these things in equal measure) commends her decision not to lie to her daughter.  How we might expect children to believe anything about Christmas if we spend their formative years insisting on Santa, I've no idea.  'I think we should be realistic and completely truthful with our children,' she says, which is reasonable enough, but Susan's life lacks fun, and even I with my puritanical streak hoped mother and daughter might soften, if not be wholly cured of their realism.  This is a magical Christmas family film, after all.

'I am not in the habit of substituting for spurious Santa Clauses'

Enter Kris Kringle (Best Supporting Actor, Edmund Gwenn), who inadvertently finds himself hired as a mall Santa for a large department store.  But as well as working as Father Christmas, he is Father Christmas.  I don't just mean to tell you the character's identity - Edmund Gwenn is Santa, if anybody has ever been so.  The performance is perfect, the sparkling wit of his dialogue, his openness to new experiences, his ready delight and his overwhelming honesty even at his own expense.  Kringle champions peace and imagination, and shows himself willing to put up a fight when justice and decency are under threat.  It seems inconceivable that a character so very good can avoid being twee or bland, but I could watch a great deal more of this St Nick, and could happily (and, I suspect, easily) befriend him.  If the legend of Father Christmas lasts another thousand years, some actor may equal Edmund Gwenn's performance as the great man, but none shall ever better it.

Hired to sit in a store's grotto and push overstocked toys on unsuspecting children, Kris Kringle openly opposes this charmless commercialism, preferring to serve the children's needs and direct overstressed parents to other stores for their needs when appropriate.  This is a Santa I can get behind.

'Maybe he's only a little crazy, like painters or composers,

or some of those men in Washington'.

Films of this era take a great glee in exhibiting over-zealous Freudian psychiatrists inhibited by great neuroses of their own, and there's a particularly churlish example here in the person of Granville Sawyer (Porter Hall).  Kris Kringle is keen to point out his respect for legitimate psychiatry, but Sawyer is a horrible and sweaty creep, too keen to diagnose and invent complexes in his patients.  Very soon, Father Christmas is on trial to prove his identity and his sanity.

I've seen a few trial movies lately (with 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' and 'M' awaiting review shortly) and it's a relief and a delight to find a court-room so full of wit and charm.  Where the film could have become tense and climactic for the sake of a little drama, it leans to its lightness and humour, with the prosecutor unable to deny the existence of Father Christmas in front of his young children, and the supreme court judge coming up for re-election and daunted by offending the Christmas goodwill of the electorate.  Kris Kringle's case seems hopeless, but far more important to him is the hope that Doris and Susan come to believe in him.

Despite considerable competition, this is my favourite Christmas movie.  I understand it's been remade a number of times (most notably in 1994), but I find it almost impossible to believe it's ever been managed so agreeably, with such a perfect Father Christmas, with the originality and flair on display here.  I stumbled on this film quite by accident, on a VHS thrown out by a housemate (hence the curious quality of the screen-captures here) and entered it with low expectations.  It's been a pleasure to rewatch it this Advent, and I'll do so again gladly.

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It's still Christmas for a few days yet, and it's always Christmas in your heart (except on Tisha B'Av, the Jewish Day of mourning), so why not seek out a copy of this festive delight?