Three British Biopics of Musicians (2019, 1975)

Some fisherfolk, cavorting

Fisherman’s Friends (2019)

‘Fisherman’s Friends’ is a lively but very by-the-book story of an unlikely rise to fame. It’s the true story of a band of Cornish fishermen who sing folk music, are discovered, and then sell a lot of records. The music is good and the group’s performances have plenty of sparkle, but the script gave me no joy. It seemed such a film-shaped film, with its plot’s rises and falls following the pattern of the genre too lifelessly.

The A&R agent who discovers the band gets into some contrived conflict which blossoms into a romance. Not because that’s what really happened, but because there’s always a romance in a film like this, playing out the same way. (There’s nothing wrong with changing the truth to make a better film - as the others on this list will show, but here it had no magic and no surprise, just formula).

The romance is between Daniel Mays and Tuppence Middleton, good actors who do what they can with the material. Without Tuppence, ‘Fishermen’s Friends’ would be quite the sausage-fest. I bracket it together with ‘Dawn of the Battle of the Apes’ (2014) in that it’s obviously set after a female extinction event that left them at a 1:20 ratio with men, but nobody mentions it.

I saw it with my parents and none of us had cause to regret it, but I doubt we’ll ever seek it out again. It’s a passable film - passable in that it fulfilled my baseline criterion for an okay movie (that being, did two hours pass without me thinking of Donald Trump?).

My love for this shoe cannot be adequately stated

Rocketman (2019)

This is a far more interesting sort of biopic! The tagline, ‘based on a true fantasy’ sums it up perfectly. The film-making matches the real Elton John’s flamboyance, and his sincerity. I’ve heard ‘camp’ defined as being a jaunty exterior which masks the more complex, vulnerable humanity inside, and this dramatises the idea wonderfully.

It’s sort-of a musical, told within flashback. Young Elton, and others in his life, put their situations into the familiarest of his songs. I reckon this aspect is likely to divide audiences - if you’re expecting Elton John to sing The Bitch is Back, it’s disconcerting to pass from modern Elton to child Elton, to a full chorus of 1950s neighbours singing - it was certainly more Disney than I was expecting (and the second song of the piece ‘I Want Love’ was so straight and sober that I worried the movie was haemorrhaging all its glee - I was proved very wrong on this). The songs in this style work because this is a story of Elton’s imagination, his fantasies, and how he moves from imagining the absurd to really living it.

I don’t normally like flashback settings, but it really worked in this case. Adult Elton John’s storytelling wasn’t just narration to move things on - the act of telling the story challenges and changes him. The segue between different ages (and thus, different actors) of Elton John in Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting manages to satisfy, rather than annoy. I already liked Taron Egerton in ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’ (2014) - he has a cocky, likeable quality that makes him satisfying to watch, and in that film he manages to anchor absurd situations. Elton John is inherently absurd, and so he was a great choice. As full-blooded as the real thing, without becoming comical. He did all his own singing in the role (including a duet with real-life Elton John for the closing credits) and it has the energy, and style style you'd hope for, but manages to preserve its own freshness. This is not just imitation.

The film takes its liberties with chronology, cause and effect to give neater resolutions, but it’s a no hagiography! At one point I wondered if the real Elton John would ever see the movie, or whether its portrayal of him and his upbringing would seem too raw, too ugly - but when the end credits came round I discovered he and his husband David Furnish were producers, and had worked closely to bring this true fantasy to the screen.

I liked this movie a lot, and it makes me want to make movies.

I would be misrepresenting 'Lisztomania' if I didn't show you this big willy

Lisztomania (1975)

Back in the 19th Century, Europe went wild for Franz Liszt. Screaming crowds, a cult of personality, the whole Beatles Schtick. This is an immensely energetic and peculiar film about the man and the myth. Roger Daltrey is Franz Liszt, galavanting around with (at one point) a ten-foot long penis which is sent to the guillotine. Rick Wakeman is Thor, and his songs make this a musical. Ringo Starr is the Pope, for some reason.

I tremendously enjoyed this film. It joins ‘Casino Royalo’ (1967) in being so unpredictable that I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t dreaming it. I’m glad I watched it alone, though. So many scenes of bare-breasted women, their bosoms very much for the viewers’ pleasure! Astonishing titillation. It’s a full-on sex-comedy - very dated, very of its time - but in other ways audacious, finding a uniquely absurd take on the life of Liszt. To give you a sense of it, the movie culminates in Liszt dying, going to Heaven, but returning in a space rocket to kill Richard Wagner, who in this movie is both a literal vampire and a kind of a Hitler Frankenstein, blasting people with his murder guitar.

I like to find films like this.



Those were some films

Yes, those were some films, and together they’ve given me a desire to make a music biopic of my own (perhaps in the vein of ’Some Deaths of Vincent van Gogh’ which I made in 2018, and which you might, for eight minutes, enjoy). It’s good when books make you want to write, when clothes make you want to sew, and when movies make you want to move … pictures! I hope I’ll actually do this at some point, once I find a good candidate, a good story and a visual angle that can be made loudly and colourfully in a bedroom. We shall see!

I didn’t have an appetite to see ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (2018), but I’m sure you’ve heard plenty about it already. I hope the trend of music biopics continues in cinemas - I hope to see some which aren’t so male. Alas, the only biographical film of a female composer's life that leaps to mind is ‘Hildegard of Bingen’ (1994), a one-off BBC drama starring the wonderful Patricia Routledge. I enjoyed it a whole lot, but it ticks my boxes more than it may yours.

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Apologies for the larger-than-usual gap between Penciltonian posts. If you missed me, you can find most of the art I'm up to over at swithen.uk

The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953)

Having watched ‘Ben-Hur’ (1959) on each of the last eleven Easter weekends, I’ve developed something of an intimate understanding of it; tiny details that I didn't notice at first now seem obvious and familiar - a few odd seconds where a line of dialogue has been partly redubbed, or small quirks to actors’ deliveries, like Jack Hawkins decision to stress the first syllable of ‘reward’ (a word he says twice).  I’ve no great desire to learn about the film’s production, and I’ve never listened to its commentaries - but repeated consumption to get at the story has made its ingredients, its composition, even the performance of its most minor roles, seem like bosom friends.

This year I thought I’d spend a little time looking up the CVs of the film’s cast.  As long-term readers may recall, I’m already well-versed in Charlton Heston’s filmography, but I thought I’d look up what Haya Harareet and Frank Thring did next.  I’ve seen Finlay Currie as Magwitch in ’Great Expectations’ (1946), and the aforementioned Jack Hawkins as the man in ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ (1957) who wishes to explode said bridge (though I’ll need to re-watch that film to see if he gets to say the work ‘reward’ at any point) - and we’ve all seen John Le Mesurier, a grim surgeon in a scene after the famous chariot race, as Sgt Wilson in ‘Dad’s Army’ (1968-77).

Dan Taylor (Hugh Griffith) and Walter Valentine (Stanley Holloway) get drunk.

In my researches, I discovered a film which featured two of the cast of 'Ben-Hur’ together.   And the same day I learned about ‘The Titfield Thunderbolt’, it popped up on BBC4.  The movie stars George Relph, who had two scenes in ‘Ben-Hur’ as a rather avuncular Tiberius Caesar, a role in which he shows off his strikingly memorable teeth.  In ‘The Titfield Thunderbolt’, he plays a country vicar who decides to buy up a railway station to stop it being closed down.  He also drives the trains, accompanied in the engine by a surly poacher, played by Hugh Griffith, who six years later won an oscar as Best Supporting Actor, for his unfortunately blacked-up but otherwise highly enjoyable performance as Sheikh Ilderim, a major player in Ben-Hur’s second half.

So, let’s turn our attention to ‘The Titfield Thunderbolt’.  It is, in short, a nice film about a train.  Will the vicar and the poacher be able to run their train safely, and on time?  Will they be able to beat those villainous men from the bus company?  Probably!  It’s an Ealing Comedy, from the writer and director of ‘The Lavender Hill Mob’ (1951), so has a charming humour and a particularly British gentleness.  (I’d say a particular English gentleness, except that Hugh Griffith is always so very Welsh).  It features some fine works of engineering, and some ingeniously concocted solutions to the problems that arise, and it has enough mild peril to keep the audience thoroughly engaged for its 80 minute duration.  It also features a physical fight between the vicar in his stream-train and Sid James on a steam-roller - surely a sight worth seeing for yourself.

...and then who should turn up but the Bishop! (Godfrey Tearle)

Do excuse me resurrecting the Penciltonian to tell you about this small, gentle adventure.  I've seen plenty of exciting films over the last year, and have often wished to crack open the blog to tell you about them - you very nearly heard about 'Wings' (1927), a very engaging silent film that you can find on Netflix, and 'Twelve Angry Men' (1957), which lived up to its reputation.  But it's 'The Titfield Thunderbolt' that's brought me back.  It's a pleasant feature, with a very sunny optimism that seems to suit the current season.  I occasionally mean to come back and comment on another film from each decade.  I wrote up a late-sixties film many months ago and never posted it, so that may happen.

And since I've covered each year from 1913-2014, I'll certainly be back with a 2015 film in a month or so.

P.S. Other films featuring two or more actors from Ben-Hur include ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ (1957, as mentioned earlier) which features Sextus and Quintus Arrius, and ‘El Cid’ (1961), which features Judah Ben-Hur and Pontius Pilate.  If you can think of any others, I’d be glad to hear from you.

P.P.S. It seems I really enjoy tales of vicars having light-hearted adventures.  See also, Father Stanley Unwin in 'The Secret Service', Reverend Charles Bentley in 'The Mundane Egg', and the kindly bishops (of Digne and Tatchester) who get involved in 'Les Miserables' and 'The Box of Delights' (the latter of which also involves a number of unscrupulous curates who fight magic with guns and flying cars).

Early films (1900-1904)

A film for each year from 1913 onwards!  It seemed a good, clear concept when I began the project, but now that 1913 is no longer exactly a century ago, it seems a rather arbitrary start-point.  Shall we go a little earlier?

The Enchanted Drawing (1900)

I’ve been aware of ‘The Enchanted Drawing’ for most of my life, as it garners a mention in ’The Rudiments of Wisdom’ by Tim Hunkin, an excellent book of illustrated facts that probably accounts for a very large part of my education.  The film combines live action and animation (though not in quite the way Hunkin remembers), as an artist is seen sketching, then plucking his illustrations from the paper, like Smarty Arty in ‘ZZZap!’ (1993-98).  He draws some wine, then picks it up from his drawing and drinks it, somewhat to the chagrin of the face he has rendered.  He cheers the face immeasurably by granting it a hat and a cigar.

It’s a short, satisfying film, augmenting J. Stuart Blackton’s pre-existing live performance piece with the cinematic innovation known as the stop trick, or locking off (stopping the camera, adding or removing elements, and starting the camera again, making the elements appear or disappear as if by magic).  These days we all know exactly how it's pulled off and have the resources to do so ourselves, but this remains a very lively and effective example of it, with a pleasing sense of humour behind it.  You can watch it here, and marvel at such a thing being produced during the reign of Victoria.

Stop Thief! (1901)

The first chase movie!  The film is short, and the plot simple: a vagabond steals some meat from a butcher, and is pursued by dogs.  He hides in a barrel, but they join him there, and eat the meat.  The man is then caught and belaboured about the head.  For its time it was pretty technically impressive, joining together a variety of consecutive shots to show the man’s route - though this very soon became the standard, and within a couple of years a film so simple would seem crude and obvious.

The film is enjoyably silly, but ends with more violent aggression than the crime, or the genre, seem to merit.  It's the earliest British film I've looked at, and you can watch it here, though I wouldn't really encourage you to do so.

Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902)

Georges Méliès was an amazingly dedicated early director, building his own film camera, and making several hundred films between 1896 and 1913.  He was also a stage-magician, with all the ingenuity for trickery that comes with such an occupation.  He invented the aforementioned stop-trick, and makes thorough use of it here.

This is the source of that famous image of the moon with a rocket in its eye, though that shot makes up only a fraction of the wonders on display.  We follow a court of elderly wizards, or perhaps just wise old men who dress for a holiday, and climb into a capsule which is fired into space, where they witness several astounding phenomena, and tussle with exploding moon-men.  It's beautifully stylised, and feels like 'Mary Poppins' (1964) in ways that I can't quite pin down.

After the wizards' rocket arrives in the moon's angular marshlands, I worried about how they would take of again, since they lacked the telescoping launch contraption seen on Earth.  Clearly, I hadn’t grasped the charming naïveté of the science at play: the film seems to assume that all gravity comes from Earth, meaning one can land on the top of the moon, but make your return voyage by pushing the rocket off a cliff, and falling back to Earth.

It's certainly the best of the films I've watched for this entry.  At this point in history, Georges Méliès was the most exciting director on the planet, and it was quite a while before anybody caught up with his witty and surprising visuals, and genuinely attractive designs.  I can't think why you wouldn't look the film up on Youtube.

The Great Train Robbery (1903)

I’ve already written about a film from 1903, ‘La Vie et Passion de Jesus Christ’, which was in colour - albeit of the crudest sort - was most of an hour long, and was filled with special effects.  Given how rarely 1900s movies are spoken of, and how crude and terrible films from later decades could often be, I was astounded to find such technical and artistic competence so early in the history of cinema.

Edwin S. Porter’s ‘The Great Train Robbery’, at a more modest twelve minutes, shares some of its ambition, using techniques of compositing and back-projection to bring trains into the studio.  It also features a fist-fight on a moving train - something I’d been impressed by in ‘Dr Nicholas og den Blaa Diamant’ a decade later in 1913.

The film is the more urgent of the two 1903 works, and (unusually for so early a film) never holds its shots too long.  It has two highlights: the first comes around the five minute mark, when Broncho Billy Anderson plays a man who is shot trying to escape the bandits.  The flailing death he gives us is wonderful to behold.  The second is the final shot, the film’s only close-up, in which Justus D. Barnes pulls out a gun, aims it at the camera, and so at the audience, and fires.  The End!  Watch it here, if you dare.

Welding the Big Ring (1904)

I was disappointed not to be able to source any fiction films for 1904, indeed, the only footage I could find from that year was ‘Welding the Big Ring’.  I dwell in Sheffield, so feel obliged to take some interest in the history of industrial metalcrafting, which may have made the piece a touch more approachable.

At first it seems like nothing will happen.  Muscle-men stand with an urgent sort of attention, surveying a huge metal ring.  Suddenly, it’s all go.  The ring is pulled out of the flames and the men descend on it with long-handled hammers.  The thing’s obviously red-hot, but they leap on it, attacking with a rhythm that makes them seem mechanical.  The work looks perilous, but the men have no fear.  They’re machines!  The ring, I assume, was later handed over to Sauron.

It was a little uninspiring, after the works of ingenuity and excitement further up the page.  It presents real working men, rather than schlock or frippery, which is commendable, but isn't what I tend to look for in a motion picture.  In the future, documentary footage tends to be coupled with innovative editing as in 'Man with a Movie Camera' (1929).  But these were early days, and no amount of perilous hammering can make 6 minutes of static footage hold the attention.  You can watch it here, but I'd stick with the first two minutes.  Your time is precious, dear reader.

Tune in at an undisclosed later point for some films from 1905 to 1912 -- and beyond!


P.S. I'm particularly delighted to add 'Stop Thief!' (1902) to the Penciltonian roster, as it joins 'Shaft's Big Score!' (1972) in that most unusual sub-genre, films with exclamation marks in their titles.

The Glang Show (live, Sheffield, and Edinburgh Fringe 2014)

This May, I went to a particularly unusual evening of comedy, The Glang Show, a sort of anti-gong-show staged by Sheffield comedy organisation AltComCab.  It was strikingly unlike any other entertainment I have witnessed, and since it is this week headed to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (every evening at Sportsters Bar), it seemed appropriate to write it up at last.

The Glang Show is an anti-competiton, in which stand-up comics take turns performing their usual sets, under the direction of a sort-of regimented heckling, an interactive element that constantly threatens to shipwreck the sets, but in actuality renders them wonderful.  At the start of the show, each member of the audience was given a Point of Information card (in actuality, pages torn out of David Hume’s 18th century tract ‘On Suicide’), and when we raised our POI cards we were empowered to interrupt the performing comic with questions, directions or comments to which they might respond.

Tom Little receives a typical Point of Information

‘Could you tell that joke again, but with a different punchline?’  We could ask the comedian to elaborate on their current theme, or request that they stop talking about topics that left us uncomfortable.  At one point I asked a performer to go for a minute without saying anything funny, which in retrospect may have encumbered their ability to do their job.

Fortunately we had a dextrous set of performers, who made good use of our disconcerting interruptions.  The duration of their time on stage was partly decided by a scene-stealing electronic Bingo Corner, and their sets were underscored, silent-movie style, by live keyboard music from the show’s producer Sean Morley — so the comedians’ wit, stamina and improvisational powers were really put to the test.

Host Dan Nicholas extols the virtue of the jam from the Glang Show's
'Jam Corner', where a local business provides jam-based prizes.

Somehow the format worked.  What should have been a mess turned out to be a disorientating, fantastically entertaining evening, which challenged the stand-ups to rely on their wits rather than their usual material.  The intimacy of the format made the performers seem more human and more charming than they might have been when delivering prepared sets, but allowed them to demonstrate a real flair of comic ability.  The run of the Glang show at Edinburgh promises a fresh array of stand-ups each night, making it an appealing way to savour new talent and find new favourites.

Since I was present in my capacity as a camcorder-for-hire, the whole show can be found here on Youtube (with a trailer embedded at the top of this page, to give you the general idea of the show), but you’d be better off heading up to see it live at the Fringe, 18.45-19.45 at Sportsters Bar on Market Street in Edinburgh.  If you do drop in, be sure to say hello to show-runner Sean Morley.  If you're a comedian, you may even find yourself on the bill.

P.S. There was a trophy, of sorts, for the greatest comedian in the world ever, but the rules governing its almost arbitrary allocation were arcane and terrible, in both meanings of the word.

P.P.S. ☆☆☆☆☆

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

By merit of having gone to the cinema twice this year, I've already seen far more films there than I did in 2013.  I'd gone to Scarborough to present my grandmother with some lime-and-raspberry vodka conserve, and on the way back my parents (who were in the area) suggested we go to the movies.  They ventured either 'Gravity', which seems to be the talking-point of the decade, or 'The Grand Budapest Hotel', about which I knew absolutely nothing.  The latter had the advantages of being 2D, and hailing from 2014, thus making it eligible to fill a gap in my 102-films-from-102-years blog, as it has seemingly now become.

I came in with no preconceptions, not knowing the genre, director or stars.  The last time my mother compelled me to watch a film about a hotel I saw 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' (2012), which was nice, but left me with mixed feelings.  I expected something along the same lines, but found a film far more fun and exciting.

Those colours!

If you've been following the Penciltonian from the start you'll know that I have a thing for colourful films, anything that leans heavily into rich colour, stylised design and symmetrical shots.  Such things are here in well-saturated abundance.  There is nothing more this film could do to excite my eyes.  It even has a funicular railway, my transport of preference.

The content of the film follows suit, a ridiculous, heightened escapade.  It has something of a Roald Dahl or Edward Gorey grotesquerie, and the kind of 1930s adventure I enjoy in Tintin and its ilk.  There's a particular liveliness and gusto that leaves it feeling like a children's story for adults, with the only real reminder of the intended audience being the sweary exclamations that leap out of otherwise genteel conversations.

A cake-van, and fascists.

There's a fantastic energy to it, abetted by Alexandre Desplat's musical score, which seemed to be a star in its own right.  By turns jazzy, jaunty and apocalyptically ominous, with a bevy of Balalaikas to match the faux-East-Europe of the film's Zubrowka.  I suspect that both film and its soundtrack will have my attention many more times over the course of my life, as they currently leave me enthused and delighted.

It's in cinemas now, by the way.  Why not go to see it?

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P.S. Since there were no up-front credits, I spent the whole film feeling that I recognised the lead actors, but unable to place their names.  They were, in fact: Voldemort from Harry Potter (2005-2011), The Pianist from The Pianist (2002), Jesus Christ from 'The Last Temptation of Jesus Christ' (1988) and New Jersey from 'The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension' (1984).  And, of course, some young actors who aren't yet famous, but probably will be.

The Bed Sitting Room (1969)

A bizarre post-apocalyptic comedy, directed by Richard Lester (he of the Beatles films), with a script co-written by Spike Milligan and a cast that includes many of the comedy greats of the era.  Much of it is extremely silly, and some of it is even stupid, and as a whole it's an utterly bleak picture about the futility of Britishness after the atomic catastrophe.

Marty Feldman IS the NHS.

It's a film adaptation of Milligan and John Antrobus's absurdist play of the same name.  Jaunty music and surreal jokes played out on Britain's filthiest, ugliest and most polluted landscapes, the most depressing places in the country, fields of shattered crockery, hills of abandoned shoes, every floor littered with something.  It's bleak and ridiculous, and the director apparently worried that he'd spent so much time making it look miserable that he'd forgotten to make it funny.  I'm not sure how well he succeeded, but I enjoy it very much.  It thrills me and it distresses me.  It just about matches 'Daisies' (1966) for oddness, which is quite an achievement.

A field of abandoned crockery.

My favourite scene of the nineteen-sixties is in this film, when Mother (Mona Washbourne) is visited by a nurse who hands over her death certificate and informs her that she's died.  Mrs Throper is overwhelmed with a deep, gentle sadness when she's allowed to hold all her certificates at once: birth, marriage, death and school.  She later gets to throw plates and bottles at Harry Secombe, and becomes a cupboard.

Mrs Throper receives her certificate.

An excellent cast, including Arthur Lowe, Peter Cook, Roy Kinnear and Marty Feldman, manages to deliver the bizarre, almost nonsensical dialogue with a warmth, and make bizarre individuals into people.  Nobody here has realised they're in a tragedy.  The expectation of imminent thermonuclear war must have been a very terrible thing back then, and I don't imagine this film offered much in the way of consolation.

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This was the first release in the BFI Flipside range, excellent but neglected British films.

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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The Kid (1921)

I'd nearly gotten through the whole project without watching any Chaplin, and I'd almost filled the 1920s with foreign-language films (not that this is especially noticeable when they're all silent).  'The Kid' goes some way to rectifying both of these things.  I spent a great many years with a very fixed idea of what a Charlie Chaplin film is like, and was surprised and delighted when I finally saw 'The Great Dictator' (1940) and found it to be extremely funny, rather emotional, and not at all what I expected.  Since then I've enjoyed 'Limelight' (1952) and not been wholly convinced by 'The Gold Rush' (1925) though in the latter case I wasn't watching the silent original, but a later version which dubbed sound and dialogue over a film that never needed them.  'The Kid' is the first time I've actually seen Charlie Chaplin in a silent movie.

The concept, in short: a woman 'whose only sin was motherhood', abandons her newborn baby in a stranger's car.  The crooks who then steal the car are alarmed by the baby, and leave it by some dustbins, where it's discovered by a tramp - it was still acceptable to call people tramps back then - who is inspired by the heartfelt note left by the woman, and raises the baby as his own.  Five years later the tramp and the kid are still living quite happily together in a situation of dire but endurable poverty.

Chaplin (credited as Charles, rather than the more familiar Charlie) wrote and directed the film, plays the lead and composed the music.  This sort of monomania is excusable, as all the elements are excellent; Chaplin was an extremely talented man, and applied his talents with good judgement, so it's not without reason that he became incredibly famous.  As in his other films, he manages to couch very silly comedy in a sentimental story - not saccharine, but highly emotional, with reasons to really care about the characters.  He has some serious social points to make about poverty and the tremendous stigma attached to single or unmarried mothers, and makes them here, in the midst of all manner of slapstick and myriad laugh-out-loud moments.

I could write much more, but it's a short film and a silent one, so will leave the rest as screen-shots and captions.

The kid is taken away by Social Services.  What an amazing look of distress!
Jackie Coogan was the first great child actor, and grew up to be Uncle Fester.

Silent films are renowned for their subtlety.

I really like it when Chaplin laughs.
He always looks like he's having a great time.

As you may know, I love pancakes, and have long sought good pancake films.
'Bucket of Blood' has a pancake-pan as a murder implement, but
no film I have watched contains such a platter of pancakes as this.

Edna Purviance rocking an amazing outfit here.
Please kill more animals, reader.

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Dragnet (1987) and Ghostbusters (1984)

Friday, with a chill dog, Streebek with salad

For four months now, it's been established that as soon as we had some hot-dogs in the house there would be an evening of hot-dogs and 'Dragnet', a reasonably enjoyable comedy based on a very sober old-time radio police-procedural of which I'm tolerant, even fond.

The great novelty of the original is that tries to present a realism, with characters umming and ahhing and making irrelevant or domestic conversation, just like in the real lives of police officers.  Time is taken while people walk from one side of the office to the other.  Joe Friday, the cop at the series' heart is not flamboyantly adventurous or heroic, he's a serious-minded public official doing his job.  It was the first radio series to be so dry, earnest and factually-based, so its main appeal in recent years (if I may call 1987 a recent year) is as an object to be parodied.

Friday and Streebek undercover as typical criminals

In this movie, Dan Akroyd plays Joe Friday, the nephew of the radio original, but very much the same in character.  He's obsessively precise and disciplined, and takes no time for fun, so his world is shaken up when he's partnered with the wise-cracking Pep Streebek (Tom Hanks), who is, by his standards excessively liberal.  I'm inclined to think Hanks overplays his role, making Streebek rather more manic than is needed: the concept for the film seems, originally, to have been pairing a ridiculous character with the intensely serious Friday, but Akroyd is too warm, and Friday too fun, to be a straight-man to Hanks's Streebek.  Indeed, Friday is so odd that he would have better been paired with somebody a little less hysterical.  Too often Hanks seems to be trying to steal the scene, where he could more profitably have shared it.  Akroyd is too good and too subtle to let his scenes be stolen.

In no time the two find themselves embroiled in a web of crime, a vast network of villainy known as P.A.G.A.N., criminals who engage in orgiastic dancing while wearing majestic goat-leggings and chanting 'kill the good', who impersonate police officers and seem to be linked in some way to the charismatic clergyman Jonathan Whirley, a fine performance by Christopher Plummer, who happens to be one of the actors I most like to watch.  It's a wonderfully clear-cut world of good and evil, and it knows it.


Oh, and a couple of weeks later we watched:

Ghostbusters (1984)

...which it seems only reasonable to mention at the same time, it being another fine eighties comedy with Dan Akroyd in a leading role.  If you haven't seen it, I shall explain in brief: there are some ghosts and some people who bust the ghosts and you should certainly watch it today as it is an embarrassing hole in your education that will be enjoyable to fill.

But of course you've seen 'Ghostbusters', and isn't it excellent?  I really haven't a word to say against it.  It was just the thing to test out the new television (the old one having perished of old age), and I could watch it again tomorrow, if this Penciltonian project wasn't pressing me toward less familiar years.

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My Man Godfrey (1936)

'All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kinda people'.

I bought this film a long time ago because I thought it might have David Niven in it.  As it happens, I was really after the 1957 remake, but at least this way I had something on my shelves to stand for 1936.  'My Man Godfrey' is a screwball comedy, meaning that everybody speaks at twice the normal speed, and regards a family of upper-middle-class twits, New York's high society, taking in a homeless man to work as a butler.  Said butler, Godfrey, then becomes romantically entangled with the daughter of the family, but feels it's inappropriate for a mere butler to woo, or be wooed by, a socialite so high above his station.

Godfrey (William Powell) is a fine fellow, and immediately likeable, with his position as a 'forgotten man' made good use of.  The rich ninnies he serves are immensely patronising to him on account of his recent homelessness, but Godfrey doesn't take offence, preferring to remain perfectly gracious, coolly receiving their awkward compliments in the spirit in which they were meant.  He's quietly amused by the outrageously dysfunctional family, and eventually saves them from their folly and, with a Gilbertian inevitability, turns out to be a man from their own class who had arrived at hard times almost on purpose, and is thus an appropriate suitor for the daughter (whether he wants to be her suitor or not).  It's a classic American happy ending: a family difficulty in the great depression is solved by the butler investing in stocks and bonds, so capitalism saves the day.  You could tell the same story today, but I'll be happy if you don't.

Godfrey is opposed at every point by the other daughter, Cornelia, that villain.

It's an entertaining film with a witty script, well performed, but isn't particularly extraordinary by the standards of the time.  The DVD release I watched presented so unrestored a print, crude and fuzzy in sound and picture that when I first watched it I was put off '30s cinema for several years.  I now realise that a good scrub and a more tender preparation for release might have let it show its merits - there's probably a pretty watchable film under all the noise.

P.S. The rule seems to be that 30s films are better if they aren't in English.  Or perhaps the sample of purchasable 1930s films from abroad is smaller and weighted towards the excellent, whereas there's a great deal of 30s Americana to be had.  Alternatively, crappy sound is more of a problem when you aren't reading subtitles.  I think I prefer my first theory, and my suspicion that America, and its cinema, wasn't the best or the coolest until World War II, at which point the whole nation suddenly got its jiggy on.

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High Society (1956)

I like it when films open with overtures, long expanses of time and music even before we reach the opening titles, when one can sit and stare at the word OVERTURE on the screen and soak up some atmosphere and mood, so that when the big melodies of the incidental music or (as here) the songs arrive they have a familiarity and all seem to hold together.  The overture is also just enough time to make a decent cup of tea, and to peanut-butter some cheeses.

The film stars Bing Crosby, alas now regarded as a physically abusive churl, and Grace Kelly, who (since I have no class) I have hitherto known only as a Mika track, with Frank Sinatra, who I've a notion was perfectly lovely, or else perhaps some kind of gangster.  It's quite a cast - Grace Kelly's first musical and last movie, and it's the first time Crosby and Sinatra shared the screen.

It's also a musical and the songs, by Cole Porter, are fine and dandy.  The most famous is surely 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire', sung by the only characters in the film who aren't, and it's a catchy piece, with appropriate choreography.  I'm not left humming any of the other songs, but it was all fine musical fun.  The title track, at the top of the film, is an excellent jazzy number sung by Louis Armstrong with a cigarette-holder.  'End of song, beginning of story,' he cries.

Featuring Louis Armstrong as himself.

I really like Grace Kelly's costume in this film, in particular a floor-length white dress which incorporates a cape of the same length and material, a design I'd associate with the Indian subcontinent, but which Kelly carries off magnificently.  By the time the film was released she was princess of Monaco.  Somehow it seems inevitable.  The men all wear suits, which may be attractive but are pretty dull, but Grace's arrays seem worthy of note.

As to the plot?  Well, Grace Kelly is getting married, but to whom?  She reaches the eve of her wedding-day with a three way choice, her fiancé, her ex-husband, or a nosey reporter.  It's plainly not going to be her actual fiancé, as he's too little fun, and is only played by John Lund, while the other two are Crosby and Sinatra.  Still, between these two it feels it could go either way.

In the end, it's a film about rich people having rich people fun, which doesn't particularly appeal (though at least the film is honest - most films we see are peopled by actors no less wealthy and perhaps equally whimsical, though at least we're seeing them at work).  It does, however, make a pleasant Sunday afternoon's viewing.

A dress with attached cape.  Why don't all people dress so?

It's also a cool film about cool people being cool.  Who's coolest?  Louis Armstrong, of course!

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Casino Royale (1967)

He wanted to be James Bond.  They wanted him to be Peter Sellers.

1967 gave us 'Casino Royale', a bizarre and extremely uneven psychedelic comedy.  It suffered under five directors seemingly unaware that they were making the same movie, and its star Peter Sellers walked out half-way through after realising the film was a comedy, meaning the remainder had to be substantially reworked to fill the gap left by the main character.  The thing's a wild mess, a terrible film brimming with excellent moments.  It's also one of my favourite films, though I hardly feel I can defend it.

So Sir James Bond (a magnificent David Niven, in a lead role that was meant to be a cameo) has turned his back on the world, but the combined intelligence forces of the international community try to persuade him out of retirement, and when he refuses they blow up his house for some reason.  There follows an interminable half hour in Scotland before we get to either the plot or the memorably funny parts.

Mata Bond in East Germany, with a young Ronnie Corbett.

What ensues is an increasingly trippy series of antics and escapades in which many agents, all of them dubbed James Bond 007, adventure around the world.  I particularly like the sequence in East Germany, which is shot to resemble expressionist cinema with its extreme angles and outlandish lighting, and the all-too-brief part of the film starring Sellers, even his awkward encounter with Orson Welles and his card-tricks.

The first time I saw 'Casino Royale' I genuinely thought I'd fallen asleep and was dreaming. It was about the time the horse gallops onto the spaceship in Trafalgar Square, though my brain had been struggling to keep up with the pictures ever since Le Chiffre's torture of the mind, a sequence in which Peter Sellers is bombarded by hundreds of illusory bagpipers, one of whom is Peter O'Toole but doesn't know it.  Peter Sellers tries to cry for help but the only thing to come from his mouth is an animated speech-bubble.  I tend to assume that this is what hallucinogenic drugs are like.  If it isn't, then they aren't worth taking.

Sir James Bond escapes from one of the great sixties evil lairs.

I'm sorry to have missed 1967, but I was years too late.  To think that in Britain this and 'The Prisoner' and 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' were all in simultaneous production boggles the mind.  We won Eurovision, too.

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Southland Tales (2006)

This is what villains look like.

I made the mistake of watching this in the middle of the night, then going on holiday for what felt like months, before returning to write it up.  Thus, I'm left only with its overpowering images and feelings.  It's like a dream, not in an ethereal or drifting way like 'Russian Ark' (2002), but with an aftertaste like 1967's 'Casino Royale', where you wonder 'did I really see this film, or did I make it all up?'

So it's a science-fantasy, I think, but only just.  The movie divides its action into three episodes, and taking a sensible cue from the Star Wars trilogy (1977-83), numbers them IV-VI rather than I-III.  The fantastical world on which its action occurs is not long-distant Tatooine, but late-2000s California at the casual end of World War Three.  It's a political comedy of sorts, though I couldn't quite place its politics, since the incompetent terrorists of the left seemed little better than the Republican governance.  Perhaps it was the individuals, the ones who get on with private lives, that were commended.  I forget.  It was lost in the blur of an odd adventure.

Miranda Richardson heads a vague yet menacing government agency.

The film has a curious cast.  It's full of people I didn't expect to find together in the same film.  The Rock (it pleases me to hope that this is his actual name) plays an amnesiac politician, or perhaps the son of one, who has been involved in a sci-fi experiment of sorts before being scrobbled by the Democrats who wish to incriminate him ahead of the elections.  The Rock is mainly noted as a muscle-man, but, like Schwarzenegger before him, has started to branch out into comedies, some strange and excellent, some slightly more desperate.  This film belongs in the former category, and I suspect 'Tooth Fairy' (2010) belongs in the latter, though I'm content not to find out.  He's much better at comedy than Arnie, perhaps better at acting, but shares with him a look of one who expected to be in a more serious film but will make do with their circumstances.

Elsewhere we find Sarah Michelle Gellar, in my mind unshakeably Buffy, here playing an adult movie star who befriends the aforementioned Rock, having meant to incriminate him before the world; Justin Timberlake playing an Iraq war veteran, and yes, he gets a song; and Wallace Shawn, who I know best as the Sicilian from 'The Princess Bride' (1987), here playing the villainous Baron von Westphalen whose outlandish scientific scheme threatens the whole of the United States.

Justin Timberlake, for some reason.

Beyond this, and some of the vibrant set pieces that I'm disinclined to spoil for you, my mind goes just about blank.  I remember it being an extremely fun film, with its exposition given as inexpensively as possible at the front end, and a stylisation that makes the incredibly near future of America seem a ripe site for fantastic adventure.  I recall thinking, during the last of its three episodes, that it had gone on a little too long and that I wished it would end, but by that point it was about four in the morning and I wanted to go to bed so I won't hold a grudge.  I don't remember what the ending was, but I recall being satisfied, so it must have been worth the wait.  One day I'll revisit this film with a clearer head and enjoy it as if for the first time.  Or hate it, but that seems less likely.

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Two films about offices: Glenngary Glen Ross (1992) & Office Space (1999)

Shelley Levene finally gets his groove on.

'Glengarry Glen Ross' (1992)

A few years ago a person I often meet directed an excellent production of 'Glengarry Glen Ross' for The Company, a small but consistently entertaining amateur dramatics troupe.  The play was very different to their usual array of classics, swashbucklers and European tragedies, and very much swearier, so it was a strange delight to see some of their best actors, most of whom I've seen in a dozen other roles, spewing forth David Mamet's uncompromisingly aggressive dialogue.

It's a very good play, and I was advised at the time to seek out the film; since 1992 was one of my few remaining gaps in the 90s I seized the opportunity to watch it here.  For one thing, I wanted to see how a play set entirely in one room of an office could work as a motion-picture - and for another, it's a strong drama and worth the rewatching.

The result is very talky, with very sparse, if welcome, use of music.  It's set in and around the office, with dialogue scenes moved out to cars, to a cafe, to rain-battered streets.  As consolation for a relative lack of visual diversity we're given an array of excellent performances from the likes of Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin and Kevin Spacey.  These are actors who can sell incessant invective and descent into despair, and Jack Lemmon was rightly awarded for his performance as Shelley 'The Machine' Levene, crumpled and pathetic whenever he's being himself, but able to turn on that magic old charm as soon as he's talking to a customer.

It's the eighties nineties, by which I mean this is still the age of the yuppie, of eighties style and sound, greys and browns over colours.  The story regards real-estate agents selling bad properties to bad customers, each of them under threat of the sack if they fail to come out on top.  Unemployment is the worst thing that can happen.  That makes it sound like a rather trivial threat, but these are people who have nothing but the job, whose lives will fall apart if they can't bring in the money, by whatever means.

It's an extremely tense watch, with a rising anxiety and pressure, and it was a relief when it was all over.  It's well-made and well-acted, but I couldn't help wondering whether something so dialogue-led was really a good use of a visual medium.  I preferred watching it on stage, but it was a very good production.

Jennifer Aniston in 'Office Space'.  She doesn't work in an office but still isn't happy.

'Office Space' (1999)

That we might lighten the mood after the difficult watch that was 'Glengarry Glen Ross' and make a double-bill of nineties pictures about miserable workers who look to crime as a last resort, Saskia ventured that we watch 'Office Space'.  This was certainly the pudding of the two films.  The office here is just awful, but at least it's comically so, and we're given a reassuring hint that, if the worst comes to the worst, we might be happier in a non-office job.

Office Space is blessed with moderately likable characters, with Jennifer Aniston as Joanna, a waitress urged by her employer to show customers that she enjoys her work, and enjoys it in an extremely regimented fashion; and Ron Livingston as Peter, who works in the eponymous office and is hypnotised into losing his overwhelming stress, causing him to saunter through his hellish life being casual and honest in ways which ought to be sackable offences.

While 'Glengarry Glen Ross' was a work of moral complexity and anguish, wherein every character was being cruel to somebody, even if just to their potential customers, 'Office Space' has a clear and booable villain: Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole) is everything one could hope to despise in a cheery young manager, and even merits his own Wikipedia page, an honour currently reserved for only the most iconic movie characters.  The only other character who really leaps out of the film is Milton Waddams (Stephen Root), an intense and learning-disabled office-worker acted with the same extreme gusto that made Mickey Rooney's 'hilarious' Chinaman in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' (1961) quite so monstrously offensive.

It was a curious double-bill, like following 'The Elephant Man' (1980) with 'Dumbo' (1941), but it seemed to work.  I'm left extremely glad I don't work in an office.  If you do, why not quit today?

P.S. I suggested watching 'Glengarry Glen Ross' without giving any clue to its contents.  Later, asking Saskia quite what she had expected of the film, she described 'Brigadoon' (1954).

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