tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66488516135094863382024-03-14T09:02:19.662+00:00Dr Keith M JohnstonKeith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.comBlogger113125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-17366874478121860322014-03-14T15:36:00.002+00:002014-03-14T15:36:51.024+00:003DCS 2014: Reflections on a year in 3D
<br />
<a href="http://www.3dcreativesummit.com/">3DCS</a> (the 3D Creative Summit)
was held on Wednesday 12th and Thursday 13th March. This is my 3rd year at the
summit, and I wanted to offer some opinions and reflections on the event while
it's all still fresh in my mind. Overall, I saw some great panels, and met some
interesting people from different industry and specialist group backgrounds -
as ever, Ravensbourne and its partners are to be commended for putting on such
an interesting event.<br />
<br />
I should state at the top that I didn't see all the panels, and had to leave
after the (pre-recorded) James Cameron interview at 3pm on the Thursday, so
this is necessarily a partial account. However, I think I saw enough to point
up some interesting debates / recurring themes that ran across most of
what I did see.<br />
<br />
<strong>1. The </strong><em><b>Gravity </b></em><strong>of the Situation</strong><br />
<br />
During the Wednesday sessions, I tweeted the tongue-in-cheek suggestion
that, if there had been a 3DCS bingo card / drinking game, anyone with <em>Gravity</em>
would have been quids in / inebriated. <em>Gravity </em>was this year's <em>Life
of Pi</em> - by which I mean it was the film everyone at 3DCS kept referring to
as the justification for 3D's future. Any reference to critics, native vs
conversion, the creative vision of the director (see below), box office
return... <em>Gravity</em> was the go-to example. Yet, to me, this pointed
up one of the elephants in the room - which is that there was only ONE <em>Gravity</em>,
and it is a film that struggles to offer a model for future 3D productions. The
financial future for 3D appears to be targeting international markets like
China, Russia and Germany, but the recurring successes there are mainstream 3D
products like <em>Iron Man 3</em> and <em>Star Trek: Into Darkness</em> rather
than <em>Gravity </em>(an opinion supported by the upcoming 3D-ification of <em>Robocop</em>
for China, and the 3D version of <em>Noah</em> only being shown in strong 3D
markets). Yes, 92% of the money <em>Gravity</em> took was from 3D screenings
(an amazing achievement) but it doesn't reveal a pattern or approach that
others could follow... and that's a real issue that no one appeared eager to
address...<br />
<br />
<strong>2. The Return of the Auteur</strong><br />
<br />
This came up in previous years (Ang Lee/<em>Life of Pi</em>; Martin
Scorsese/<em>Hugo </em>etc.), but the sense of 'individual creativity' vs.
'mass market popular / mainstream product' was at the heart of every panel I
saw this year, and suggests that authorship is a pivot around which the 3D
debate is happening. It was a shame that 3DCS had few directors who could
actually talk about their 3D approach, because everyone else had an opinion about
what they did / should do. There was a lot of talk about 'supporting their
vision' and that 3D had to come from the lone directorial voice... but that
flies in the face of the communal way that all media is produced. (and don't me
started on the gender issue here - James Cameron wasn't the only one who
referred - I hope unintentionally - to creative 3D authorship as a male
preserve) To reduce 3D to the work of a sole vision is to reduce the
contributions that thousands of people make to all the popular 3D movies, and
to set up a really unhelpful distinction between 3D 'art' and 3D 'popular
entertainment' - unhelpful not least because most audiences SEE the latter, not
the former. It's also a assumption around cultural worth that demonstrates
that, consciously or not, the industry remains embarrassed by some of the 3D
offering out there, even if it is demonstrably popular. 3Ds continued success
won't be won by art, it will be won by good popular entertainment.<br />
<br /><br />
<strong>3. Limited 3D Product on Display</strong><br />
<br />
So, remove <em>Gravity</em> from the discussion, and the number of film and
TV titles being discussed multiple times, and in multiple panels, dropped way
down. (i.e. <em>Hidden Kingdom</em> was mentioned a lot in the panel on <em>Hidden
Kingdom</em>, but not much in other places) This, again, mirrors last year's
discussion of <em>Life of Pi</em>, but what was noticeable was that many of the
titles that were discussed were actually titles that had been talked about at <strong>last</strong>
year's event as well (<em>Stalingrad, Hidden Kingdom, Dredd</em>). The sense of
NEW product, new exciting experiments and work, was mostly lacking. There was a
panel about a Jeunet 3D film, a panel on Wenders' 3D TV show... but there was
less excitement about upcoming product than I expected. Some were name-checked
(Jim Chabin mentioned half a dozen in his energetic defence of 3D) but few
apart from possibly <em>Godzilla</em>, made any noticeable impact. <br />
<br />
This tends to support points made by a number of speakers around alternative
3D media: 3D TV is falling off, 3D internet hasn't really taken off, 3D streaming
is out there but, like 3D Blu-Ray, has yet to make real inroads... the view
from several speakers (including Cameron) was that auto-stereoscopy would have
to happen before a wider range of new and exciting product can be addressed.
Cinema largely stands alone in the 3D world at the moment, and that feels like
a backwards step from previous years of this event, where TV was more
prevalent. Mainstream narrative cinema remains dominant as well, with little
alternative content in 3D (interesting to note that <em>Doctor Who</em>'s 50th
anniversary special was one of the sole 3D alternative content offerings last
year) - again, a noticeable drop in the range of material being produced.<br />
<br />
<strong>4. Industry and Academia remain at arms length</strong><br />
<br />
The 3DCS research strand was bigger this year (and arguably better, given
the range of work on display). But the academics were largely talking to each
other, while industry was largely talking to itself, and never the twain shall
meet. I'm biased, obviously, given I'm an academic that gave a talk about
empirical research on audiences, 3D and film trailers - that was well
received by fellow academics. Industry attendees might have been interested in
my talk (or any number of the other talks I saw), but all the academic talks
were scheduled against the big industry panels and were in the BFI Blue Room,
which required a bit of effort to track down! I think the opinions of speakers
like Nick Jones and Lisa Purse would have sat well alongside the producers and
industry spokespeople I saw, yet an invisible line still divides these two
sections of the programme.<br />
<br />
<strong>5. Marketing</strong><br />
<br />
I went to a few business-focused panels, and my own research is often around
marketing materials such as the film trailer, but one of the key messages I
kept hearing was that marketing of 3D wasn't as strong as it could be, and that
the industry needed to do more to 'win back' the audiences lost through
"bad' 3D product. Adrian Wootton (from Film London) claimed that <em>Gravity</em>
(bingo!) had wiped the "bad 3D" slate clean with the audience,
but most of the other speakers I heard think there's still some work to be done
here. To return to point 1, one film does not a summer make.<br />
<br />
So those are my immediate reflections. None of the above is intended to
criticise the people who organised 3DCS, or the speakers I saw. But I think it
does suggest that below the surface of the event (and, arguably, the
international 3D industry), there exist tensions that have not yet been solved
or addressed. <br />
<br />
I look forward to 3DCS 2015 to see if that picture changes in the next year.<br />
Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-29758192411777790792013-06-21T09:09:00.002+01:002013-06-21T09:09:19.012+01:0050 Years in the TARDIS: Doctor Who's Anniversary Specials, part 3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UpO78n0ES9E/UcQIeOOtINI/AAAAAAAAAcA/QudgsLX055Q/s1600/DW+RT+cover+-+1993+(2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UpO78n0ES9E/UcQIeOOtINI/AAAAAAAAAcA/QudgsLX055Q/s320/DW+RT+cover+-+1993+(2).jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Despite some success in revitalising interest in the programme,
particularly through anniversary-centred episodes such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Remembrance of the Daleks</i> (which, as noted last time, revised the
past while looking to the future), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor
Who</i> was cancelled in 1989, after its 26<sup>th</sup> season. The plans laid
out for a darker, more proactive Doctor were eventually pursued through a
series of original novels, and most fans look to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who: The Movie</i> (featuring 8<sup>th</sup> Doctor Paul McGann)
as the next iteration of the series.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Dimensions in Time</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> (1993)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Yet there is the tricky issue of the 30<sup>th</sup> anniversary special
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dimensions in Time</i>. Around thirteen
minutes long, the first part was shown (like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Five Doctors</i>) during the 1993 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Children in Need</i> telethon, while the second part was featured in
the following night’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Noel’s House Party</i>.
Likely the most disparaged <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i>
episode of all time (even beating stories such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Twin Dilemma, Timelash</i>, or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Time
and the Rani</i>), this is admittedly a mess of a programme, which deposits
multiple incarnations of the Doctor, various companions and monsters, into the
Albert Square set from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eastenders</i>
(characters from that soap opera also appear), and a limited number of other
London locations. What narrative there is revolves around a plot by the Rani
(hardly a top tier villain) to trap the Doctor in a time loop.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The programme was also filmed and broadcast in Nuoptix, an experimental process
that 3D expert Charles W. Smith described as offering a ‘depth-effect... an
optical novelty capable of giving an illusion of depth on certain scenes’. (Smith
1994, 19) As such, it wasn’t the stereoscopic 3D that we are familiar with
these days (and which is being used to film the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary
special), but still required audiences to wear VTL (visual time-lag) glasses
similar to the polaroid/anaglyphic glasses more familiar to 3D viewing. (the
BBC seemed confused about whether <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dimensions
in Time</i> was in stereoscopic 3D or not, with images of viewers in red-green anaglyph
specs featured in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Radio Times</i>: yet
such glasses wouldn’t work with the Nuoptix footage!) Aside from all this, the general
consensus appears to be that the depth effects added little to the already
disjointed special.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Dimensions in Time
</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">is
also, to my knowledge, the only intact <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor
Who</i> episode that has never been released on DVD: likely due to rights and
contracts issues, as the special was largely thrown together at the last minute
by producer John Nathan-Turner.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">However, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dimensions in Time</i> is
fascinating because once you get past the bad 3D, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eastenders</i>’ actors and the non-existent script, it is clear the
programme relies purely on a collective (or public) memory of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> to survive. It is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> reduced to visual spectacle,
and is perhaps the ultimate anniversary special in the sense that it dispenses
with narrative logic to offer the programme’s ‘greatest hits’: multiple
Doctors, companions and monsters. As such, it relates to some of the themes
identified in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors </i>and<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> The Five Doctors</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Multiple Doctors /
Absent Doctors: </span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Five Doctors appear here, with Jon Pertwee becoming the only Doctor to
perform in the 10<sup>th</sup>, 20<sup>th</sup> and 30<sup>th</sup> specials;
he is joined by Tom Baker (who is filmed separately from the others, appearing
as some form of cosmic DJ broadcasting warnings to his other selves), Peter
Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy. As with previous anniversary stories,
the Doctors are kept apart, with no comic interaction or rivalry shown between
them (a likely effect of the last minute nature of filming); and there are two
absent Doctors: the First and Second Doctors were not recast for this special,
and are present only as floating mannequin heads in the Rani’s TARDIS (heads
that are, for the most part, almost unrecognisable as either Hartnell or
Troughton).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Time Lords:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> Apart from the
Rani, who is a renegade Time Lord (or Time Lady), the special offers not
further insights into the Time Lord culture or history.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">References to a
shared narrative past:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> As noted above, the spectacle of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dimensions of Time</i> is almost wholly
about that shared narrative: appearances from various companions, and an array
of monsters (including Cybermen, Sea Devils and Ogrons, although no Daleks)
that suggests the producers simply raided the BBC prop department. The
programme also features the Brigadier, giving Nicholas Courteney the dubious
honour of being the only companion to be in the 10<sup>th</sup>, 20<sup>th</sup>
and 30<sup>th</sup> specials (it is also his only canonical television
appearance alongside the 6<sup>th</sup> Doctor).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Narrative change:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> There is no
relationship between the episode and the ongoing series, given the show was
still cancelled at this stage, with no sign of its re-commissioning or return.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Promotional
materials:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> although there is a feature in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Radio
Times</i>, there is little other supporting work promoting the anniversary
here.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QmQ_3_S_CGU/UcQIqMFBAoI/AAAAAAAAAcM/7JwpO4S2ziY/s1600/Scream+of+the+Shalka+2003+book+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QmQ_3_S_CGU/UcQIqMFBAoI/AAAAAAAAAcM/7JwpO4S2ziY/s320/Scream+of+the+Shalka+2003+book+cover.jpg" width="202" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Scream of the Shalka</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> (2003)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Produced as a Flash animated story for the BBC website and intended to
function as the introduction to a new Ninth Doctor (played by Richard E. Grant,
who had previously played a comic version of the Doctor in Steven Moffat’s 1997
Comic Relief sketch, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Curse of Fatal
Death</i>), this Paul Cornell-scripted story is an aborted new beginning that
is now best seen as a parallel ‘What If..?’ adventure. Broadly enjoyable, the
show doesn’t quite pull off its revisionist take on the series, although Cornell’s
novelisation offers more background for his conception of what the online
animated programme could have become.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Cornell, who had written <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor
Who </i>novels and comics, created a more embittered, aloof Doctor who had
suffered an undefined loss (of a female companion) and now travelled with a
robotic version of the Master. It is not, however, really a story that offers
any real comparison with other anniversary shows, and the relationship with the
40<sup>th</sup> anniversary appears only tangential.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1XmO8bGnoXo/UcQIuULq6qI/AAAAAAAAAcU/jPP9zWJ9jFA/s1600/Doctor+Who+Radio+Times+40th+complete.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="109" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1XmO8bGnoXo/UcQIuULq6qI/AAAAAAAAAcU/jPP9zWJ9jFA/s320/Doctor+Who+Radio+Times+40th+complete.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">As is clear from the supporting <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Radio
Times</i> issues (with their inter-locking covers featuring the Fourth, Fifth,
Sixth and Seventh Doctors), however, the popular memory of
the series appeared to be based around nostalgia for the cancelled version of
the programme, and hopes for Russell T. Davies’ new incarnation. Even in these covers, though, certain themes recur: notably a reliance on Multiple/Absent Doctors (the First, Second, Third and Eighth are absent) and references to shared narrative history (costumes, monsters, TARDIS)...</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">50<sup>th</sup>
Anniversary thoughts</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">As we approach the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary special, scheduled for
Saturday 23<sup>rd</sup> November (and thus the first TV anniversary show since
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Silver Nemesis</i> to be broadcast without
any association with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Children in Need</i>),
it is unclear what (if anything) current showrunner and writer Steven Moffat
intends to draw from previous commemorations.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">What is clear is that there is no longer one collective memory of the
show (if, indeed, there ever was). The 2013 anniversary special needs to target
different collective memories: post-2005 fans who might have only partial
knowledge of the preceding 40 years, long-term fans, and a general audience who
wouldn’t know who the Brigadier or UNIT was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">We are also in a situation where the anniversary special is being
executive produced by a fan for the first time. Pennebaker and Banasik (1997)
discuss the idea of a generational cycle of memory, where official
commemoration only happens after people in early adulthood have grown up, and
are now in positions to produce or influence media remembrances: that is
precisely the situation Moffat now finds himself in, which likely means he is
highly aware both of what previous anniversary shows have done, and what
themes/issues to avoid or tackle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Based on this, what is the likelihood of the themes identified in the 10<sup>th</sup>,
20<sup>th</sup>, 25<sup>th</sup>, 30<sup>th</sup> and 40<sup>th</sup> returning
for the 50<sup>th</sup>? [SPOILER WARNING ON!]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Multiple / Absent
Doctors: </span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">There have already been brief appearances of old Doctors since Matt
Smith took over as the Doctor (and Moffat took over running the show): visual
appearances of all the faces in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Eleventh Hour</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nightmare in Silver</i>,
repurposed footage of Doctors and costumes in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Name of the Doctor</i>. The BBC have already publicised the
involvement of David Tennant’s 10<sup>th</sup> Doctor, we now know that John
Hurt is playing a character called ‘The Doctor’, and there have been various
dismissals / comments from the other surviving actors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Likelihood:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> aural appearances
highly likely, visual appearances less so (due to the obvious aging of many of
the actors, although Moffat partially got round this in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Time Crash</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Time Lords:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> Since the
programme’s return in 2005, the Time Lords have been largely absent, killed off
in a Time War (which has been referenced as recently as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS</i> but never shown on screen).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Likelihood:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> High,
particularly given the appearance of Hurt as a previously unknown / unseen
version of the Doctor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">References to a shared
narrative past:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> fan favourite villains the shape-shifting Zygons have already been
teased, and it seems likely that a certain Silurian and Sontaran may appear.
Again, Moffat knows the value of the show’s iconography, so appearances by the
Daleks and the Cybermen seem likely. The show may also take a cue from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Remembrance of the Daleks</i> and revisit
narrative locations such as Coal Hill School, and it has been revealed that the
Brigadier’s daughter, and head of UNIT, will return (continuing the Lethbridge-Stewart
link through the 10<sup>th</sup>, 20<sup>th</sup> and 30<sup>th</sup> specials)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Likelihood:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> 100%, if only
because that is usually the purpose of an anniversary special, to encapsulate
what is best known/loved about a programme<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Narrative change:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> The introduction
of the Hurt Doctor in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Name of the
Doctor</i> has already potentially shifted the narrative of the whole
programme, and the announcement that Matt Smith will be leaving the show,
opening up the introduction of a Twelth Doctor, means that change is almost
inevitable. (this could also be seen as a pattern for the show: Jon Pertwee's final season started in 1973; Peter Davison's final season started in 1983...)</span></div>
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Likelihood:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> Guaranteed<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Whatever else, it is clear from its specials that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> offers a different perspective on media remembrance than
the traditional journalistic/documentary celebrations. More often than not, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i>’s anniversary specials are a
chance to celebrate and encapsulate central tenets of the programme’s history
(the Doctor, monsters, companions), to visually recreate specific elements of
that past (costumes, locations), or (since the 25<sup>th</sup> anniversary)
retouch and reinterpret that narrative and fictional past.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">But, given Steven Moffat knows more about the previous anniversary
specials than most, perhaps November 2013 will offer up something new (rather
than something borrowed or blue)...</span></div>
Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-5128299354986118652013-06-17T11:44:00.000+01:002013-06-17T11:44:16.726+01:0050 Years in the TARDIS: Doctor Who's Anniversary Specials, Part 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E1vf7uUBtC0/Ub7m2GqynKI/AAAAAAAAAbQ/4Qbb3zRg4MM/s1600/five+doctors+dvd+us.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E1vf7uUBtC0/Ub7m2GqynKI/AAAAAAAAAbQ/4Qbb3zRg4MM/s320/five+doctors+dvd+us.jpg" width="220" /></a></div>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In 1973, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors</i>
established several dominant ideas around how to celebrate and commemorate a
ten year television anniversary: multiple Doctors appearing, an ‘absent’
Doctor, references to (and expansion of) Time Lord history, discussion of a
shared narrative past, and narrative change to the shape of the programme. As
Derek Johnston has observed (in relation to my last blog post), the programme
was also a remembrance of ten years of a show that couldn’t be re-watched and
was rarely repeated (indeed, many of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor
Who</i>’s early episodes had been wiped by the BBC and could not be
re-broadcast).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Ten years later, in 1983, the series revisited the anniversary special
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Five Doctors</i>, an episode that
sat outside of the normal run of the series (broadcast on November 23<sup>rd</sup>
as part of the Children in Need telethon): but this special had a more self-reflective
tone that can be linked not only to an increased audience for the programme (on
a global scale as much as a British one), the presence of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but also a 1981 ‘Five Faces of Doctor Who’
series of summer repeats that included early adventures including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors</i> and which reasserted
certain notions about remembering the programme’s past: the stern grandfather
(Hartnell), the playful fool (Troughton), the action-man (Pertwee), the kooky
alien (Tom Baker); familiar monsters, faithful companions. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Five Doctors</i>, a
mysterious figure retrieves each of the five Doctors (and a relevant companion)
from their own time-streams: so, the First Doctor is reunited with his
granddaughter Susan (Carole Ann Ford), the Second with the Brigadier (Nicholas
Courtney), the Third with Sarah Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen), etc. They are
all taken to an alien landscape (that the Doctors eventually recognise as the
Death Zone on Gallifrey), and forced to avoid familiar villainous adversaries
(a Dalek, Cybermen, a Yeti, the Master) while playing ‘the Game of Rassilon’.
Meanwhile, the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) tries to solve the mystery with the
High Council in the Citadel of Gallifrey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">As laid out, the narrative feels like a metaphor for writing an
anniversary storyline: the necessity of selecting each Doctor and companion
team, placing them in danger, relating that to a known monster. This
self-reflective quality is also clear in some of the dialogue and interactions:
Sarah Jane’s surprise that it is the Third Doctor she meets not the Fourth
(‘all teeth and curls’ is the Third Doctor’s comment), the familiar (from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors</i>) bickering between
Second and Third, the Brigadier’s comment ‘Splendid chap... all of them’ (a
deliberate echo of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors</i>’
‘Splendid chap... both of them’), and the interaction between Tegan (Janet
Fielding) and the Fifth Doctor about going on the run from his people in a
rickety old TARDIS: ‘why not, that’s how it all started’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors </i>there
is no referential sense of 20 years having past, or that there is such a
concept as 20 years or 1983 in the fictional world being displayed. Here, as in
1973, the passage of ‘real time’ is less important than the concept of
reuniting a series of known actors and characters. However, in other respects
the programme hews close to the themes introduced in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The multiple
Doctor / the ‘absent’ Doctor:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> As already noted, the programme brings together
five Doctors, although using six actors. After a brief clip of William
Hartnell, the role of the First Doctor is played by Richard Hurdnall; Troughton
and Pertwee return; and Davison continues to play the Fifth. Absent here (bar
some clips from the untelevised episode <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shada</i>)
is Fourth Doctor Tom Baker, who choose not to appear, having only been out of
the role for two years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gDRimTzJfNY/Ub7m_mVknWI/AAAAAAAAAbc/ONoixSUMNtI/s1600/DW+RT+cover+-+1983.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gDRimTzJfNY/Ub7m_mVknWI/AAAAAAAAAbc/ONoixSUMNtI/s320/DW+RT+cover+-+1983.jpg" width="242" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Time Lords:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> Whereas Time Lord
hero Omega was the villain in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three
Doctors</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Five Doctors</i> offers
more glimpses of the Time Lord society by delving into its dark past, and the
figure of Time Lord founder Rassilon. Unlike <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors</i>, which revealed unknown aspects of Time Lord
society and history, by the 20<sup>th</sup> anniversary there had been several
programmes devoted to Gallifrey, its people and customs, so the planet itself
was much more familiar. That also allowed writer Terrence Dicks to exploit
knowledge of President Borusa, previously a friend of the Doctor, and make him
the unseen villain of the piece. The figure of Rassilon hangs over most of the
story, but with some uncertainty over how positive he was, either encouraging
or stopping Gallifrey’s dark times.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">References to a
shared narrative past:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> There are continual references to ‘old’ events: the
Second Doctor and the Brigadier talk about Cybermen and Omega, and are chased
by a Yeti; the First Doctor and Susan talk about the Dalek’s home planet,
Skaro; as noted, Sarah-Jane Smith talks about the facial difference between 3<sup>rd</sup>
and 4<sup>th</sup> Doctors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Narrative change:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> Although <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Five Doctors </i>has less impact on the
wider series narrative than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three
Doctors</i>, it works to redefine and underline the programme’s central
concept: a Time Lord on the run from his own people, adrift in time and space.
It also appoints the Doctor to the position of President of Gallifrey,
something that is does return in the Colin Baker story <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Trial of a Timelord</i>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span> </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vqU68G_JFsQ/Ub7nJs4DRXI/AAAAAAAAAbk/KFLkJaSOinA/s1600/Longleat+adult+ticket+01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="221" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vqU68G_JFsQ/Ub7nJs4DRXI/AAAAAAAAAbk/KFLkJaSOinA/s320/Longleat+adult+ticket+01.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span></b> </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Promoting the
Anniversary: </span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Once<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>again, the programme was
promoted through a special <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Radio Times </i>cover,
a magazine, other media appearances <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(Blue
Peter, Pebble Mill</i>), and a major BBC-organised convention in April 1983,
‘The Dr Who Celebration: Twenty Years of a Timelord’. Based at Longleat House
in Wiltshire, the convention was a huge success, with over 35,000 people
attending. Like the other promotional materials, the convention worked to
stress a particular remembrance of the programme that drew on monster costumes,
the showing old episodes, and appearances of the actors who had played the
companions, villains and the Doctors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Remembrance of the Daleks</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> (1988) and <em>Silver
Nemesis</em> (1988)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Only five years later, due to threats of cancellation, production
postponement and the replacement of Colin Baker, interest in a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> anniversary was at a lower
ebb and, despite several stories and events marking the programme’s silver
anniversary, the emphasis was back on ‘in-season’ celebrations closer to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors</i> than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Five Doctors</i>. While all four stories
from season 25 can be described as commemorating the programme’s past in some
form, the two villain-centric stories offer the most obvious anniversary
elements.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-muqnZEzR6q8/Ub7nSSPGq5I/AAAAAAAAAbs/_82b28V32mw/s1600/Remembrance+of+the+Daleks+DVD.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-muqnZEzR6q8/Ub7nSSPGq5I/AAAAAAAAAbs/_82b28V32mw/s320/Remembrance+of+the+Daleks+DVD.jpg" width="227" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Unlike previous anniversary programmes, both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Remembrance of the Daleks</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Silver
Nemesis</i> use the idea of 25 years as a central narrative conceit: the former
taking place in 1963 (days or weeks after the Hartnell Doctor left), the latter
story taking place on 23<sup>rd</sup> November 1988, and built around a comet /
spaceship that revisits Earth every 25 years (because the Doctor got his
calculations wrong when it was launched). More self-referential than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Five Doctors</i>, most notably through a
recreation (and repositioning) of the programme’s own fictional past (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Remembrance </i>revisits Coal Hill School
and – where Susan went to school in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">An
Unearthly Child </i>and I.M. Foreman’s junk yard, where initial companions Ian
Chesterton (William Russell) and Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) first
discover the TARDIS), neither story features the multiple or absent Doctor
approach of previous specials (although Hartnell’s Doctor is referred to by one
character), or old companions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span> </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YSkB4T2ZJ9s/Ub7nYsviJNI/AAAAAAAAAb0/vKd8GpRohPM/s1600/Silver+Nemesis+%25281988%2529+DVD+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YSkB4T2ZJ9s/Ub7nYsviJNI/AAAAAAAAAb0/vKd8GpRohPM/s320/Silver+Nemesis+%25281988%2529+DVD+cover.jpg" width="224" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">However, other tropes are present: no Time Lords are seen on screen, but
both stories revolve around their advanced technology (the ‘Hand of Omega’ (a
stellar manipulation device) in the Dalek story, and a living metal discovered
by the Time Lords in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Silver Nemesis</i>);
the episodes also feature the series’ most recognisable recurring monsters: the
Daleks (and their creator Davros) and the Cybermen; and both stories represent
attempts to shift the narrative direction of the show, making the Doctor into a
more active participant in his own drama, a Time Lord eager to manipulate the
future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">As such, the programme’s 25<sup>th</sup> year saw a reconstruction of
its own history (something that Steven Moffat’s current run has also attempted,
most notably in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Name of the Doctor</i>,
the lead-in to the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary special), setting up bridges
between the present, past and future of its fictional world, offering a new
framework for understanding the previous 25 years and repositioning the show
for its immediate future...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">That future, however, was shorter than anyone knew...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Next
time:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> From <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dimensions
in Time </i>(1993) to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scream of the
Shalka</i> (2003)... to 2013?</span></div>
Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-80844222414901395812013-06-11T15:21:00.002+01:002013-06-11T15:21:31.621+01:0050 Years in the TARDIS: Doctor Who's Anniversary Specials (Part 1)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ugyLEtUi6WQ/UbcyJ-ybjOI/AAAAAAAAAbA/AUb77AWJ540/s1600/DW+logo+2010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ugyLEtUi6WQ/UbcyJ-ybjOI/AAAAAAAAAbA/AUb77AWJ540/s320/DW+logo+2010.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">[A] remembrance is... a reconstruction of the past achieved with data
borrowed from the present, a reconstruction prepared... by reconstructions of
earlier periods wherein past images had already been altered’ (Halbwachs 1952,
69)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Later this year, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i>
will reach its 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary, a major milestone that few
television programmes have achieved. Although partially overshadowed by the
announcement that current 11<sup>th</sup> Doctor Matt Smith will be leaving
(and the now-traditional media interest in who will replace him), the 50<sup>th</sup>
anniversary will see a range of different celebrations, from a special episode
through a BBC-organised convention. As long-term fans of the programme know, however,
we have been here before: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i>
celebrated its 10<sup>th</sup>, 20<sup>th</sup>, 25<sup>th</sup> and 30<sup>th</sup>
anniversaries with similarly well-anticipated television specials,
commemorative magazines and/or events. As each of those anniversaries has demonstrated,
the history of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> is in
almost constant revision, with reconstructions of narrative conceits and
alterations of past fictional events a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de
rigeur</i> feature of dramatic anniversary commemorations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Over a series of three blog posts, I want to think about how <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i>’s anniversary celebrations have
set up recurring traits around anniversary television programmes. Specifically,
I want to think about how fictional celebrations such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors</i> (1973), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Five Doctors </i>(1983)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, Remembrance of
the Daleks</i> (1988)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, Silver Nemesis</i>
(1988), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dimensions in Time</i> (1993) and
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scream of the Shalka</i> (2003) created
their own remembrances of the programme’s history – both in terms of narrative
(the fictional world of the Doctor, the TARDIS etc.) and behind-the-scenes
production information.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The media representation and commemoration of ‘real world’ historical events
(such as the Second World War) tends to take place through news and
documentary-led programmes, and such programmes manufacture their remembrances
through a combination of archive footage, dramatic recreation, voiceover, and (often
temporally disingenuous) editing patterns. These manufactured media histories, then,
renew, challenge and efface real memories, creating a collective public memory
of the original event – as I was writing this first blog, for example, it was
claimed that collective memory of the First World War has likely been shaped
more by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blackadder Goes Forth </i>than
any textbook or documentary.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">This, then, suggests the importance of media constructions to public
memory of ‘real world’ histories. Using <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor
Who</i>, however, these blog posts will explore how anniversary fictions can reproduce
and reassert particular elements of its fictional dramatic history, while
promotional materials support a particular mediation and representation of the
programme’s production history. By looking at these specific stories, it is
clear that anniversary dramas retell stories about their fictional pasts, adding
a new veneer of meaning in each retelling, and representing subtle shifts in
the collective memory through each recreation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">10<sup>th</sup> anniversary:
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors </i>(1973)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">If you’ve read this far, I’m going to assume you have a basic sense of
what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who </i>is: a time travel
drama aimed at family audiences, that was first broadcast on Saturday 23<sup>rd</sup>
November 1963, and grew in popularity due (at least in part) to the
introduction of the Daleks in December 1963.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The first major anniversary story is 1973s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors</i>, although a case could be made for ‘World’s End’,
the first episode of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dalek Invasion
of Earth</i>, given it was broadcast on 21<sup>st</sup> November 1964 and is
the end of the first major arc of the programme, reintroducing the hugely popular
Daleks (who had been killed off at the end of their first story) and ending
with the departure of the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan (Carole Ann Ford). Yet although
it falls around the right time of year, and features returning villains (subsequent
conceits of the anniversary episode), the story was not designed to commemorate
the programme’s one year anniversary. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Three Doctors</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">, however, was
produced as a deliberate attempt at commemoration, bringing together the First
(William Hartnell), Second (Patrick Troughton) and Third (Jon Pertwee) Doctors
to battle a Time Lord villain, Omega. The story is a solid example of Pertwee’s
era as the Doctor, a partly-Earthbound action-adventure romp, featuring most of
the regular supporting cast from UNIT (the United Nations Intelligence
Taskforce), a military force designed to combat the alien and unusual, led by
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney), and featuring Sergeant Benton
(John Levene) and Jo Grant (Katy Manning). This Earthbound focus was a
production conceit for budgetary and story reasons: the Doctor’s memories of
time travel taken away by the Time Lords and the TARDIS’s dematerialisation
circuit removed. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Unlike traditional ideas of media anniversaries, which are based around
the proximity to an actual date, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Three Doctors</i> was broadcast as the first story of the 10<sup>th</sup>
season of the show, with episode one debuting on 30<sup>th</sup> December 1972,
almost a year ahead of the anniversary. Most journalism-based media anniversary
programmes also make specific reference to the period of time that has passed:
but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors</i> has not
narrative reference to ten years having passed, or even that the adventure
takes place in 1973.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">That said, several anniversary themes are established that recur through
future programmes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The multiple Doctor
/ the ‘absent’ Doctor:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> the programme is built around the combination of
Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee in both production and narrative terms. It is
the first time <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> would
revisit its past in such an overt manner, but by no means the last; it was also
designed to be the first time all three Doctors shared screen space and time,
although due to illness Hartnell’s First Doctor is mostly ‘absent’ from the
reunion, delivering his lines via the TARDIS scanner. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors</i> also sets up the dramatic concept of rivalry and
competitiveness between the Doctor’s incarnations: the Second and Third Doctors
bicker throughout, while the First (who describes his ‘replacements’ as ‘a
dandy and clown’) acts as a drill sergeant in his cameos. Off-screen, the
Troughton-Pertwee relationship was cordial, but featured a clash of acting
styles, with Troughton more given to on-set improvisation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Time Lords:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> Ten years into
the programme, very little was known about the Doctor’s people, the Time Lords.
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors</i> establishes much
more information: Omega gave the Time Lords the power of time travel by
harnessing the power of a black hole; Omega is a hero on Gallifrey, the Time
Lord’s home; the Time Lords have a governing structure that includes a President
and a Chancellor; and there are ‘Laws of Time’ (the first of which is that Time
Lords should not meet their other incarnations)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">References to a
shared narrative past:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> Anniversary programmes tend to be spaces where
particular views or perspectives on the past can be solidified: here, for
example, Benton and the Brigadier both recognise and reminisce about previous
adventures with the Second Doctor, most notably those involving villains such
as the Yeti and the Cybermen (in turn, these reconstruct a vision of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> that focuses on the
spectacular nature of the villains: something promotional materials such as the
10<sup>th</sup> anniversary magazine special would also focus on)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Narrative change:</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dalek Invasion of Earth</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors</i> ends with a narrative
shift that affects the whole programme: the Time Lords return the Third
Doctor’s knowledge of time travel, and give him a new dematerialisation
circuit, allowing the programme to return to its earlier narrative structure of
off-world and Earth-bound adventures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Promoting the
Anniversary: </span></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Three Doctors</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> was promoted with
features in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Radio Times</i>, a
special celebratory magazine, appearances on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blue Peter</i> and a special exhibition at the Science Museum in London
focus on the actors, crew, costumes and stories that defined the decade. Each
of these materials offered a stronger sense of the programme’s decade-long
success, the actors and crew involved, and the range of monsters the programme
was famous for. As such, these were more traditional media ‘anniversary’ celebrations,
pulling together strands from the previous ten years, rather than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Three Doctors</i>’ narrative approach.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Next time: From <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Five Doctors</i>
(1983) to <em>Silver Nemesis </em>(1988)...</span></div>
Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-71564928997216304242012-12-20T18:11:00.002+00:002012-12-21T15:56:12.660+00:00The Twelve Days of (Ealing) ChristmasA suitably festive contribution to round off my year (and a bit) of Ealing viewing - the blog will be back in 2013 with more musings on cinema and TV...<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Twelve Crichton’s Directing<o:p></o:p></b></div>
Not counting his contribution to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead of Night</i> (1945), Charles Crichton directed twelve Ealing films, including comedy classics <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hue & Cry</i> (1947), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lavender Hill Mob </i>(1951) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Titfield Thunderbolt</i> (1953), as well as lesser known dramas like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dance Hall</i> (1950) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Man in the Sky</i> (1957). Despite this, he still lags behind Basil Dearden (21 films) and Charles Frend (13), but ahead of Robert Hamer (7), Harry Watt (7), Walter Forde (6) and Alexander MacKendrick (5).<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eleven Pipers Piping<o:p></o:p></b></div>
Before becoming famous for TV roles in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Upstairs Downstairs </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Professionals</i>, a young Gordon Jackson made eleven appearances in Ealing films, stretching from Tommy Trinder’s mate Alastair ‘Jock’ McFarlane in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Foreman Went to France</i> (1942) to Peggy Cummins’ jealous boyfriend Ralph in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Love Lottery</i> (1954). His distinctive brogue provided a Scottish perspective for war films, Australian epics and Victorian melodrama.<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ten Lads a Leaping<o:p></o:p></b></div>
Aside from Gordon Jackson, the top ten leading actors who appeared in Ealing films include Mervyn Johns (12), Jack Warner (8), Jack Hawkins (6), Alec Guinness (6), Stanley Holloway (6), George Formby (5), Will Hay (5), John Mills (5), John Clements (5), and Raymond Huntley (4).<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i><br />
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Nine Ladies Dancing<o:p></o:p></b><br />
The top nine leading actresses include Googie Withers (6), Joan Greenwood (4), Moira Lister (4) Sally Anne Howes (4), Katie Johnson (4), Elizabeth Sellars (3), Kay Walsh (3),<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Adrienne Corri (2), and Patricia Roc (2). However, although never a lead, they are all beaten by Gladys Henson, who appeared in 10 Ealing films.<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eight Alec Guinesses-a-killing<o:p></o:p></b></div>
One of Ealing’s best known films, the dark comedy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kind Hearts and Coronets </i>(1949) is most famous for Alec Guinness’ appearance in eight different roles, as the members of the artistocratic D’Ascoyne family that Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) kills off, one by one... Guinness would try and recreate the effect in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Barnacle Bill</i> (1958), but to less acclaim.<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Seven Awards a Winning (kind of)<o:p></o:p></b></div>
Ealing films were nominated for Academy Awards seven times, but T.E.B. Clarke proved victorious, winning ‘Best Original Screenplay’ in 1952 for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lavender Hill Mob</i>. The other six nominations were for:<br />
<ul>
<li>1949: Best Art Direction-Set Direction (Colour), Jim Morahan, William Kellner, Michael Relph, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saraband for Dead Lovers</i></li>
<li>1949: Best Original Screenplay, T.E.B. Clarke, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Passport to Pimlico</i></li>
<li>1952: Best Actor, Alec Guinness, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lavender Hill Mob</i></li>
<li>1952: Best Adapted Screenplay, John Dighton, Roger MacDougall, Alexander McKendrick, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Man in the White Suit</i> (nominated) – from play of same name by MacDougall</li>
<li>1953: Best Adapted Screenplay, Eric Ambler, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Cruel Sea</i> (nominated) – from Nicholas Monsarrat novel</li>
<li>1956: Best Original Screenplay, William Rose, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ladykillers<o:p></o:p></i></li>
</ul>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">6 Six Googie Withers<o:p></o:p></b><br />
The inestimable Googie Withers appeared in six Ealing films: she had a low-key start as the love interest for George Formby in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Trouble Brewing</i> (1939), before starring in some of Ealing’s strongest 1940s dramas: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">They Came to a City</i> (1944), a supportive wife in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead of Night</i> (1945), a calculating Victorian <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">femme fatale</i> up against stern patriarch Mervyn Johns in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pink String and Sealing Wax</i> (1945), a female farmer challenging tradition in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Loves of Joanna Godden</i> (1947) and, perhaps her strongest performance, as Rose Sandigate in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It Always Rains on Sunday</i> (1947), struggling to reconcile her past life with criminal and her new domestic life in the East End of London.<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Five Aussie Things<o:p></o:p></b></div>
Between 1945 and 1959, the head of Ealing Studios Sir Michael Balcon, followed through on his plans to develop and expand Australian film production, with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Overlanders</i>, Ealing’s first film to utilise Australian stories, cast and location filming. Followed by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eureka Stockade</i> (1949), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bitter Springs</i> (1950), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Shiralee</i> (1957) and Ealing Film’s swansong, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Siege of Pinchgut</i> (1959), these films represent the more globally focused side of Ealing that looked (often eagerly) beyond Britain’s shores for stories and audiences.<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Four Just Men</i> (1939)<o:p></o:p></b></div>
The fifth Ealing film under Michael Balcon’s stewardship of the studios, this confident and briskly paced crime-spy thriller lingers on some of the darker and dramatic strands of Ealing’s output, elements that would thread through later films as diverse as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Went the Day Well? </i>(1943), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead of Night </i>(1945), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Against the Wind</i> (1948), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Blue Lamp</i> (1950), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Gentle Gunman</i> (1952) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nowhere to Go</i> (1958).<br />
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Three French Locations<o:p></o:p></b><br />
Many of Ealing’s films feature French protagonists, but three in particular use their French locations to set up a Britain-French narrative contrast: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Foreman Went to France</i> (1942) strands its British hero in the middle of an invasion; David Farrar fakes his death before escaping back to Herbert Lom’s glamorous and sexualised Parisian club in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cage of Gold </i>(1950); while Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway engage in a madcap trip to Paris to retrieve their misplaced golden Eiffel Towers in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lavender Hill Mob</i> (1951).<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Two Audrey Hepburns<o:p></o:p></b></div>
Before <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Roman Holiday</i> (1952) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sabrina</i> (1954), Audrey Hepburn appeared in two very different Ealing films: a brief part as ‘Chiquita’ in the South American scenes that bookend <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lavender Hill Mob</i> (1951), and a major role as Nora Brentano in spy drama <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Secret People</i> (1952).<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">And a (solitary) Partridge in the Studio’s Pear Tree<o:p></o:p></b></div>
Several stars made singular appearances in Ealing’s film output: Humphrey Bogart (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Love Lottery</i>, 1954); Mai Zetterling (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frieda</i>, 1947), David Niven (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Love Lottery</i>, 1954); Harry Secombe (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Davy</i>, 1957), Simone Signoret (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Against the Wind</i>, 1948)and Benny Hill (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Who Done It?</i> 1956).Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-36696518838082314592012-08-15T06:00:00.000+01:002012-08-15T06:00:11.838+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 95 (and FINAL): Passport to Pimlico (1949)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Jj0RCQaQkdg/UCqMTmFGZWI/AAAAAAAAAZw/S1l-dyFjrFk/s1600/Passport+to+Pimlico+DVD+case.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Jj0RCQaQkdg/UCqMTmFGZWI/AAAAAAAAAZw/S1l-dyFjrFk/s1600/Passport+to+Pimlico+DVD+case.jpg" /></a>And so, it came to an end. Not with a whimper, but with a
bang: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Passport to Pimlico</i>, one of the
best known ‘Ealing comedies’, one of the films that (it is claimed) speaks for
the whole of the studio’s output and thematic interests, and one of the films
that first sparked my love of Ealing many years ago. It remains a film of its
time and place but, watching it during a time of British recession and
austerity, it is also a film that can still provide a satirical edge to events,
over sixty years on.</div>
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When an unexploded bomb (which is supposed to be the
final one in London, until another one is found: a small comment on the
fragility of fame/notoriety that echoes through the rest of the film) reveals a
hidden treasure trove, the inhabitants of Miramont Place, Pimlico discover the
land they live on is actually owned by the Duke of Burgundy. The local’s
realisation that they are now Burgundians (and not bound by British law) is a
beautifully structured piece of cinema that starts with the individual
realisation of bank manager Mr Wix (Raymond Huntley), which spreads through
other characters, ending up in a communal ‘knees up’ around the piano in the
local, a ripping up of ration booklets, and a rejection of traditional
authority figures. Because this is Ealing, such excesses are not without their
problems: as the bureaucracy of Whitehall rolls over them, Miramont Place
suffers from an influx of spivs and black marketeers, the imposition of strict border
controls and immigration, and the cessation of basic amenities (water,
electricity, food).</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6BWpe_XCkMg/UCqMDDHCiTI/AAAAAAAAAZo/72R7h-ZDCM0/s1600/Passport+to+Pimlico+French+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6BWpe_XCkMg/UCqMDDHCiTI/AAAAAAAAAZo/72R7h-ZDCM0/s320/Passport+to+Pimlico+French+poster.jpg" width="241" /></a>One of the things that this Challenge has revealed is
that Ealing Studios was fascinated with the world beyond Britain’s borders:
whether that was expressed through literal border crossings in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Johnny Frenchman</i> (1945) or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Against the Wind</i> (1948), or completely
foreign-set narratives such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saraband
for Dead Lovers</i> (1948) or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">His
Excellency</i> (1952). Here, the introduction to the film suggests a
continental or Latin setting, with salsa music playing, a fan turning: a
seemingly foreign location. That this turns out to be England in a heat-wave
(revealed through a camera shot that pulls back over Molly Reeve (Jane Hylton) sunbathing
on the roof, tilts down to reveal the fish shop beneath, pans across past the
pub door, and gazes down the street) is just one of the visual and thematic
misdirections that the film offers to its audience. It also points to the
inherently playful nature of this film, and of the studio more broadly.</div>
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The film moves along swiftly, developing new ideas
quickly and never stopping, a testament to the combined skills of director
Henry Cornelius, writer T.E.B. Clarke, director of photography Lionel Banes and
editor Michael Truman. Narrative details are referenced in passing, not shoehorned
in or signalled far in advance. The heat-wave, for example, is rarely mentioned
directly in dialogue, but is alluded to visually: in the opening few minutes,
we see Molly in a bikini; a few minutes later she slaps some fish into a
newspaper with a weather-related headline. The end of the heat-wave is also
narrated visually with a sudden rainstorm and mercury plummeting in a
thermometer. The skill of the pacing is also seen in the Whitehall scenes:
although featuring the star turn of Ministers Gregg (Basil Radford) and Straker
(Naunton Wayne), they are brisk and rapid, short digs at bureaucracy that don’t
overstay their welcome (unlike Gregg and Straker, who are slow and dogmatic).</div>
<br />
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The scene in the pub also quickly and succinctly develops
key characters: Wix’s rational approach, the more enthusiastic and communally
minded Arthur Pemberton (Stanley Holloway), and bossy Edie Randall (Hermione
Baddeley). The jealousy that Molly feels over Frank Huggins (John Slater) continually
trying to impress Shirley Pemberton (Barbara Murray) is expressed musically, as
Molly uses her singing to lure Frank’s attention away (the lyrics, ‘I don’t
want to set the world on fire, just start a fire in your heart’ reaffirm this)
It offers a strong example of the film’s focus on this community, but it also
stands as a marker for how efficient the script, editing and direction can be.</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dhJifsiv_ag/UCqMVJ0xdMI/AAAAAAAAAZ4/IhgUN0y382g/s1600/Passport+to+Pimlico.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dhJifsiv_ag/UCqMVJ0xdMI/AAAAAAAAAZ4/IhgUN0y382g/s1600/Passport+to+Pimlico.jpg" /></a>As I suggested above, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pimlico</i>
still feels relevant today: the austerity measures of post-war Britain fit well
with 2012 Britain, there is no money for public works (the Pemberton lido) only
private development (blocks of flats), and there is no escaping the circuitous
bureaucracy of Whitehall. In Miramont Place, public ownership of (and control
over) the banks, democratically elected people’s councils, and pulling together
is the response to such a crisis. Of course, that ignores the one fly in this
socialist ointment: the need for a feudal overlord, in this case the current
Duke of Burgundy (Paul Dupois). He may be charming, but he has little real role
to play in this film: that said, the sequence of him attempting to romance
Shirley under a night-time sky is beautifully undercut by the noises of a true
London street (cats howling, men gargling).</div>
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<br /></div>
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With its strong location work, including shots in Piccadilly
Circus (where several Pimlico kids go to watch a Gaumont-British newsreel about
their street), the use of Whitehall, and the Underground (the scenes where the
Pimlico brigade stop the tube to check passports and to check food stocks is a
particular highlight), there is little doubt this is one of Ealing’s most
obviously ‘London’ films. But the comic treatment of more universal themes of
British community, identity (‘it’s because we are English that we’re sticking
up for our rights to be Burgundian’) and democracy (a sign reading ‘3% For, 3%
Against, 94% Don’t Know’ seems particularly apt to the film’s national vision)
shine through, and reassert the film’s claims to classic status within Ealing’s
95 films, and British cinema more generally.</div>
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[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Passport to
Pimlico</i> is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Studio Canal UK. See <a href="http://www.studiocanal.co.uk/"><span style="color: blue;">www.studiocanal.co.uk</span></a> for more details]</div>
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Next time... some final thoughts on the Great Ealing Film Challenge...</div>
Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-43517889348912321712012-08-10T09:14:00.002+01:002012-08-10T09:14:12.798+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 94: Nowhere to Go (1958)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MtMCO2khWmc/UCTCOPp2JhI/AAAAAAAAAY0/66-fi28yROQ/s1600/Nowhere+to+Go+British+quad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MtMCO2khWmc/UCTCOPp2JhI/AAAAAAAAAY0/66-fi28yROQ/s320/Nowhere+to+Go+British+quad.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nowhere to Go </i>was
the second-last Ealing Film produced and, suitably, is also the second-last
film to be viewed and written about for this Challenge. Erstwhile Ealing editor
Seth Holt made his directorial debut in a crime thriller which he scripted with
Ealing script editor (and theatre critic) Kenneth Tynan (from a book by Donald
MacKenzie). The hiring and influence of Tynan is covered in more detail by
Charles Barr in the new collection <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ealing
Revisited</i>, but of the seven films Balcon produced after selling the
physical studio in Ealing, this is often seen as the film that offered one
potential (and unfulfilled) new route for Ealing Films in the late 1950s.<br />
<br />
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Canadian thief Paul Gregory (George Nader) pursues
Harriet P. Jefferson (Bessie Love) in order to steal her rare coin collection.
Having sold the coins, he puts the money in a safe deposit box and waits to be
arrested, expecting to be out in five years. Sentenced to ten years, and with
the help of Victor Sloane (Bernard Lee), Gregory breaks out of prison and plans
to collect the money, and leave the country. A series of accidents and
double-crosses sends Gregory spinning through London’s criminal underworld,
before he ends up on the run with socialite Bridget Howard (Maggie Smith)
through the Welsh countryside.</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-t-nePPCwhW4/UCTCSRWEHTI/AAAAAAAAAZE/bP4VOKyAVxY/s1600/Nowhere+to+Go+US+poser+%2528thin%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-t-nePPCwhW4/UCTCSRWEHTI/AAAAAAAAAZE/bP4VOKyAVxY/s1600/Nowhere+to+Go+US+poser+%2528thin%2529.jpg" /></a>There is a visual confidence on display in the film from
the opening images, underpinned with a jazz soundtrack (by Dizzy Reece), that
makes it feel like an early 1960s film rather than one from the late 1950s.
Given its interest in interior spaces, and cool London locations, the film
resembles later films like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ipcress
File</i> (1965) more than earlier Ealing crime thrillers <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Blue Lamp</i> (1950) or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pool
of London</i> (1951). There is no dialogue in the first nine minutes of the
film, as Victor arrives at the prison, throws a rope over the wall, climbs in
and sets in motion Gregory’s escape; Gregory, in reverse, heads over the wall,
changes his clothes, and takes the car Victor left for him, before ending up in
a borrowed flat. It is a meticulous and well-staged sequence and, perhaps
because of Holt’s work as an editor, there is little excess fat here or,
indeed, elsewhere in the film. </div>
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</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Camerawork and set design remain strong throughout, with
composition in depth that sets up complex scenes that reward extra attention. The
apartment where Gregory stays for the first half of the film, for example, is a
precise and controlled environment: we see it shot almost exclusively from one
direction (a decision that could – unfairly – influence accusations of
theatricality), but this is a complex and deeply layered space, with layers of
information and narrative detail built on top of each other. Some images are
dominated by the white telephone that sits on a side table, or his bag: both act
as barriers to our ability to view the action, with Gregory often relegated to the
background of the room. Given this isn’t a space Gregory is familiar with, but
a borrowed location, it sets him adrift in a supposedly safe place: the idea of
lacking roots or a solid base recurs throughout. (Bridget’s apartment, by
contrast is a lived in space, more bohemian, with classic statues and arched
window frames).</div>
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Gregory is not the only character to be trapped or positioned
through such camera compositions: after being attacked, he lies unconscious on
the floor, his head taking up the bottom left of the foreground of the frame,
while Victor, in the deep background of the image, searches the apartment for
the money. In each case, the space of the apartment, and the arrangement of the
characters, is a bravura attempt to use location thematically. Forced
perspectives also crucially link character and event: Gregory in the background
of the coin dealers, with the bag (containing the coins) looming large in the
foreground; or an image outside Rosa’s flat, with a cat in extreme left of
image, and police cars pulling up in the mews below (the cat, disturbed, wakes
Gregory, who is able to escape across the roof). Some of these effects also suggest
generic identity: when Victor enters the apartment, the film uses canted camera
angles, and a streaming light from outside that casts diagonal venetian blind
shadows across the ceiling: both hark back to American (and British) crime films
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">film noir</i> from the past two
decades, an acknowledgement of how crime thrillers had changed since the 1940s.</div>
<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MgzXeIWT1kU/UCTCUu8p4uI/AAAAAAAAAZM/oNWVPu96Rec/s1600/Nowhere+to+Go+US+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MgzXeIWT1kU/UCTCUu8p4uI/AAAAAAAAAZM/oNWVPu96Rec/s320/Nowhere+to+Go+US+poster.jpg" width="207" /></a>The narrative remains solid and well-paced throughout,
with Gregory running from club to apartment, to the apparent safety of
Bridget’s flat and, later, her family’s country house. Yet Bridget remains an
opaque character, a narrative prop as much as a strongly psychologised (or even
thematically useful) presence. Maggie Smith gives a solid performance,
suggesting an occasional wildness or ingénue quality (most obvious when talking
to Inspector Scott – Geoffrey Keen – in the final minutes of the film) but the
film fails to explain why Bridget would be attracted to, never mind help,
Gregory. She also appears at useful moments for the narrative (arriving at the
flat Gregory is staying in, within hours of him escaping from prison; leaving the
club that Gregory’s criminal connection runs) but these coincidences are
seemingly explained away by a line that she is a home for lost causes and lame
ducks: neither of which Gregory falls into, as a thief and murderer.</div>
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</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There is a claim here that the film is interesting
because it lacks the moral centre of previous Ealing productions, but is
Gregory any better / worse / different than psychotic Professor Marcus (Alec
Guinness, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ladykillers</i>, 1955),
Irish terrorist Matt Sullivan (Dirk Bogarde, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Gentle Gunman</i>, 1952), or German spy Davis (Mervyn Johns, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Next of Kin</i>, 1942)? Gregory is
ultimately punished – shot while committing the minor crime of stealing a
bicycle – but as his actions devolve from meticulous planning to kneejerk responses,
he becomes a less fascinating character, and Nader’s performance is largely
one-note. Most of the time he is surrounded by characters actors like Bernard
Lee or Maggie Smith who disguise the lack of personality in its star.</div>
<br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nowhere to Go</i>
opens with the shriek of a steam train as it rumbles past camera, and ends with
Bridget walking down the hill, with a cloudy sunset in the distance, jazz
drifting over the imagery. It is tempting to read more into those images than
Holt (and cinematographer Paul Beeson) intended. A sunset on Ealing Films,
perhaps, given their final film would be the Australian-set <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Siege of Pinchgut</i> (1959)? A shift
from the traditional (steam trains, moral certainty, metropolitan, jazz) to
regional British spaces that the British New Wave and rock ‘n roll would soon
begin to colonise? Ealing Films would never contribute to that version of
British cinema, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nowhere to Go</i>
suggests they might have had interesting things to add...</div>
<br />
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[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nowhere to Go</i>
is not currently available on DVD from Studio Canal]</div>
<br />
Next time, the Great Ealing Film Challenge finishes with one of the studios' best loved productions, <em>Passport to Pimlico</em> (1949)...Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-82213590587091195572012-08-07T07:00:00.000+01:002014-04-03T15:40:05.446+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 93: The Ware Case (1938)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v-w-eFgFexA/UBJnplp2lxI/AAAAAAAAAYY/Ow4kJEOC4gk/s1600/ealing+studios+logo.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v-w-eFgFexA/UBJnplp2lxI/AAAAAAAAAYY/Ow4kJEOC4gk/s1600/ealing+studios+logo.gif" /></a>When discussing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Young
Man’s Fancy</i> (1939), it was noted that these early Ealing films act as a
bridge between the Basil Dean / Associated Talking Picture films produced at
Ealing and the Balcon-produced films that the production company called ‘Ealing
Studios’ would become known for. Yet even using that framework to approach
these films, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ware Case</i> is an odd
and generically unstable contribution to the Ealing back catalogue.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
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<br /></div>
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Told through a flashback structure that begins with a
murder court case, the bulk of the film follows immature man-about-town Lord
Hubert Ware (Clive Brook) as he leaves a litany of angry creditors across
London and the continent. Ignorant of the feelings of his wife Meg (Jane
Baxter), Hubert is presented as an amusing cad who spins lies and half-truths
to get out of a variety of problems, including imminent bankruptcy and a string
of mistresses. Hubert’s friend and barrister Michael Adve (Barry K. Barnes) is
secretly in love with Meg, while Meg’s rich brother Eustace (Peter Bull)
resents Hubert’s attitude to life and money. Meg puts Hubert’s country mansion
up for sale, in order to stave off bankruptcy, but while all the major
characters are staying there, Eustace’s body is found floating in the lake. The
Ware’s money problems are solved, but the testimony of Ware’s ex- gamekeeper
(John Laurie) suggests foul play, leading to a high profile murder trial.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
It is hard to know how to take the film’s central
character: the initial whirlwind of creditors, conspicuous consumption, casinos
and women suggests a likeable cad, and the film goes to great lengths to position Hubert at the centre of the film (not least the fact he is in the dock in
the opening court scenes). When
Michael describes Hubert (and his class) as ‘out of date, museum pieces’ and we
see the growing relationship between him and Meg, it is the start of a series
of narrative events that wrong-foot audience expectation’s of a light-hearted
aristocratic comedy of errors. The death of Eustace offers the next narrative
lurch, with the introduction of a revenge-based court case providing another.
Yet even here, the film is not finished. With Hubert cleared, he returns to his
London flat, hears servants talking about Meg and Michael’s unrequited love,
confronts his wife about it, seemingly realises his entire life has been a
waste, announces to a crowd that he did murder Eustace, then throws himself off
the balcony to his death below.</div>
<br />
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In its discussion of class dynamics, then, the film
clearly ties in (however accidentally) to later notions of the middle class
Ealing Studios and its desire to depict the working and middle classes on
screen. Yet while Hubert’s class position might be out-of-touch, he remains one
of the film’s few dynamic and interesting characters, fuelled by a strong
performance by Brook who spits out his dialogue as though in a fast-paced
screwball comedy, not this Frankenstein of generic odds and ends. There is
solid support from Baxter and Barnes, but they fail to conjure up any of the
hidden passion their characters are supposed to share, while Edward Rigby and
John Laurie do their best to enliven the working class clichés showered on
their drunken bookmaker and vengeful gamekeeper characters. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Although hampered by that strange narrative melange (and
a curious flashback structure that begins with the foreman reciting the facts
of the case, but never returns to the jury room when the flashback is complete),
the film looks good, and is another solid production from director Robert
Stevenson, scriptwriter Roland Pertwee and cinematographer Ronald Neame.
Stevenson and Neame conjure up some impressive shots here, with good use of
deep focus in the courtroom scenes, and some high angle shots that work to
heighten the drama (notably down the side of the mansion block before Hubert
falls to his death). The set design is also strong, setting up a modern art
deco feel for the London apartment, more traditional (and spacious) country
house interiors, and a cramped courtroom; this work is aided by extensive
location filming, particularly around the Ware estate, that gives some
verisimilitude to the film’s aristocratic setting.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Difficult to categorise, and with an uneven balance of
comedy and tragedy around its central (and most interesting character), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ware Case</i> is never dull.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
[UPDATED April 2014: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ware Case</i>
is available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 5, from Network]</div>
<br />
Next time, Ealing's final British film, the crime thriller <em>Nowhere to Go</em> (1958)...Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-9529677447362663182012-08-01T07:00:00.000+01:002014-04-03T15:41:05.597+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 92: His Excellency (1952)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QfH7dqKdRt4/UBJmLt0VUAI/AAAAAAAAAYI/chzqbwPv8W8/s1600/His+Excellency.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QfH7dqKdRt4/UBJmLt0VUAI/AAAAAAAAAYI/chzqbwPv8W8/s320/His+Excellency.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">His Excellency</i>
is one of those films that is difficult to love, partly because it often fails
to deliver a coherent experience or meaning: it has moments of jingoism and
anti-foreigner attitudes that feel alien to a 21<sup>st</sup> century audience,
yet also goes to great pains to mock the British patriarchal attitude to ‘the
colonies’; it mocks socialism yet offers a partial celebration of unionism and
collective action; ridicules military might but ultimately relies on it to
resolve narrative issues; celebrates a particular ‘northern’ personality within
Britain but dilutes that through the imposition of upper class knowledge and
restraint. And, worst of all for some critics, it is not the darkly wry and
subversively witty film that Robert Hamer, director of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kind Hearts and Coronets</i> (1949), was expected to deliver.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
However, for all of the above reasons, the film is never
less than fascinating, not least when it is imploding under the weight of its
own narrative devices and themes.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
From the opening announcement it is clear the film has a
political and satirical point to make: ‘Great Britain’s Colonies are known to
be the outposts of her Empire. They are reputed also to be the outposts of
dressing for dinner, reading “The Times”, cricket and afternoon tea... This
film tells of a mythical Colony of this kind during Britain’s recent Labour
regime.’ That statement is a clue to the balancing act of mockery and
patriotism the narrative tries to accomplish. In the colony (and naval base) of
Artisa, the existing governor is replaced after a worker’s strike and dockyard
riot. Instead of reliable aristocratic candidate Sir James Kirkman (Cecil
Parker), Britain installs northern trade union leader George Harrison (Eric
Portman). A man of action rather than a diplomat, Harrison rejects much of
Kirkman’s advice and tries to change working conditions for the Arista dockyard
workers, leading to a confrontation with Arista’s corrupt Prime Minister
(Gerard Heinz) and local union leader Morellos (Geoffrey Keen). As the military
are called out to deal with another strike and riot, Harrison relies on a final
speech to try and get the workers on his side and back to work.</div>
<br />
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The class and political conflict is clear from the
opening words and dialogue. One of the film’s representations of colonial
‘Britishness’ is a group of old ladies who gather at ‘Ye Olde Tea Shoppe’, read
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Times</i> and discuss the latest
developments in London society. It is one of these ladies who declares, upon
hearing of Harrison’s appointment, ‘I suppose with this wretched government one
had to expect a Socialist, but they might at least have sent us one of the
right sort’ (i.e. a socialist from the right background) It is tempting to
compare this old-fashioned and fusty version of Britain with a similar
gathering of old ladies in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Ladykillers</i> (1955) three years later. In both cases, it is possible to read
the gatherings as a clash of modernity, tradition and party politics – if the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ladykillers</i> (as director Mackendrick
claimed) was about the Edwardian anachronism of Mrs Wilberforce (and her
gloriously skewed house), then <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">His
Excellency</i> signals the Victorian/Edwardian colonial mindset is equally
anachronistic. If <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ladykillers</i> can
be read as a veiled comment on the post-war political landscape (as suggested
by Jeffrey Richards and Anthony Aldgate), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">His Excellency</i> offers a
more explicit intervention in such debates.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Ealing’s politics and productions were class-ridden, but
the content of their films can also be seen as driven by a reformer’s zeal, an
often middle class exploration of modern society and different areas of Britain
and abroad. While much of its representation of Britain here is aristocratic or
militaristic, Harrison and his daughter Peggy (Susan Stephen) are the voices of
the sensible middle classes, mediators that can attempt to talk to both sides
and reach a compromise. This is hardly the socialism rejected in the line of
dialogue quoted above, but it is a return to wartime values of compromise and
coalition (Harrison accepts the need for Kirkman’s upper class help, Kirkman
accepts Harrison’s perspective is valid). These are elements and ideals that Ealing
understood, given Balcon’s description of their ‘mild revolution’ when many of
them supported the post-war Labour government. However, the other side of this
exploration of Britishness abroad means the film gives little voice to the
natives of Arista, who are broadly scheming or in the pocket of large
corporations. The local police chief Dobrieda (Eric Pohlmann), for example, is
a caricature, a pompous colourful peacock of a figure that struts around the
film like a bad Mussolini impersonator.</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u1SwaQp2fjs/UBJmNwvNu3I/AAAAAAAAAYQ/PgJXUIsB84w/s1600/His+Excellency+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u1SwaQp2fjs/UBJmNwvNu3I/AAAAAAAAAYQ/PgJXUIsB84w/s320/His+Excellency+poster.jpg" height="320" width="150" /></a>Harrison, as the film’s patriarch, believes he can walk
the streets of his capital city until he understands the living conditions of
his new people and find a solution (notably he never visits the tea shoppe, but
prefers local bars). He may still hark back to his working class roots (Portman
has a striking Manchester accent throughout), but it is clear from Peggy’s
attitudes and accent that theirs is now a middle class life. Harrison, however,
does succeed in wrestling sense from both upper and working class perspectives
though his language alone – he attends a meeting of striking workers and
convinces them to return to work through his oratory alone, while Kirkman and
others are browbeaten by his ideas and orders. Where military might failed,
working class language and logic triumph.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
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<br /></div>
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As might be imagined, this story offers little feminine
perspective beyond the old ladies in the tea shoppe. Lady Kirkman (Helen
Cherry) makes snide comments about the Harrisons, but is won over by Peggy’s
charm and approach to running the governor’s palace; yet this is hardly a
celebration of Peggy, who is reduced to a housewife’s role, chastising the chef
and giving speeches to the local Red Cross. Stephen gives a solid, light
performance but has little role beyond a sounding board for Portman to test
rhetoric on.</div>
<br />
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Given the incoherent nature of much of the film, there
are elements that can be celebrated: Portman and Parker give committed and
enjoyable performances, the opulent set design of the palace is well used
throughout (there are several shots of Harrison, Kirkman and Admiral Barclay
(Edward Chapman) arranged across those spaces, like chess pieces on the
chequered floor beneath them), and it continues Ealing’s strong tradition of location
filming (the images of Portman striding
through the streets and alleys of Arista, lingering in the empty town square,
or yelling at the dockyard add colour to the story). Indeed, in places, the
film is crying out for actual colour – Technicolor or Eastmancolour – and it is
a shame it wasn’t made two years later, when the studio embraced colour
filmmaking.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
[UPDATED April 2014: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">His Excellency </i>is available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 10, from Network]</div>
<br />
Next time, we go (almost) back to the start, with the second film after Michael Balcon took over, <em>The Ware Case</em> (1938)...Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-47318279432811836702012-07-30T07:00:00.000+01:002014-04-03T15:42:32.352+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 91: The Divided Heart (1954)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wRHjaiVFVuE/UBJkuLWO_yI/AAAAAAAAAYA/r-3XvZLyZ0M/s1600/The+Divided+Heart+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wRHjaiVFVuE/UBJkuLWO_yI/AAAAAAAAAYA/r-3XvZLyZ0M/s1600/The+Divided+Heart+poster.jpg" /></a>‘based... on a factual story taken from the newspapers.
Part of its appeal for me was that it was about the mother-child relationship...
which, I recognise, was a recurring one in Ealing films.’ (Michael Balcon,
quoted in Barr, 192-3) </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The idea that the mother-child relationship was a
recurring one in Ealing might seem a strange observation, even coming from the
man who ran the studio between 1938 and 1959. Maternal issues can, of course,
be found across a range of Ealing’s films: there is the mother-battleaxe figure
who has to be defeated (often by the new bride) in films like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Young Man’s Fancy </i>(1939) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Turned Out Nice Again</i> (1944), and there
are mother-child elements to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cage of Gold</i>
(1950), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Where No Vultures Fly</i> (1951)
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mandy</i> (1952), but it seems a
stretch to call this a recurring theme. Children are more visible in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hue and Cry</i> (1947) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Magnet</i> (1950), but the mother-child theme
is less evident; equally, an argument could be made that father-son (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Long Arm</i>, 1956; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pink String and Sealing Wax</i>, 1945) and father-daughter
relationships (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lease of Life</i>, 1954; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Touch and Go</i>, 1955, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Shiralee</i>, 1957) are equally important to the studio output.</div>
<br />
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The focus of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Divided Heart </i>can, however, be seen as a continuation of Ealing’s move into
more domestic melodramas from the post-war period, a move that paralleled what
Charles Barr and others have seen as a move towards the professional male
figure of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Cruel Sea</i> (1953) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Man in the Sky</i> (1957). Barr also saw
this film as ‘worthy but tame – sober, academic, actressy, afraid of getting
into any deep emotional water’ (192): an assessment that seems to ignore the
film’s desire to elicit emotion in quite direct and manipulative ways. It is
also very much (to use a potentially problematic term) a ‘woman’s film’, in
that the subject matter appears tailored for an assumed female audience – and
the film features two central female characters.</div>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The film opens with Inga and Franz Hartl (Cornell
Borchers and Armin Dahlen), on the Bavarian ski-slopes and at the birthday
party of their son Toni (Michael Ray / Martin Keller). The party is disturbed
by two child repatriation officers, notably Marks (Geoffrey Keen), who informs
the Hartl’s that Toni’s biological mother is alive and living in Slovenia.
During a court case to assess Toni’s future, and to decide which of his mothers
he should end up with, there are flashbacks that fill out other elements of the
story: the birth mother, Sonja Slavko (Yvonne Mitchell) was held in a
concentration camp during the war, and lost her husband and daughters; after
finding Toni at a German orphanage, Inga raised him by herself while Franz is
away at war, and captured by the Russians. Toni (or Ivan) gets the chance to
meet Sonja, and grows to like her, but tells the judges he would prefer to live
with the Hartls. Sonja also comes round to the belief that Toni would be better
with them. Despite this, the three American justices vote 2-1 in favour of
returning him to Sonja, and the final image is mother and son, reunited, on a
train heading home.</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fd5nD9OECCY/UBJkWJcd4eI/AAAAAAAAAX4/XsXuwYYdePs/s1600/The+Divided+Heart+-+U.S.+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fd5nD9OECCY/UBJkWJcd4eI/AAAAAAAAAX4/XsXuwYYdePs/s1600/The+Divided+Heart+-+U.S.+poster.jpg" /></a>The film is richer and more complex than Barr’s
assessment allows, not least because it is, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frieda </i>(1947) before it, a commentary from an English perspective,
on the post-war German character and identity. At first, the Hartl’s are just a
nice family, but as the flashbacks reveal, Franz was a Nazi soldier and Sonja
(and other Slovenians) suffered at the hands of the German army. The symbolism
and emotion is laid on fairly thick: Toni/Ivan has hysterics every time he sees
a Nazi uniform because it (unconsciously) reminds him of being torn from Sonja;
in court, Sonja speaks through a translator, but one word ‘Auschwitz’ echoes
round the courtroom and is understood in all languages; there is a concern
about whether the Hartl’s will tell Toni the truth about German actions in the
war, particularly against Slovenia. Those moments aside, the film rarely takes
a direct position for or against Inga, and Borchers gets her fair share of
lingering close-ups when she talks about her love for Toni, or longing looks
across the courtroom at her competitor for his love, Sonja.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
It could be argued that Inga gets more than her fair
share of the film’s portrayal of this custody case, not least because she
speaks English throughout (although, in one of those cases of glorious movie
logic, she is actually speaking German), while Sonja – to start with at least –
has to speak through a male translator, thus striking her mute for at least
half the film. Mitchell makes the most of her mostly silent role and, like Borchers,
is given plenty of time for expressive looks and glances – one of the places
where the film wades happily into the ‘deep emotional waters’ Barr thinks it
incapable of. By the end of the film, when Toni/Ivan has saved Sonja from a
snowball attack in his home village, and both mothers have mutely expressed
their love, the film is an exercise in manipulative staging, framing and
editing. (there are also several nicely composed shots that fir both women into
the frame, often with Inga in close-up, Sonja further away, and arguably more
distant emotionally) That it ends with clumsy speeches from the three judges
giving their opinions is unfortunate, because it shifts the focus from the two
actresses who have driven it along so far.</div>
<br />
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The film is solid throughout, and makes good use of its
location work in St. Johann-in-Tirol and Skofja Loka (Yugoslavia), adding a
European sheen and a set of different spaces to the tale. Indeed, the Bavarian
setting (and much of the story) seems so alien to much of what Ealing was known
for – despite Balcon’s claim – that when Sonja gets lost in the streets and
alleys of the village, our sympathy as an audience may shift to her, because
this is unfamiliar territory for the Ealing audience as well.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
[UPDATED April 2014: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Divided Heart </i>is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 10, from Network]</div>
<br />
Next time, more Ealing European themes in <em>His Excellency</em> (1952)...Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-6564888404308442702012-07-25T07:00:00.000+01:002012-07-25T07:00:10.156+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 90: Mandy (1952)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0MvKMnrt_Z0/UAvKadU3R_I/AAAAAAAAAXI/_-DRJbygCIE/s1600/Mandy+DVD+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0MvKMnrt_Z0/UAvKadU3R_I/AAAAAAAAAXI/_-DRJbygCIE/s1600/Mandy+DVD+cover.jpg" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mandy</i> is a film
that can be defined in various ways. The DVD cover, in a departure from the normal
Ealing Studios branding, sells the film as ‘by Alexander Mackendrick' (the back cover also notes he is 'the director of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Man in the White Suit</i>’, but the film
also has generic similarities to ‘social problem’ films of the early 1950s
(such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I Believe in You</i>, 1952),
female-targeted stories (the likes of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dance
Hall, </i>1950; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Divided Heart</i>, 1954)
and more child-oriented films (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hue &
Cry</i>, 1947; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Magnet</i>, 1950). In
the grander scheme of Ealing Studios in the 1950s, it is also the first of five
successful collaborations between Jack Hawkins and Ealing (following his brief
appearance in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Next of Kin</i>, 1942),
and the first to position him as a professional, often highly driven and
brusque, individual (a role he would pursue in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Cruel Sea</i>, 1953 and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Long Arm</i>, 1956, among others).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
There are traces of all those approaches throughout the
films performances and narrative. When Christine and Harry Garland (Phyllis
Calvert and Terence Morgan) realise their daughter Mandy is deaf, their
responses threaten to tear the family apart. Initially living with Harry’s
wealthier parents (Godfrey Tearle and Marjorie Fielding), Christine realises
the house has becomes a prison for Mandy, and (against Harry’s wishes) takes
her to a special boarding school in Manchester run by Dick Searle (Hawkins).
Here, Mandy struggles with her new surroundings, but with individual tuition
from Searle, begins to become more confident and starts to speak. Harry tries
to force Christine to return to London, and uses rumours of Searle and Christine
having an affair to take Mandy back to the family home. At the end, female
independence (for both Christine and Mandy) is resolved by Mr Garland’s
intervention, and the family is reunited.</div>
<br />
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Although not a ‘social problem’ film in the classic
sense, this is a social ‘issue’ film about the one in sixteen thousand children
born deaf: an issue which (in true Ealing style) is married to a domestic
melodrama. The film does depict Mandy as a problem that can be ‘solved’ through
education but, unlike Charles Barr, I don’t think Mandy stands for ‘all
children, for the potential locked up inside the new (English) generation’
(152), not least because we meet several (deaf and non-deaf) children in the
film, and their potential seems to be happily unlocked already (in fact, the
interplay of Mandy and other children is an element that structures much of the
story, despite the clear influence of Searle). It is not just Mandy, of course,
that needs to be investigated: her family (parents and grandparents) also need attention.
So, the film is an amalgam of several of the Ealing elements identified: social
issue, melodrama, about children but also the adults who revolve around them.</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8hZVVp3oqqY/UAvKciZM5WI/AAAAAAAAAXQ/hX4r8yZO9BI/s1600/Mandy+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8hZVVp3oqqY/UAvKciZM5WI/AAAAAAAAAXQ/hX4r8yZO9BI/s320/Mandy+poster.jpg" width="150" /></a>What then about star and director? The claim for
Mackendrick seems fuelled by the need to demonstrate an author’s vision at
work, but the gulf between a critic’s need to discover a vision and the
actuality of such a vision appear quite distant here: the film is beautifully
shot by Douglas Slocombe, the actors are strong, and the storyline is potent
and dramatic stuff – but the dark, satirical and joyful notes of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Whisky Galore! </i>(1949), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Man in the White Suit</i> (1951), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Maggie </i>(1954) or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ladykillers</i> (1955) are nowhere to be
seen here. That is not to reduce the often powerful work in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mandy</i>, more to note that it does not
have that immediate connection to what came before or after. The film is
playful around its use of sound (including early scenes of Christine and Harry
making noise to try and attract Mandy’s attention), and in attempts to connect
the audience to Mandy’s experience: often the camera will push in on Mandy’s
face, and the soundtrack will fade, until we are left with only the visual
information. Although not a complete sense of her point-of-view, these occur at
dramatically important moments (a van driver shouting at her; a teacher trying
to get her to speak). As noted below, the film also isolates Mandy within the
frame (in the empty garden of the Garland house, in a park), also helping to
visually identify her ‘otherness’ within the narrative world.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Performance-wise, Hawkins is a reliable actor and gives
Searle a requisite grumpy passion that matches his calling as a teacher. He is
also largely secondary to the Garland family: Calvert and Morgan are solid, but
they tend to be overshadowed by Mandy Moore’s startling turn as the title
character, a piece of acting that, given her age and lack of dialogue, remains
powerful to this day. The film doesn’t give her an easy task, either, with
several long close-ups that require the young actor to perform wholly through
expression, and convey the frustration of Mandy’s attempts to speak and
understand.</div>
<br />
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However, while Mandy’s story is always central, the
Garland family dynamic is at the heart of the film’s concerns, particularly its
exploration of female imprisonment, escape and isolation. One of Mandy’s first
actions is to try and escape the tall cage of the Garland home, with its ornate
hallways, prim rooms, paved courtyard garden: isolated in these spaces, her
‘escape’ is onto the neighbouring bombsite (almost required for an Ealing film
at this stage) and streets, where she is almost run over (by a van she cannot
hear). The motif of escape continues when Christine and Mandy flee London and
the Garland family; yet their new life is isolating for both. Mandy is visually
separate from many of her classmates, unable to fit in; while Christine is
often pictured alone in the hallways of the school. While Harry sporadically
appears to fill some of those empty spaces, Searle is the more comforting
figure (it is telling that he is the one who fills the male role in a
celebratory montage showing Mandy’s improvement), but he and Christine rarely
make a compelling couple, and he ends the film as isolated as the Garland women
he has been helping. Returning to the London house, Mandy is visually pictured
within door frames that trap her back into this old life. The unlikely saviour
to her isolation (and Christine’s) is Mr Garland: after hearing Mandy speak, he
reunites Christine and Harry, and they watch as Mandy, on the same bombsite, is
included in a game with the local children.</div>
<br />
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So, in the end, a film that is almost all of the things
listed above, but which survives largely because of the committed performance
of Moore in the central role.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mandy</i> is available
on DVD from Studio Canal UK. See <a href="http://www.studiocanal.co.uk/"><span style="color: blue;">www.studiocanal.co.uk</span></a>
for more details]</div>
<br />
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Next time, more child-centred drama in <em>The Divided Heart</em> (1954)...</div>Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-86951332532867833112012-07-23T07:00:00.000+01:002014-04-03T15:44:09.620+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 89: Young Man's Fancy (1939)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hn6mJJnVTQE/UAvKXJ7k-UI/AAAAAAAAAXA/ejDJ0XGZF88/s1600/Young+Man's+Fancy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hn6mJJnVTQE/UAvKXJ7k-UI/AAAAAAAAAXA/ejDJ0XGZF88/s1600/Young+Man's+Fancy.jpg" /></a>
Between 1938 and 1940, director Robert Stevenson,
cinematographer Ronald Neame and scriptwriter Roland Pertwee were part of the
creative bridge between Basil Dean’s Associated Talking Pictures (which were
based at the studios in Ealing) and Michael Balcon’s new production company
called Ealing Studios. While they produced a number of films together,
including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ware Case</i> (1938), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Young Man’s Fancy</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Return to Yesterday</i> (1940), they were
also individually responsible for fourteen of the first sixteen films produced
by the new studio, including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Four
Just Men</i> (1939) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Let George Do It</i>
(1940).
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
While there is still one film from that period of
Ealing’s production history left to watch – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Ware Case</i> – it is already clear that these films exist in that no man’s
land between 1930s low budget British studio productions and the infusion of
drama-documentary styles that wartime circumstances would force on Ealing, and
others in the British film industry. It would be wrong to dismiss these films,
either creatively or as a picture of production trends, but they feel more
bound by well-trodden narrative structures and thin characterisations than some
of the complex Ealing work of the 1940s and 50s. Certain continuities are there
to be made – the reliance on ensemble casts, with certain actors recurring
across films, can be seen in later productions – but a direct comparison likely
reduces the content of these early productions.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Young Man’s Fancy</i>
is a faintly absurd romantic comedy sporadically saved by spirited performances
from Seymour Hicks and Anna Lee, and some strong comic exchanges (courtesy of
Pertwee, Rodney Ackland and EVH Emmett). The story is set in September 1870,
with the Duke and Duchess of Beaumont (Hicks and Martita Hall) eager to marry
their son Alban (Griffith Jones) to Miss Crowther (Merial Forbes), the daughter
of wealthy brewer Sir Caleb (Felix Aylmer). Alban, uninterested in Miss
Crowther, meets Ada O’Grady (Lee), a working class Irish ‘human projectile’
(cannonball) at the Cavendish music hall. Hoping to use the scandal of his
association with Ada to break off the marriage, and with Ada schooling him in
rebellion against his mother, they end up in Paris together where, while the
city is under siege by the Prussian army, they (naturally) fall in love. On
return to London, Alban has to decide whether to obey his mother or follow his
heart.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
While it breaks little new story ground (although the
introduction of the siege of Paris as a narrative obstacle is a little odd),
the film does enjoy some creative flourishes, notably the framing of the whole
story by a wedding album motif. While this is initially used to present the
crew details, and photographs of the main cast (a hand turns each page during
the credits), it also functions to introduce scenes of Paris and London when
the story shifts location, and then literally closes the story / album at the
end. While such a motif is now commonplace in romantic comedies (the film also
ends with an aborted wedding, another standard element) it works well here to
establish generic expectations. Director Stevenson also uses editing and
optical printing to emphasise travel later in the film: Alban and Ada’s Paris-to-London
return journey is told in a simple shot of them in a carriage, over which are
superimposed British railway signs, place names and advertisements. It is a
striking sequence that offers a simple visual representation of their journey
and their descent back into British society and habits.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Given the thin plot, the film relies heavily on its
performances and dialogue: the Duke is the broadest comic character, but Hicks
is able to perform both drunken well-meaning idiot and thoughtful father roles
equally well. Hunt as the Duchess gets some enjoyably scathing dialogue (her
dislike of the common brewing family, snide asides to arriving party guests,
demands to have bedclothes burned after Ada had slept in them), but her
character is largely a one-dimensional posh battleaxe. The Crowther family have
little real personality, while Alban is similarly one-note, Jones’ performance
often pulled up by Lee’s enthusiasm and skill. She plays Ada as mischievous and
loud, emotional and independent: the success of the Ada and Alban romance is
fuelled mainly by her work. The film skirts Ada’s working class origins and the
Beaumont’s treatment of the poor (they appear to be slum landlords). Ada’s
father (Edward Rigby) is given some potent lines about capitalism and social
inequality (he’s embarrassed his daughter is associating herself with ‘the idle
rich’), but they are thrown away, rarely central to the plot: tempting to see
an early element of Ealing’s interest in social issues, but more likely a
coincidence.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Given Ealing’s British reputation, it is also curious to
see another film where travelling (or escaping) abroad becomes an important
element, but returning back to Britain is always essential: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frieda </i>(1947), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cage of Gold </i>(1950) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Lavender Hill Mob</i> (1951) would all revisit those themes in later years.
That said, the view of 1870s Paris as a besieged and war torn city, with
foreigners fighting their way onto the final trains, and buildings occupied by
the military, would also prove to be prophetic of what 1939-40 would bring.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
[UPDATED April 2014: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Young Man's Fancy </i>is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 8, from Network]</div>
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<br /></div>
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<o:p>Next time, a different kind of 1950s social problem in <em>Mandy</em> (1952)...</o:p></div>
Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-79781483319462090192012-07-19T08:17:00.000+01:002012-07-19T08:17:21.110+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 88: Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iyaC5TKqOI8/UAezeAPQsmI/AAAAAAAAAWg/vuPvy5XZpDw/s1600/Kind+Hearts+and+Coronets.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iyaC5TKqOI8/UAezeAPQsmI/AAAAAAAAAWg/vuPvy5XZpDw/s1600/Kind+Hearts+and+Coronets.jpg" /></a>Re-watching <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kind
Hearts and Coronets </i>for the sake of this blog post (the film is one of the
Ealing films I’ve seen several times in my life, although admittedly not in
recent years), I’d forgotten how sexual a film it is. Many of the films seen
over the course of this challenge have challenged Ealing’s reputation as a
studio more at home with restrained and repressed subjects, but this film
stands alongside <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Another Shore </i>(1948),
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cage of Gold </i>(1950) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Feminine Touch </i>(1956) as films that
are quite wonderfully overt about sex, lust and longing.</div>
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It may be that the perceived knowledge of this film works
to soften some of that sexual sting: the pitch-black nature of much of the
comedy, as Dennis Price’s Louis Mazzini has his murderous revenge on the
D’Ascoyne family (after they disinherit and shun his mother); Alec Guinness’
masterful performance of eight characters from the D’Ascoyne family; the
reputation of the film among the ‘Ealing comedies’. </div>
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Yet good as Price and Guinness are, Joan Greenwood as
Sibella is in danger of walking away with the whole film, developing from an
apparently flighty and flirtatious society girl to a sly and cunning mistress,
before blooming into a lying and mischievous blackmailer. Despite being almost
constantly buttoned up in a series of ornate outfits, Greenwood uses her husky
low tones and coquettish manner to position Sibella as a strong sexual figure
on par with Mazzini and the D’Ascoynes. It is true that the film often resorts
to a simplistic dualism with its main female characters, with Louis caught
between Sibella’s machinations and his courtship of uptight and abstemious
widow Edith D’Ascoyne (Valerie Hobson), but both actresses bring humour and
life to their different roles (Greenwood can be more obviously theatrical,
while Hobson is more restrained but equally pointed) that allow some
development beyond the obvious virgin/whore dynamic.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i17LzPzqxpg/UAe0GbE1tRI/AAAAAAAAAWs/sXIHeehROMI/s1600/Kind_Hearts_and_Coronets%5B1%5D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i17LzPzqxpg/UAe0GbE1tRI/AAAAAAAAAWs/sXIHeehROMI/s320/Kind_Hearts_and_Coronets%5B1%5D.jpg" width="215" /></a>The sexual thrust of the film doesn’t end with the women.
Dennis Price is a striking and sexual figure throughout: wooing Edith and
Sibella, an expert in ladies underwear (from working in a draper’s shop), taunting
Sibella’s cuckolded husband with the line ‘you’re a lucky man now, take my word
for it’, and apparently also attractive to men, with a strongly suggestive
scene with photography enthusiast Henry D’Ascoyne (Guinness) who offers to show
Louis his equipment in the safety of his dark room. The D’Ascoyne line, from
which Louis is descended, is not short on lust: the family line passes through
male and female heirs because of the first Duchess’ ‘relationship’ with Charles
II; while Louis murders Ascoyne D’Ascoyne (the younger; also Guinness) while he
is on a dirty weekend in Maidenhead. (hardly an accidental choice of venue).</div>
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Of course, the film isn’t just about sex. It is about
family, murder, the class system... Yet, at the same time, sex lies at the
heart of the narrative. Sex is the (unspoken) reason Louis’ mother (Audrey
Fildes) left the family home to marry her Italian lover (and was then shunned
thereafter); and sex is the initial fuel behind Louis’ murderous decision to
wreak revenge on the D’Ascoyne family. While his mother’s death and the
family’s refusal for her to be buried at the ancestral home is the reason Louis
gives to others, the film shows us he only makes the decision after Sibella
spurns his advances and announces she has accepted a marriage proposal from
Lionel Holland (John Penrose). Sex is what causes Louis to be tried for murder
(after Sibella hides Lionel’s suicide note and insinuates Lionel confronted
Louis over their affair); sex is what saves him from the hangman’s noose
(Sibella, again, finds the note in exchange for future sexual favour, and the
future death of another D’Ascoyne, Edith).</div>
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Like many of the Ealing films studied through this
challenge, part of the joy of the film comes from the minor characters: notably
Mr Elliot the executioner, who keeps forgetting to address Duke Louis by his
correct title (Your Grace). By casting Guinness as the family D’Ascoyne, the
film highlights the importance of such brief characters, with several short
vignettes of the suffragette Lady Agatha (killed in a balloon ‘accident’), the dullard
Reverend Lord Henry D’Ascoyne (poisoned port) and pompous Ethelred D’Ascoyne
(hunting accident). While most of them remain caricatures of particular British
upper class types – the obstinate naval captain, the bumbling priest, the horny
playboy – they are well-observed and largely exist as backdrop to Louis’
progression to the Dukedom.</div>
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Unlike some of the others Ealing films the visual
elements are enjoyable but rarely stand out: there are location shots
throughout, notably in the grounds of various D’Ascoyne family estates and
houses, but again they feel like a useful backdrop than a potent part of the
narrative. The only exception to that might be the scene between Edith and
Louis, which continues after potting shed has exploded, and the smoke drifts
serenely behind Edith’s head. The film’s humour lies in tone, dialogue and
performance as much as its visuals, although it all looks impressive in the
restored print released by Studio Canal on Blu-Ray in 2011.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-t8Fhrb8BUKc/UAe0RHW8RoI/AAAAAAAAAW0/w2JWLTXlkK4/s1600/Kind+Hearts+Blu+Ray+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-t8Fhrb8BUKc/UAe0RHW8RoI/AAAAAAAAAW0/w2JWLTXlkK4/s200/Kind+Hearts+Blu+Ray+cover.jpg" width="160" /></a></div>
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[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kind Hearts and
Coronets</i> is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Studio Canal UK. See <a href="http://www.studiocanal.co.uk/"><span style="color: blue;">www.studiocanal.co.uk</span></a> for more details]</div>
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Next time, more upper class romantic chaos in <em>Young Man's Fancy</em> (1939)...</div>Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-21341447820381393772012-07-16T07:00:00.000+01:002012-07-16T07:00:09.528+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 87: The Man in the Sky (1957)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Gx5rM3kP6EQ/UAFiQSf2MgI/AAAAAAAAAWE/34uofu-D4UM/s1600/Man+in+the+Sky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Gx5rM3kP6EQ/UAFiQSf2MgI/AAAAAAAAAWE/34uofu-D4UM/s1600/Man+in+the+Sky.jpg" /></a>In the forthcoming collection <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ealing Revisited</i> (available to pre-order on Amazon here: <a href="http://tiny.cc/60qfhw">http://tiny.cc/60qfhw</a>), Robert Murphy describes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Man in the
Sky </i>as a film any national cinema should be proud of. Yet this film is
rarely listed among the greats of Ealing’s oeuvre, never mind that of British
cinema more generally. While I’m not going to summarise Murphy’s opinion here (you’ll
have to read the book for that), I do want to consider how the film sits within
broader ideas of what Ealing Studios were capable of, and whether that shifted
in the final ‘Ealing Films’ made in association with MGM in 1956-8.</div>
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One of the most striking changes to this film is the
shift out of the London streets and into a more suburban landscape: here, the new
houses and outskirts of Wolverhampton. Rather than the bomb-strewn locations of
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hue & Cry</i> (1947) or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Blue Lamp</i> (1950), these are clean
and character-less avenues; in place of the community and support of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It Always Rains on Sunday</i> (1947) or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lease of Life </i>(1954),<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>we have an absent neighbour, a local
laundrette and a shop selling flying saucers and spaceship toys. That is not to
say there is no community in the film, but the workers of Conway Aero
Manufacturing (who arguably best fill that role) are literally onlookers,
commentators, always outside and never part of the drama. That community is also
a professional one, to which John Mitchell (Jack Hawkins) belongs, but which
has little place for his wife Mary (Elizabeth Sellars). In that sense, the film
mirrors the work/home life split seen in Ealing’s other 1956 Hawkins film, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Long Arm</i> (1956).</div>
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The storyline here is simple but potent: John Mitchell is
a test pilot at Conway’s, which is going to go bankrupt if they don’t secure a lucrative
new contract. During a routine test of the new plane, an engine fire causes Mitchell
to order everyone to parachute to safety, but he decides to stay onboard,
knowing that losing the plane will definitely sink Conway. In an Earthbound precursor
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apollo 13</i>, the ground crew and
Mitchell struggle to find a way for him to land the plane safely. Mitchell
circles the field for 30 minutes; below, his wife and colleagues watch and
wait... </div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CjWcLhO8ORk/UAFjuLQ804I/AAAAAAAAAWU/H45cm4c18PA/s1600/Man+in+the+Sky+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CjWcLhO8ORk/UAFjuLQ804I/AAAAAAAAAWU/H45cm4c18PA/s320/Man+in+the+Sky+poster.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The first element that is striking about the film is its
desire to tell the story in real time. The first and third are partially compressed,
but the second act is wholly in real time, as Mitchell circles the airfield. (dialogue
exchanges and well-placed clocks attest to the real time element) Hawkins is
particularly strong here: isolated in the plane set, and with only occasional
(and often one-sided) dialogue exchanges, he has to convey Mitchell’s stubborn,
scared and uncertain emotions, and convince the audience the character would be
committed enough to see this unlikely flight through. Given the brisk nature of
the visual storytelling in the opening of the film (in 12 minutes we learn
about the Mitchell family, meet their children, understand the financial
pressure they’re under, meet the team at Conway, get introduced to seven or
eight supporting characters, and then we’re up in the plane), director Crichton
pulls that pace back, and allows the film to linger on Hawkins’ face (or one of
the other characters), to rely on performance to propel the story along.</div>
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The second striking element is the performance of
Elizabeth Sellars, whose Mary Mitchell is as close to breaking point in the
domestic sphere as her husband is up in the air. This may be billed as a story
about the man in the sky (my own narrative recap above focused almost wholly on
this aspect), but it is clear that the woman in the house is also holding an
increasingly shaky and unwieldy machine together, and the Mitchell marriage becomes
the main problem the film has to solve. True, the film initially paints that
problem in broad strokes (notably their inability to buy a new dream house),
but it continues to cut back to Mary during the airborne drama (of which she is
blithely unaware until close to the landing) and emphasises her perspective on
the Mitchell’s lives. That the marriage is the main issue is also clear given
that John’s (successful) landing occurs almost 15 minutes before the film ends,
with the remaining time largely given over to a Hawkins-Sellars confrontation
about his apparently suicidal decision on the plane, and their future life. It
is a conversation that can seem one-sided, given John physically and verbally
dominates it (Hawkins flirts with playing John as a bully here), but the camera
often comes back to Sellar’s face while John continues his stern but blustering
defence of his decisions (and refutes Mary’s belief he wanted to kill himself).
Although this ends with John justifying himself and agreeing to buy their dream
house, the visual focus on Mary (and her scenes throughout) suggests it remains
open-ended, a papering over of the cracks, rather than a long-term solution.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AtU4EkW6djA/UAFjpS6HrmI/AAAAAAAAAWM/WIhWSes4_OE/s1600/Man+in+the+Sky+US+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AtU4EkW6djA/UAFjpS6HrmI/AAAAAAAAAWM/WIhWSes4_OE/s320/Man+in+the+Sky+US+poster.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
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The desire to play the drama through performance as much
as dialogue or event, also reveal the visual strengths of the film: Crichton
and cinematographer Douglas Slocombe use deep focus shots in places, particularly
when shooting the crowds who gather on the airfield (often shooting down from
the tower, with characters in fore- and background action clearly in focus); there
is a playfulness around some compositions (the crowd running back and forth
across the horizontal length of the frame to keep the plane in sight as it goes
behind buildings) and a simplicity to others (the plane, isolated in the sky, while
everyone stands together on the ground); while they favour a slow zoom into
close-up on characters faces to emphasise emotional shifts (including a shot
near the end of Hawkins in the bathroom, just after Mary has accused John of not
thinking of the family: the frame pushes closer and closer in on him, and we
see him snap)</div>
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With nice character moments scattered throughout (the
reporter who is told this is only a story if the plane crashes, Conway being
promised the contract if it lands, the tea ladies who complain no one is buying
their tea because they’re staring at the sky), and some impressive sound design
(the creaking and shrieking noises of the tortured plane make it sound alive in
the central sequences), this remains a fascinating film, and one that should be
better known among the Ealing canon.</div>
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[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Man in the Sky</i>
is available on DVD from Studio Canal UK. See <a href="http://www.studiocanal.co.uk/"><span style="color: blue;">www.studiocanal.co.uk</span></a> for more details]</div>
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<o:p>Next time, is this Alec Guinness' (and Ealing's) finest hour? <em>Kind Hearts and Coronets</em> (1949)...</o:p></div>Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-90946369788662102092012-07-10T07:00:00.000+01:002012-07-10T07:00:00.538+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 86: Scott of the Antarctic (1948)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2zHyiLOTAS0/T_ak3vlEnwI/AAAAAAAAAVw/zbk4v8gWhFw/s1600/Scott+of+the+Antarctic+DVD+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2zHyiLOTAS0/T_ak3vlEnwI/AAAAAAAAAVw/zbk4v8gWhFw/s1600/Scott+of+the+Antarctic+DVD+cover.jpg" /></a>In the numerous celebrations and commentaries around the
100<sup>th</sup> anniversary of Scott’s expedition in 2012, few mentioned this
Ealing hagiography of Captain Scott (John Mills), the studio’s big budget
Technicolor epic of Antarctic exploration. Part of Michael Balcon’s belief that
Ealing (and the British film industry more widely) should be producing films of
great British heroes and events, the film’s simple narrative is visually
overshadowed by strong landscape elements, and the (complicated) production
history of its Technicolor imagery.</div>
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French film critic Andre Bazin dismissed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scott</i> as a ‘boring and ridiculous
undertaking... told with an almost pedantic formality’ (Bazin 1967, 157-8) and
it is hard to challenge that assessment. After a brief 1904 prologue, the film
jumps to 1908 and follows Scott as he gathers together money and men in
England, including Bill Wilson (Harold Warrender), ‘Teddy’ Evans (Kenneth
More), Taff Evans (James Robertson Justice), Bowers (Reginald Beckwith), and
Captain Oates (Derek Bond). There is no real sense of why these men gather
together, although dialogue does pay lip service to the spirits of scientific
enquiry, adventure and patriotism. Slowly (it is 27 minutes before it leaves
England), the film gets its characters to Antarctica, and off on the route to the
Pole, now in a race against a Norwegian team. From there, the story treads
familiar ground: the trek across the desolate landscape, the problems of the
journey, the final five men arriving too late to claim their prize, and then
dying on their journey home.</div>
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Any attempt to appreciate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scott</i>, however, likely needs to ignore its narrative and thinly
drawn characters, and focus instead on the staggering landscapes, images and
Technicolor that sit at the heart of the film. Despite his dislike for the
film, Bazin had noted the film was ‘a Technicolor masterpiece’ and ‘lavishly
and carefully made’ – and that is an assessment that captures the issue at the
heart of the film. That is not to say that such elements save the film (it
remains too long, and too deferent) but they reveal its scope and ambition,
something quite apart from Ealing’s reputation as a safe and restrained studio.</div>
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This is, after all, a film that required three
cameramen/directors of photography: Osmond Borradaile shot the Antarctic
imagery with a Technicolor Monopack camera; Geoffrey Unsworth filmed location
images in Norway and Switzerland; and Jack Cardiff, who had the job of
stitching those different colour palettes together with his own studio-bound
footage. Sometimes that needlework succeeds (some of the Antarctic work,
cutting from long and medium location to close studio images is convincing), at
others it doesn’t (the ship’s departure features an awkward combination of a
studio-bound ship and dockside with location scenes of a pier that doesn’t
match in terms of colour), but there is no doubt that the impressive scale of
the landscapes function as the film’s main visual spectacle.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YJ6bl9pEv_I/T_ak6RpzhfI/AAAAAAAAAV4/naUFEC1i8Z4/s1600/scott_poster+%2528us%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YJ6bl9pEv_I/T_ak6RpzhfI/AAAAAAAAAV4/naUFEC1i8Z4/s320/scott_poster+%2528us%2529.jpg" width="199" /></a>Borradaile’s extreme long shots of the Antarctic
landscapes, intercut with some of Unsworth’s location scenes on safer European snow
slopes (which often feature stand-ins rather than the actual actors), sells the
idea of isolation, with tiny groups of men, dogs and sleds lost in a white sea
of icy and snow. Such images fuel the narrative themes more than dialogue and plot
points, and provide an atmosphere that the studio work struggles to replicate. While
the artificiality of the studio-bound <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saraband
for Dead Lovers</i> (1948) emphasised the melodramatic nature of that film,
here the studio artifice works against the power of the realistic imagery
provided from the location work. While Cardiff struggled to match the colours,
the unsettling yellow sunset tones and grey-green hues of the tent interiors
work to undermine the realism that Ealing was obviously striving for.</div>
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Away from aesthetic issues, the film is also a film about
men, not women. Kathleen Scott (Diana Churchill) is supportive (‘You knew the
Antarctic long before you knew me’), Oriana Wilson (Anne Firth) is not,
although that is conveyed through Firth’s largely mute performance. But they
are two of only four female speaking parts, and all are dismissed within the
first half hour. The male performances are a curious mix: Mills is his usual
blank slate, perhaps frozen by the pressure of giving any real passion or life
to this legendary figure; only James Robertson Justice stands out of the other
men who make it to the Pole, offering some depth and humour to the otherwise
po-faced characterisations.</div>
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At the end of the film, you know little about Scott, his
motivations, whether his decisions (trying new machine sleds and ponies instead
of relying purely on dogs) were truly the cause of the deaths, or (perhaps the
film’s most crucial fault) why a failed expedition to the South Pole is worthy
of celebration and memorialising. There is a curious scene early on where a
Yorkshire crowd query why Britain should go to the Antarctic at all: like
Scott, this Ealing film has no real answer to that question.</div>
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[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scott of the
Antarctic</i> is available on DVD from Studio Canal UK. See <a href="http://www.studiocanal.co.uk/"><span style="color: blue;">www.studiocanal.co.uk</span></a> for more details]</div>
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Next time, time is running out for <em>The Man in the Sky</em> (1957)...</div>Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-77426766151353354702012-07-06T09:38:00.002+01:002012-07-06T09:38:49.186+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 85: Convoy (1940)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hJIVXESrGkE/T_ajQFbuboI/AAAAAAAAAVg/vW174z4os7U/s1600/Convoy+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hJIVXESrGkE/T_ajQFbuboI/AAAAAAAAAVg/vW174z4os7U/s1600/Convoy+poster.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
From the opening credits, which dedicate the film to the
‘Officers and Men of the Royal and Merchant Navy’ and the note that ‘many
scenes in our film... were taken at sea under actual wartime conditions’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Convoy</i> is, in many senses, the archetypal
Ealing war film. The focus, like the later <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Cruel Sea</i> (1953) is on the captain and officers, and the choices they make
during wartime; but the film also has time for the ordinary sailors, and their
role in the running and order of the ship. The ship’s community, both above and
below deck, is quickly but well drawn, although the addition of some of the
broader character notes (and narrative developments) is an obvious reminder
that this is Ealing Studios’ first attempt to create a war film that could
successfully combine documentary footage with dramatic narrative scenes,
propagandist tendencies with melodramatic acting styles and characters. Given
that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ships with Wings</i> (1941) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Big Blockade</i> (1942) were later, and
less successful, attempts to combine similar aspects, it is telling that
director Pen Tennyson – the man Michael Balcon described as the future of
Ealing after his first film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">There Ain’t
No Justice</i> (1939) – managed it so convincingly here.
<br />
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Captain Tom Armitage (Clive Brook) commands the officers
and crew of HMS Apollo, as they head out to form part of a North Sea convoy,
protecting ships heading into British ports. Joining the Apollo is Lt. David
Cranford (John Clements), who had an affair with Armitage’s wife, Lucy (Judy
Campbell) years before. Armitage and Cranford clash when it is revealed Lucy is
on board a wayward merchant ship, the Sea Flower. Cranford is locked up for
trying to send help, but narrative events – including a Nazi U-boat’s attempt
to lure ships into a trap using the Sea Flower, and the appearance of a German
dreadnought <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>– bring him back on deck in
time to see Lucy, amend bridges with Armitage, and die a heroic death as the
Apollo single-handedly takes on the dreadnought (called Deutschland, in a
not-so-subtle metaphor).</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VN1Dqys62J4/T_ajSiOrEgI/AAAAAAAAAVo/Yrh8AH4hs10/s1600/Convoy+pressbook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="244" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VN1Dqys62J4/T_ajSiOrEgI/AAAAAAAAAVo/Yrh8AH4hs10/s320/Convoy+pressbook.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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While that description seems some distance from later
Ealing films that make more claim to realism and documentary techniques, many of the film’s visual qualities owe an obvious debt to
that developing tradition. Several long sequences pull together three key
elements that would be central to Ealing’s wartime filmmaking approach: solid
location filming (here, on board destroyers and other boats), strong ensemble
performances, and often exceptional model work. The final face-off between the
British and German ships, and the earlier submarine / North Sea Patrol battle
make particular use of these elements, but the non-fighting scenes of ships at
sea are equally strong examples of it.</div>
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One key element in the film’s success is the comic touch
that would lighten later Ealing wartime films such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Bells Go Down</i> (1943), and that arises from the largely working
class characters. The crew of the Apollo bicker about the lack of leave and
have food fights in the mess; the minefield skipper (Hay Petrie) and his mate
(Mervyn Johns) are busy fishing as guns boom in the distance; while there is a
running joke about Armitage’s batman Bates’ (George Carney) inability to deliver
a cup of hot coffee or cocoa to Armitage at the right time (until during the
final battle). These small moments of humour do much to lift the creaky
melodrama of the Armitage-Cranford-Lucy triangle, and some of the more
on-the-nose propaganda (including Lucy reciting Nelson’s prayer on the eve of
Trafalgar; the German captain noting ‘Their heart is British, they are
attacking again’; or the Apollo crew offering German prisoners a tot of rum).</div>
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As a solid if not completely successful combination of
drama and documentary, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Convoy</i> remains
fascinating for what it gets right, and for what it suggests about a future
Ealing that could never come, given that Tennyson died after completing this,
his third Ealing film. Tennyson may have been one of Ealing’s great
‘might-have-beens’ after the success of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">There
Ain’t No Justice</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Proud Valley</i>
(1940), but this film suggests that Ealing Studios were already learning specific lessons from the first ten or fifteen films produced under Balcon’s
regime.</div>
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[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Convoy</i> is not
currently available on DVD from Studio Canal]</div>
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Next time, Ealing's Technicolor celebration of British heroic failure in <em>Scott of the Antarctic</em> (1948)...</div>Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-70905208534932553862012-07-03T07:00:00.000+01:002014-04-03T15:50:25.764+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 84: Dance Hall (1950)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_-1BRN-npfc/T_BnZWQmQ1I/AAAAAAAAAVU/nmAH0wqG__U/s1600/Dance+Hall+poster+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_-1BRN-npfc/T_BnZWQmQ1I/AAAAAAAAAVU/nmAH0wqG__U/s320/Dance+Hall+poster+01.jpg" height="241" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Sometimes, when watching one of the Ealing films that
make up this challenge, I am reminded of another film. Most often the link is
to another Ealing Studios production or other examples of ‘classic’ British
cinema: so, with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dance Hall</i> that list
might include female-centred dramas such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Millions
Like Us</i> (1943) or Ealing’s own <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Feminine Touch </i>(1956) or, prompted by the opening factory floor sequence,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saturday Night and Sunday Morning </i>(1960)
(a comparison that others made well before me, notably Melanie Williams in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The British Cinema Book</i>). Yet it wasn’t
a British film I kept thinking of throughout my viewing of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dance Hall</i>, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">when harry
met sally...</i> (1989). <br />
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The film follows the lives of three girls who work
together at the local factory, and play together at the local Palais. Carole
(Diana Dors), Georgie (Petula Clark) and Eve (Natasha Perry) are first seen as
the camera tracks left along the rows of machine, watching them singing and
chatting about men and dancing. From here, we follow them getting prepared for
a night out at the Palais, where we also meet Georgie’s dance partner Peter
(Douglas Barr), Eve’s boyfriend Phil (Donald Houston) and cocky American Alec
(Bonar Colleano). The triangle between Eve, Phil and Alec forms the core of the
film, tracing Phil’s jealousy over Eve and Alec dancing together, Phil and
Eve’s cramped marriage, separation and final dramatic reconciliation. While this
is solid, the sub-plots get less focus which, in the case of Georgie and
Peter’s progress through a competitive dance competition, isn’t that much of a
problem, but the underuse of Carole/Dors is a real oversight. While she is the strongest
comic actor of the three (there is a great line where she swears off men and insists
she’s going to go and live in a monastery, before Georgie corrects her), Dors’
attempt to imbue Carole with any dramatic purpose is undercut by the script,
which gives her little to do and (out of the blue) ends up with her engaged to
the largely mute Mike (James Carney). At one point the film appears to be
heading for a portmanteau set-up, with segments devoted to each girl (the film
returns to the factory three times, and each time it seems like it will follow
Georgie or Carole in more detail) but the pull of the Phil-Eve-Alec story
proves too strong.</div>
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The obvious strength of the film is its openness to
dramatising and exploring a group of working class women’s dreams and desires:
the film doesn’t chastise Eve for wanting to go dancing, Carole for playing the
field, or Georgie for choosing a beautiful ballgown over a dress bought by her
mother. The men, particularly Phil and Alec, regularly come off worse in their
scenes: Phil is needy and controlling in equal measure, Alec is aloof and smug,
Mike is silent, while all Eve, Georgie or Carole want to do is dance at the
Palais with their friends. That the film broadly supports their view is done partly
through visual means and the amount of time it spends at the Palais: while
other locations look cramped, dark and traditional, the dance hall is a vast
and impressive set, bright, shining and modern. This set is constantly explored
and framed by Douglas Slocombe’s mobile camera: tracking along the edges of the
dance floor, sitting alongside the band, crane shots that sweep up to the
balcony, and images down on the floor itself, shooting up through the whirl of
dancing couples, moving alongside them, focusing on their feet, letting them
sweep in and fill the screen. The mobility of the camera, and slick editing,
means that scenes in the Palais move to a strong rhythm. The women are the
heart of this story, but the spectacle is the dance hall itself: to emphasise
this, shots of the women dressing up and preparing themselves are mirrored by
images of the hall being swept and decorated for the following night’s
entertainment.</div>
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So why then does the film remind me of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">when harry met sally...</i>? At one level,
it is the exploration of shifting relationship and romantic worries among a
small group of couples, and the centrality of female sexuality and desire
within that; while at another it is the culmination of both films in a New
Year’s celebration where, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dance Hall</i>,
Eve declares that she hates Phil before this on-an-off couple embrace to the
tune of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Auld Lang Syne</i>. It is
tempting to imagine that, like the later film (where the late Nora Ephron
worked with writer-director Rob Reiner), the combination of Alexander
Mackendrick and Diana Morgan (and ECH Emmett) is behind <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dance Hall</i>’s balance of comedy, romance and drama. That’s not to
say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dance Hall</i> is a romantic-comedy,
or that its script is as sharp as Ephron’s, but that the attempt to mix romance
and comedy, with a dramatic focus on interlinked male-female relationships,
feels fresh and new for a 1950 film, as much as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">when harry met sally... </i>did for a late 1980s audience.</div>
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It is a real shame that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dance Hall</i> is not yet available on DVD, because the popularity of
the cast (Clark and Dors particularly) and the subject matter would, I think,
make it a strong film to be rediscovered and placed more centrally within
understandings of post-war British cinema.</div>
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[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dance Hall</i> is available on DVD from Studio Canal]</div>
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Next time, a final burst of wartime action as Ealing joins the <em>Convoy</em> (1940)...</div>
Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-70223633043304062602012-06-29T06:30:00.000+01:002014-04-03T15:50:48.362+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 83: I Believe in You (1952)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XTyBCL4zgs8/T-jGI7g3zWI/AAAAAAAAAVA/npWCkDkg2v4/s1600/I+Believe+in+You+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XTyBCL4zgs8/T-jGI7g3zWI/AAAAAAAAAVA/npWCkDkg2v4/s320/I+Believe+in+You+poster.jpg" height="320" width="208" /></a>It is hard to know how to react to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I Believe in You</i>: in one sense, this could be dismissed as reliable
Ealing social problem fodder, where nice upper and middle-class people
volunteer to be probation officers to help deal with the problematic working
classes, particularly the rebellious youth who frequent dance halls and get in
trouble with the police (in that sense the film has been linked to Relph and
Dearden’s earlier <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Blue Lamp</i>,
1950). Yet, at the same time, the film can be seen as an indictment of that
organisation, largely unable to help their charges and often reduced to an
under-staffed community centre. The film also feels like a tipping point for
Ealing productions: the establishment are represented by the stuffy yet
well-meaning Cecil Parker, Celia Johnston and George Relph, while youthful
vigour comes in the form of Harry Fowler, Joan Collins and Laurence Harvey,
with the latter two offering very different paths for British cinema in the
years and decades following this film’s release. The distinction between
Johnson and Collins is showcased throughout, both in attitudes (Norma wants to
go dancing, have fun) and clothing (the film enjoys its glimpses of Collins in
a bikini).</div>
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Structured around the flashback of ex-colonial officer
and ‘man of leisure’ Henry Phipps (Cecil Parker), the film traces his induction
into, and first year of working with, a probation service department led by Mr
Dove (George Relph) and Matty Matheson (Celia Johnson). Based in an unnamed
police court, the probation service is a chaotic corridor full of characters
(and character actors) jostling for the attention of one of the three officers.
While the film shows various cases, the focus is on Charlie Hooker (Harry
Fowler), one of Phipps’ charges, and Norma Hart (Joan Collins), one of Matty’s:
Hooker has drifted into gangs alongside his mates, while Norma is a wannabe
gangster’s moll, hanging around with tough guys like Jordie Bennett (Laurence
Harvey). As Phipps gets to grips with his new life, he ends up playing cupid
for Charlie and Norma, but has to try and prevent a robbery that could ruin
their future together.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cB3p04QqXrk/T-jGLJI2rNI/AAAAAAAAAVI/mQT_sirdQnE/s1600/I+Believe+in+You+poster+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cB3p04QqXrk/T-jGLJI2rNI/AAAAAAAAAVI/mQT_sirdQnE/s1600/I+Believe+in+You+poster+2.jpg" /></a>Parker and Johnson are the safe and stalwart centre of
the film: he’s a comic but loveable figure out of his depth (regularly referred
to as ‘Mr Chips’, part of a running joke where no one can remember his name),
while she is solid and reliable, with a tragedy in her past (a wartime loss is
hinted at, but it is tempting to think she’s still pining for Trevor Howard).
They have a thankless job at times, partly because the script can feel trite in
places, but mainly because they are surrounded by scene-stealing character
actors who dip in and out of the plot to serve as reminders of the broader
world of the probation officers: chirpy Fred Crump (Fred Griffiths),
ex-portrait model and horoscope nut Mrs Crockett (Ada Reeve), paranoid Miss
Mackline (Katie Johnson), convinced that someone is poisoning her cat, and the
Hon Ursula (Ursula Howells), an upper class drunk trying to forget a wartime
sweetheart. These characters form much of the interest in the film, even as
they point up the failure of the officers to solve problems. It is clear these
people will keep recurring and returning to the same office, the same person.
Even police sergeant Body (another stellar small turn from Sid James) functions
in a similar way, constantly complaining that no one picks up the office’s pint
of milk: it seems that despite the best efforts, the probation service is
caught in a repeating loop, unable to change or help.</div>
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</div>
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Psychology is important to the film, with both Matty and
Phipps offering psychoanalytic reasons for their charge’s behaviour: jealousy
over a mother’s new lover, loss of a loved one during wartime; mother love.
Yet, again, there is no solution to these diagnoses, they are offered as clues,
not resolutions. The ultimate message from the film appears to be that the
probation service needs to become more like the people they help, to not look
down on them like ‘a scientist looks at beetles’: Dove expresses this early on
in terms that PC George Dixon would recognise, telling Phipps he needs to walk
the streets of the district to keep in touch with the people, to be visible,
part of the community; while Phipps’ ultimate solution to helping Charlie and
Norma is to try and single-handedly prevent a robbery, literally and
figuratively getting his hands dirty to stop Charlie turning into a thug.</div>
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While there are some nice visual touches throughout, this
is rarely a showy film in that sense: the camera pushes in on a courtroom scene
at the beginning, and then pulls back from that same scene at the end, a visual
framing device for the story as a whole; the audience is often put ‘in’ the
position of the offenders, with the judge speaking into camera while passing
sentence; but the location work remains the key visual strength here, with a
range of street scenes from throughout London’s outer boroughs. Working class
terraces, Victorian hostels, overgrown gardens, shadowy steps, rubble-strewn
bomb sites, temporary swimming pools rubbing up against established theatres
(performing Shaw’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Man and Superman</i>):
these are the sites of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I Believe in You</i>
as much as the tiny stage-bound corridor, offices and courtroom. And they,
ultimately, raise this above the more prosaic material of the narrative.</div>
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[UPDATED April 2014: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I Believe in You </i>is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 6, from Network]</div>
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Next time, Petula Clark and Diana Dors take to the floor in <em>Dance Hall</em> (1950)...</div>
Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-13921712409168105112012-06-26T06:30:00.000+01:002012-06-26T06:30:01.697+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 82: Barnacle Bill (1957)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jVLbnP3e6ko/T-jFDptTiGI/AAAAAAAAAUw/rTaVqUZHUz0/s1600/Barnacle+Bill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jVLbnP3e6ko/T-jFDptTiGI/AAAAAAAAAUw/rTaVqUZHUz0/s1600/Barnacle+Bill.jpg" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Barnacle Bill</i> (aka
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All at Sea</i> in the U.S.) has an
undeserved critical reputation as a late failure that is more concerned with
the studios’ past comedy glories than it is in creating something new and
innovative. Two famous accounts of the studio are scathing in their
assessments: Charles Barr felt the film didn’t ‘merit a long account,’
dismissing it as a recreation ‘of past Ealing successes... the last twitching
of the nervous system before death.’ (Barr 1980, 164) George Perry, meanwhile, saw
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Barnacle Bill </i>as ‘Ealing comedy in
decline’ (Perry 1981, 125), with ‘eccentricity replaced by silliness’ compared
to the ‘sharp, accurate, well-aimed satire’ of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Passport to Pimlico </i>(1949). (142)</div>
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But, based on viewing it for this blog, I can’t really agree
with them.</div>
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Perhaps it is the presence of Alec Guinness, setting the bar
so high (based on previous Ealing appearances) that it becomes difficult to
judge the film on its own merits; or maybe it is those brief echoes of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pimlico</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Titfield</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kind Hearts and
Coronets </i>(1949) (a tiny piece of Britain choosing to separate itself from
the rest; a small group standing in opposition to a bureaucratic system;
Guinness appearing in multiple roles). Yet all those points are small elements
in what is actually a solid and enjoyable comic production with a sly sense of
humour (often self-deprecatory), confident visual gags, and a strong central character
performance from Guinness as Captain William Horatio Ambrose.</div>
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Ambrose, despite coming from a long line of sea-faring
ancestors (short comic skits introduce us to Ambrose family history from cavemen
to the First World War, with Guinness in each role), has always suffered from
seasickness and spent the war working in training schools and on sickness
remedies. Post-war, and wanting a command of his own, he buys the dilapidated
Sandcastle pier and, fighting the (crooked) local council every step of the
way, makes a success of it by registering it as a ship (the ‘RMS – Really
Motionless Ship – Arabella’) and taking visitors on fake cruises. Facing
seaborne attack, Ambrose is forced to go into battle (in a pedalo) and finds a
cure for his seasickness on the way.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MFvEzAtVu0c/T-jFFrtaHiI/AAAAAAAAAU4/UmjZfKrcxvU/s1600/Barnacle+Bill+%2528All+at+Sea%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MFvEzAtVu0c/T-jFFrtaHiI/AAAAAAAAAU4/UmjZfKrcxvU/s320/Barnacle+Bill+%2528All+at+Sea%2529.jpg" width="210" /></a>As that description likely makes clear, this is one of
Ealing’s more fantastic stories, and it makes few claims to anything
approaching realism. It is a film built around that central figure of Ambrose
(and thus, Guinness), and few of the supporting characters make any lasting impression.
Guinness remains the powerhouse of the film, a seemingly stern naval figure
whose unrealistic dream revitalises the small town, drawing in old and young
with a dance hall, cheap drinks, and fun. </div>
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Perhaps the film suffers through critical opinion simply by
existing so close to the end of the studio, one of the six non-Ealing based
films produced for MGM, the context overwhelming the actual content of the
film; equally, Barr and Perry seem to criticise it for not having a link to
contemporary events but arguments could be made around the ‘pier as Britain’ (it
literally becomes an island, and one that can only be attacked by sea), Ealing’s
continued 1950s concern about generational difference (Ambrose is hailed by the
town’s youth for creating a new dance hall and bar), or the changing face of
the British seaside (the Victorian pier pulled down to be replaced by something
more modern).</div>
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The playful and occasionally surreal nature of the film
starts with the opening titles, where names float up and down on screen as
though tossed around by the (live action) waves; continues through the
vignettes of the Ambrose family (one of whom is being cooked in a native
tribe’s pot that is clearly too small to fit a whole human in); the defence of
the pier by three pedalos against a dredging boat also partially takes place on
a radar screen that makes it look like a video game; to the ramshackle and
cubist nature of some of the buildings on the pier itself (the Crazy Cottage,
which Ambrose makes his home, is full of sloped floors, skewed surfaces and
oddly angled ceilings, and becomes the centre of comic scenes of him and Mrs
Barrington (Irene Browne) getting drunk together, and sliding towards and away
from each other). There is also an early scene of Ambrose apparently on deck in
a storm but, as the camera pulls back, it is revealed to be a fake deck in a
training school with people off to one side throwing water over him – yet the
scene also stands as a reminder of the trickery of cinema, pulling back to
reveal the ‘magic’ behind such scenes (which may have particular relevance for
director Charles Frend, given he was also behind <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Cruel Sea</i>, 1953). Light comic and self-referential touches like
this actually lift the film and balance the occasional dip into slapstick (which
is found in all Ealing comedies).</div>
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<br /></div>
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A late entry in the Ealing comedy canon, yes, but one
that deserves to be considered alongside earlier triumphs.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Barnacle Bill </i>is
available on DVD from Studio Canal UK. See <a href="http://www.studiocanal.co.uk/"><span style="color: blue;">www.studiocanal.co.uk</span></a> for more details]</div>
<br />
Next time, Ealing on probation in<em> I Believe in You</em> (1952)Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-60897537330006234492012-06-21T06:00:00.000+01:002012-06-21T06:00:11.777+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 81: Painted Boats (1945)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BCgVSsxUJ04/T9tUOPtw5eI/AAAAAAAAAUk/lZfDOhOFpAM/s1600/Painted+Boats.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BCgVSsxUJ04/T9tUOPtw5eI/AAAAAAAAAUk/lZfDOhOFpAM/s1600/Painted+Boats.jpg" /></a>Even though earlier Ealing films in this blog have
featured documentary elements – the likes of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Big Blockade </i>(1942), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Next of Kin </i>(1942) or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Bells Go
Down</i> (1943) – they contained their documentary elements within a feature
narrative. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Painted Boats</i>, however, is
the opposite: a documentary that features occasional narrative or dramatic
moments, largely through an inconsequential story following the burgeoning
romance of Mary Smith (Jenny Laird) and Ted Stoner (Robert Griffiths).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The appearance of a feature dominated by documentary elements
shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given Ealing’s parallel work on short
documentary production during the early 1940s. Although not an area of the
studio this blog is able to focus on (not least because the films are harder to
access), these shorts feature work from established and upcoming Ealing talent such
as John Paddy Carstairs, Walter Forde, Charles Frend, Alberto Cavalcanti, Angus
Macphail and Basil Dearden. Documentary production of titles like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Hands</i> (1940, featuring John Mills), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Now You’re Talking</i> (1940), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dangerous Comment</i> (1940), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yellow Caesar</i> (1941) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Go to Blazes</i> (1942, featuring Will Hay
and Thora Hird) ran alongside the well-known Ealing wartime films and, in some
cases (such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Next of Kin</i>)
informed feature narratives.</div>
<br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Painted Boats</i>,
however, is a different beast. Although produced during wartime, and very much
linked to wider propagandistic aims to remind audiences what Britain was
fighting for (the film is, in many ways, a love letter to British history,
industry and a particular way of life), its choice of an instructional
documentary approach can feel more like a return to the 1930s documentary
movement than a look forward to the documentary aesthetic-informed dramas that
Ealing were becoming known for. Exposition and narrative are not so much
combined as pushed up against each other: at several points in the story, a
narrator (James McKechnie) takes over, a ‘voice-of-god’ presence who tells the
audience about the history of the canal, why they were built, how they were
almost replaced by railways, how the canals responded to wartime, and what the
role of the canal can be in peacetime. It is possible to imagine the
documentary portions of this film cut together as a sponsored documentary
similar to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Coal Face </i>(1933) or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Housing Problems</i> (1935): indeed, the
film uses poetry and rhythm in its narrative voice and montage editing in a
manner that seems to be a direct reminder of those earlier films.</div>
<br />
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The actual drama element is slender: the Smith family run
the Sunny Valley, a traditional barge that is pulled by a horse; while the
Stoner family run the Golden Boy, driven by a diesel engine. Although there is
a tradition versus modernism narrative here, it feels tangential to the film,
even when Pa Smith (Bill Blewitt) dies and the Sunny Valley also gets an engine.
This sets up the most interesting part of the film, as Ted is called up
(off-screen, we only hear about this via his brother Alfie Stoner (Harry
Fowler) and the Smith women decide to stay onboard and crew it themselves. It
is a very wartime-based message, given the crucial role women played in keeping
British industry going, but it is also striking to see a film that ends not in
marriage, but in female solidarity and action.</div>
<br />
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Visually, the film jumps between styles. The film is
dominated by strong location filming from director of photography Douglas
Slocombe, which moves from sweeping aerial shots to close images on the boats
and canal sides themselves that celebrate the range of English landscapes that
the canals cut through. The film also foregrounds two sequences that take place
in the long canal tunnels, and which are particularly powerful, with the black
expanse filling the screen and only allowing brief glimpses of the men and
women guiding the boats, a reminder of Slocombe’s later expressive black-and-white
photography in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Man in the White Suit</i>
(1951), among others.</div>
<br />
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So, a strange entry for this blog, but one that gestures
towards Ealing’s other life, as a wartime documentary film studio, more than
their known persona.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p>[</o:p><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Painted Boats </i>is
available on DVD from Studio Canal UK. See <a href="http://www.studiocanal.co.uk/"><span style="color: blue;">www.studiocanal.co.uk</span></a> for more details]</div>
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Next time, we're all at sea with <em>Barnacle Bill</em> (1957)...</div>Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-82132340453371300682012-06-18T06:00:00.000+01:002014-04-03T15:51:31.025+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 80: Eureka Stockade (1949)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QeGcIwtQSao/T9mj613KziI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/i-uffGVeKtU/s1600/Eureka+Stockade+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QeGcIwtQSao/T9mj613KziI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/i-uffGVeKtU/s1600/Eureka+Stockade+poster.jpg" /></a>This historical Western finishes off the coverage of Ealing’s
five Australian films in this blog and, as that genre description suggests, it
has a lot in common with the films it was produced between, namely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Overlanders</i> (1946) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bitter Springs</i> (1950). Like those
productions, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eureka Stockade </i>relies
on the scale of Australia’s natural landscapes, filling the screen with
impressive location shooting and framing people and events under huge skies
that dominate two-thirds of the screen or more. The narrative here is about a
fight for freedom, one the opening voiceover compares to other historical
moments: ‘England had her Magna Carta, France her revolution, America her
declaration of independence, and Australia, Eureka Stockade.’ Yet by trying to
do justice to this moment in history, to explain the motivations of the main
characters, and to justify the scope of the narrative, the film ultimately
rushes over details and characters in the race for the finish line.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
Despite that criticism, however, this remains an
impressive and well-paced film, and one that tells a story likely unknown to
most audiences. Peter Lalor (Chips Rafferty) is one of hundreds of immigrants
who arrives at Ballaarat to mine for gold; once there, he meets Scotsman Tommy
Kennedy (Gordon Jackson), Spaniard Rafaello Cardoni (Peter Illing) and German
Frederick Vern (Sydney Loder), and the four ‘grave-diggers’ work together in
the fields, hoping for a lucky strike. But this Australian gold rush has pulled
workers away from the farms and other industries, and the government, hoping to
force men back to work, introduces taxation and digging licences run by the
honest and under-manned Commissioner Rede (Jack Lambert). As tensions between
the pioneers and the newer immigrants increases, Peter finds himself the
reluctant leader of a small band of rebels fighting for the right to vote, buy
land and settle down: a fight that leads to a show down with government forces
at a hastily built fort on Eureka Hill.<br />
<br />
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The film takes its time to draw the viewer into the
story: what initially feels like a more light-hearted story about four
disparate men digging for gold takes a dark turn when one of Tommy’s friends,
Scobie (Al Thomas) is killed by a gang led by bar owner Bentley (Ron Whelan).
Because Tommy’s character has been developed, when he shifts to demanding
vengeance and helps stoke the flames of an attack on Bentley and his wife, his
viewpoint is understandable (even as the film relies on Peter as the voice of
reason to defuse and reject this move to violence). Vern and Raffaelo are more
broadly caricatured (Rafaello also has a good line in anti-German dialogue),
but still rounded individuals – when Vern runs away from command in the final
battle, it feels apt, based on his actions and bluster to date. And, while the
film is careful to position itself largely on Peter’s side, it also gives Rede
actions and dialogue that doesn’t paint him as evil, but restricted to obeying
(and occasionally challenging) orders. The film may be broadly on the side of
the revolutionary diggers, but it isn’t a simple celebration of their views,
and does give limited voice to the opposing side.</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xMWnpih5Cdc/T9mj-YSsvHI/AAAAAAAAAUY/T-A99051Wes/s1600/Eureka+Stockade+-+Polish+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xMWnpih5Cdc/T9mj-YSsvHI/AAAAAAAAAUY/T-A99051Wes/s1600/Eureka+Stockade+-+Polish+poster.jpg" /></a>Yet despite solid storytelling throughout, the final ten
minutes of the film are rushed and uncertain, cramming in too much historical
detail in an attempt to show the impact of this one rebellion. Given the slow
and steady build-up, the post-showdown is juggling too many balls: Tommy saves
an injured Peter with the help of school teacher Alicia Dunne (Jane Barrett);
they travel away from Ballaarat; the military restores order to the town; the
government brings several captured rebels to trial; Peter recovers from his
illness; the rebels are cleared; the government recognise the rebel’s demands;
Peter and Alicia return to Ballaarat to buy land, and have a final meeting with
Rede. That alone would be material for another film, and it reduces the final
impact of this one.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
As is no doubt clear, one of the film’s strengths lies in
its use of location filming and landscapes: shots of the field where the gold
miners dig give the film a strong sense of space, and the different fights
between diggers and police/soldiers are well choreographed in such locations. Yet
the film can also be visually and aurally inventive in other ways: Watt uses a
lot of montages and close-ups in sequences that are effective in showing either
how news spreads quickly across the miner’s camp, or the growing anger at new
government policy; while several night time sequences (notably Scobie’s death
and the burning of Bennett’s bar) rely as heavily on Mary Habberfield’s sound
editing skills as they do the cinematography of George Heath.</div>
<br />
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In terms of its place within the larger Ealing back
catalogue, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eureka Stockade </i>has strong
links to other studio films, not least the Australian projects developed by Harry
Watt. Like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Overlanders</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bitter Springs</i> (and, arguably, many of
Ealing’s war films), the film is about a disparate group of nationalities and
individuals coming together for a common cause; the films suggest that logical,
commonsense decisions are often beyond the reach of official organisations; and
they celebrate the history and landscape of their country, projecting elements
of Australia as clearly as Balcon intended Ealing films to project Britain.
(although, of course, in projecting Australia these films can also be read as projections
of British views on Australia, a partially colonial view of this land)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
[UPDATED April 2014: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eureka Stockade </i>is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 7, from Network]</div>
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Next time, from Australian history to the British waterways in <em>Painted Boats</em> (1945)...</div>
Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-41975225399501285832012-06-14T07:00:00.000+01:002014-04-03T15:51:47.425+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 79: There Ain't No Justice<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7YKASSTw3r8/T9joOu2ExcI/AAAAAAAAAT0/Fyng8UVbG8A/s1600/There+Ain't+No+Justice+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7YKASSTw3r8/T9joOu2ExcI/AAAAAAAAAT0/Fyng8UVbG8A/s1600/There+Ain't+No+Justice+01.jpg" /></a>Michael Balcon often identified this film as an early
example of what he believed Ealing films to be capable of: a character study
about (allegedly) realistic people and situations, a commentary on modern
society, with a focus on community and the representation of British concerns.
Yet while that description fits <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">There
Ain’t No Justice</i> it also speaks to some of the film’s (and studio’s)
problems, particularly a reliance on normative endings which displace the
interesting morally grey material at the heart of the story into more
black-and-white terms.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
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The story feels well-worn today, and was likely so even
in 1939: Tommy Mutch (Jimmy Hanley) enters the world of professional boxing to
make money and impress Connie Fletcher (Jill Furse). Helped by his trainer,
Tommy gets a deal with local promoter Sammy Sanders (Edward Chapman), who plans
to fix a series of matches between Tommy and Frankie Fox (Michael Hogarth).
Needing money to help his sister Elsie (Phyllis Stanley), and distracted by the
sexual allure of Sammy’s girl Dot Ducrow (Nan Hopkins), Tommy has to decide
whether to take a dive or stand up to Sammy.</div>
<br />
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The film opens with a dedication to ‘the small time
boxer, who has too long been at the mercy of both managers and public’, and
expresses the hope that it may help ‘those who are struggling to improve his
lot.’ Charles Barr notes that the narrative is more concerned with crooked
managers / promoters Sammy and Alfie Norton (Gus McNaughton), than it is the
questioning the public, but like Ealing’s later film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Square Ring</i> (1953), the mass boxing crowd is presented as a
potentially dangerous body of (largely) men. This is not the safe and
comfortable community of Notting Hill the film celebrates in an early dance
scene (where Tommy meets Connie, and all the locals dance to ‘Knees Up Mother
Brown’), but a darker place baying for entertainment, chanting at bloodied
fighters, and seemingly ready to tip over into violence (while the final riot
is caused by external influence, and played partly for comedy, it also appears
to be a comment on the problems of this mass gathering). It may even be that
Ealing gets more cynical with age: the boxing arena’s call for charity (here,
for a blinded boxer) is repeated in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Square Ring</i>, where the charity box is stolen by a member of the audience.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8mJZ08qgXNQ/T9joQkYkQ5I/AAAAAAAAAT8/5VjGaWHVk-g/s1600/There+Ain%2527t+No+Justice+02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8mJZ08qgXNQ/T9joQkYkQ5I/AAAAAAAAAT8/5VjGaWHVk-g/s1600/There+Ain%2527t+No+Justice+02.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
So, that idea of different communities is central, and
the socially ‘correct’ community ultimately wins, with Tommy choosing to leave
boxing for married life with Connie. Equally, problematic sexuality is
constantly displaced: as Dot increases her seduction of Tommy, Connie is shown
in a maternal role, cradling a baby; Elsie’s boyfriend Lenny Charteris (Michael
Wilding) starts as a sexual figure, but that potency is reduced when they get
engaged, then avoided when he robs the milk bar where she works and runs away
(allowing Tommy to step into a patriarchal role, finding the money to support
himself and Connie, and save Elsie). As this suggests, family is also key, with
Tommy’s parents Alfred (Edward Rigby) and Ma (Mary Clare) functioning as secondary
comic characters. An early scene where the five members of the Mutch family
move around the cramped kitchen having breakfast is particularly strong in setting
up the dynamic of their lives.</div>
<br />
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To Balcon, and to later critics, this coalescing of
different strands of what later came to stand for ‘Ealing Studios’ is partly
the influence of director Pen Tennyson and his belief in opting for more
realistic characters, situations and dialogue. Certainly when compared to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Gaunt Stranger</i> (1938) or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Four Just Men</i> (1939), the focus on a
working class family does allow the film to make some claims to realism, but
the film’s balance of drama and comedy is hardly more revolutionary than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Let’s Be Famous</i> (1939) or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saloon Bar</i> (1940), which also foreground
regional accents and community-based ensemble filmmaking, simply in more
generic formats. That is not to say that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">There
Ain’t No Justice </i>had no influence: it is easy to see echoes of it in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It Always Rains on Sunday</i> (1947) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Blue Lamp</i> (1950), although it lacks
the strong location work of those later films (apart from an early pan round
real London streets), and tends to rely on its boxing melodrama rather than
building up the world its disparate characters inhabit.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nh0o95nt_Fg/T9joSpx-zsI/AAAAAAAAAUE/CDXGk4xEsVM/s1600/There+Ain%2527t+No+Justice+03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nh0o95nt_Fg/T9joSpx-zsI/AAAAAAAAAUE/CDXGk4xEsVM/s1600/There+Ain%2527t+No+Justice+03.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Best seen as a first attempt at what Balcon believed
Ealing was capable of, and should pursue, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">There
Ain’t No Justice</i> falters when seen out of that context, too restricted by
narrative conventions and without the full courage of its realist convictions
to flesh out its characters and situations.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
[UPDATED April 2014: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">There Ain't No Justice </i>is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 8, from Network]</div>
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Next time, revolution in Australia in <em>Eureka Stockade</em> (1949)...</div>
Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-29655208747350651252012-06-11T06:00:00.000+01:002014-04-03T15:41:59.147+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 78: Let's Be Famous (1939)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CdM-rdROmHI/T9IrYt4W4bI/AAAAAAAAATo/PCKUFzxJzgE/s1600/Let's+Be+Famous+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CdM-rdROmHI/T9IrYt4W4bI/AAAAAAAAATo/PCKUFzxJzgE/s320/Let's+Be+Famous+poster.jpg" height="320" width="120" /></a>The third film produced at Ealing Studios after Michael
Balcon arrived (following <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Gaunt
Stranger</i> and <em>The Ware Case </em>in
1938), it is both tempting and potentially misleading to try and see the future
path of Ealing in the tealeaves of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Let’s
Be Famous</i>. Charles Barr describes the film as a tedious experience, enlivened
only its depiction of the BBC and commercial radio advertising, and its links to
concerns over generational struggle seen in other Ealing films of the period; while,
to many British cinema and television fans, the film is perhaps best known as a
vehicle for future <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Coronation Street</i>
star Betty Driver.
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
While ‘tedious’ feels an unfair judgement, the film is
not Ealing’s finest hour, although it does bear similarities to other studio films,
most obviously the comedies <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cheer Boys
Cheer</i> (1939) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sailors Three </i>(1940).
It shares the episodic and slapstick elements of those films, but without their
narrative momentum or cohesion: the film is reduced to a series of set pieces,
comic attractions that feel like separate sketches linked mainly by the
appearance of recurring actors. While some of these remain amusing – the final sound
effects-inspired sequence is still strong, not least for its combination of
sound and visual humour – most feel drawn out and tired (a stage magician
hypnotising one of the characters; a tangential parachute jump plot involving
fake French accents).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The plot is both tortuous and simple. Irish singer and
local legend (a legend largely written by himself) Jimmy Houlihan (Jimmy O’Dea)
heads to London as the result of a mix-up: he thinks he’s been booked to sing, while
the BBC want him as a comic Irishman for a spelling bee. En route, Jimmy meets
Polly and Betty Pinbright (Lena Brown and Betty Driver): Polly was once Polly
Punch, the queen of burlesque, while Betty is a wannabe singer, lured to London
by Golden Glow advertising man Johnny Blake (Patrick Barr). Both Pinbrights are
keeping their London journey secret from stuffy patrician father/husband Albert
Pinbright (Milton Rosmer). Once in London, complications ensue that draw in rival
advertising man Finch (Sonnie Hale), his boss Watson (Basil Radford), the BBC
and a series of commercial broadcasts for Radio France. By the end, most of the
characters are drunk or enraged in a radio studio-based
fight-chase-slapstick-musical number that throws everything on screen in the
hopes that something sticks.</div>
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O’Dea, Hale and Radford are the glue of the film, even if
all give better performances in later Ealing productions: O’Dea and Hale in
particular form a double-act that is pushed into more and more absurd narrative
situations. At one point, they mime a parachute jump using a hotel table and an
umbrella; during the ‘actual’ parachute jump, the film pauses while they float
in the air discussing their families; and, as mentioned, they are the key
players in a final scene where, locked in a booth, they act out a radio play performing
all the sound effects using the materials in front of them. This moment of
comic chaos also feels like an insight into sound effects creation and editing,
pulling back the curtain on sound design techniques of the late 1930s in both
film and radio. It is also one of the few moments where the radio station
setting is put to good use in the film.</div>
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As for the female characters (notably Driver), they have
little function in the narrative beyond their musical numbers and their ability
to attract men. Driver has some good repartee with Barr (whom she calls a
half-witted advertising man), using her northern background as a means to mock his
smooth metropolitan routine, but she still ends up in a bubble bath for the sexy
advertising photograph her contract requires; and, while Polly and Betty get to
perform on the broadcast (against Albert’s wishes) this is resolved mainly by Albert
chasing them round the studio shouting his disproval. While Betty’s desire to
sing is out in the open (earlier, she snuck out of choir practice and adopted a
fake name to enter a crooning competition), it hardly feels like this is a
moment of personal revolution.</div>
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The film’s treatment of advertising and the BBC does
remain interesting, particularly in a time period where radio was still a rival
medium (and where television was still an experimental and unknown proposition):
the BBC is a place that runs spelling bees that pits “the regions” against
London, while advertising agencies create programmes for ‘Radio France’ that
are designed to sell products for large companies like Golden Glow and
Silverene. The advertising agency men Watson, Finch and Barr are depicted as squabbling
children fighting to shape the next potential star. If the BBC is boring, and
the commercial world juvenile, does that position the film industry as the more
entertaining, adult medium?</div>
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Very little stands out in the film from a visual
perspective: this feels like low budget filmmaking, all filmed in the studio
(apart from some aerial shots during the parachute jump), and reliant on
editing montages to create pace. The songs are solid if unremarkable, and suggest
that Betty Driver might have been seen as a replacement Gracie Fields, but she often
seems leaden when scenes needed more energy and vigour. The final image, of
Driver, O’Dea, Hale and Radford, lined up and singing about happy days being
back, and sun shining through, might speak to a brighter future for Ealing, but
largely by learning the lessons from this film and leaving the musical comedy
to George Formby and Tommy Trinder.</div>
<br />
[UPDATED April 2014: <em>Let's Be Famous </em>is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 10, from Network]<br />
<br />
Next time, we're back in the ring for Ealing's first boxing drama, <em>There Ain't No Justice</em> (1939)...Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-82388542375105840822012-06-08T06:00:00.000+01:002012-06-08T06:00:13.905+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 77: Hue & Cry (1947)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x6X6gRswFKM/T8UGzuL7b_I/AAAAAAAAATA/B_DuSweXQCY/s1600/Hue+and+Cry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x6X6gRswFKM/T8UGzuL7b_I/AAAAAAAAATA/B_DuSweXQCY/s1600/Hue+and+Cry.jpg" /></a>Although Charles Barr has ‘always found the charm of this
film very resistible,’ I think there remains a lot of fun and enjoyment to be
found in this often slapstick-laden Ealing comedy: the first of the post-war
series that, for many, still defines what we mean by Ealing Studios. Like many
of the Ealing films covered in this blog, it is not perfect – the supporting
performance by Alastair Sim is tonally distinct from the rest of the film
(which, depending on your preference, may be a good thing), and the film occasionally
opts for the easy gag rather than anything more inventive – but the energy of
the main performers, the impressive location shooting, and some wry creative
touches, largely offsets those problems.</div>
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Set in and around various bombsites and derelict landscapes,
the film follows eager wannabe sleuth Joe Kirby (Harry Fowler), who accidentally
uncovers a criminal plot to plan and execute robberies through codes embedded
into the pages of kid’s comic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Trump</i>. Along
with other kids from his local neighbourhood, including Alec (Douglas Barr), Arthur
(David Simpson), Roy (Stanley Escane), Dicky (Gerald Fox) and token female
Clarry (Joan Dowling), Joe attempts to track down the mastermind behind the
plan, and bring him to justice, meeting up with the comic story’s author Felix H.
Wilkinson (Alastair Sim), Covent Garden businessman Nightingale (Jack Warner)
and Police Inspector Ford (Jack Lambert) along the way.</div>
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The strength of the film is not its narrative, however,
which efficiently moves its characters from scrape to scrape: it flows largely
because of the child actors, who all give strong performances that rise above the
uneven sections of the script (there is a slapstick fight in a department store
followed by a more tense sequence navigating the unfamiliar world of the sewers
that would simply not convince without strong work from the younger actors).
The characters are well observed as well, with Joe, Alec, Roy and Clarry having
particularly distinct views and opinions, rather than all being written as interchangeable
kids. As for the adults, Lambert and Warner are solid, while Sim hogs his
limited screen time with a real star turn: he is doing his own melodramatic and
mannered thing, in a different register to the rest of the film, but which
largely works because his (brief) appearances are also separated from the bulk
of the action and the cast.</div>
<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zqeLxiS3QqQ/T8UHQunKcdI/AAAAAAAAATI/0yC9mZEVQ0E/s1600/Hue+%2526+Cry+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zqeLxiS3QqQ/T8UHQunKcdI/AAAAAAAAATI/0yC9mZEVQ0E/s320/Hue+%2526+Cry+poster.jpg" width="218" /></a>The film also looks impressive, because of its
much-vaunted location shooting. While this has come up around other Ealing
films of the period, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hue & Cry</i>
succeeds because of the prominence it gives its post-war ruined landscapes.
From the kid’s meeting place in the midst of a ruined building, to the
warehouses that are the setting for the final kids vs. crooks fight scene, the
vision of a bombed-out London persists. That is not to say the film is aiming
for a purely realist tone: studio scenes in the stairwell of Wilkinson’s flat play
and the aforementioned sewer tunnel sequence flirt with horror and suspense tropes
as much as an implied realism. The film uses its locations for strong dramatic
purpose – the final cat-and-mouse chase between Joe and Nightingale through a
derelict building is enhanced by the uneven walls, gaping holes in the floor
and exposed stairs.</div>
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While this may sound like a damning statement, one of the
film’s most enjoyable stylistic and comic touches happens during its title
sequence. The film’s credits are painted on a series of ‘real’ brick walls, against
which kids play cricket, throw stones at each other, run past, ride bikes, jump
over the walls, etc. As the camera pans and cuts between these different areas
of wall, you can see the graffiti that surrounds the main credits (Union Jacks,
cricket stumps, stick figures, arrows, insulting messages to some of the film’s
characters, a steam train) and which points to broader issues of Ealing’s
interest in representing aspects of British society, but also to other Ealing films
before and after 1947. While setting up the anarchic spirit of the film’s younger
characters, there are also playful comic touch that relate to the production itself:
a ‘Kilroy was here’ title (or, given its British provenance, a Chad title) that
reads ‘Wot No Producer?’ before the camera pans right to show Michael Balcon’s
name; equally, graffiti has been added to director Charles Crichton’s name so
that it reads ‘King Charles Crichton’, and a policeman’s shadow passes over
this image, perhaps a suggestion of how Crichton saw his role in marshalling
cast and crew for this film? </div>
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The titles also reveal the presence of Mary Habberfield
as Sound Editor – a role that is highlighted throughout the film, in creating the
unease in the sequences that play with horror (noted above), but also in the
department store fight, which is accompanied by a malfunctioning speak-your-weight
machine, a nice aural touch in an otherwise bland sequence.</div>
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These little creative touches, and the well-cast young
performers, raise the film above its standard narrative devices, and give
strong support to any claim that this is where the post-war Ealing comedy
machine began.</div>
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[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hue & Cry </i>is
available on DVD from Studio Canal UK. See <a href="http://www.studiocanal.co.uk/"><span style="color: blue;">www.studiocanal.co.uk</span></a> for more details]</div>
<br />
Next time, we go back to an earlier comedy made at Ealing, <em>Let's Be Famous</em> (1939)...Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648851613509486338.post-28574076886657135872012-06-05T06:00:00.000+01:002012-06-05T06:00:07.746+01:00The Great Ealing Film Challenge 76: The Night My Number Came Up (1955)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7AdLxYOeCgI/T74zN7nuyLI/AAAAAAAAASs/wOQlGZwLUOs/s1600/The+Night+My+Number+Came+Up.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7AdLxYOeCgI/T74zN7nuyLI/AAAAAAAAASs/wOQlGZwLUOs/s1600/The+Night+My+Number+Came+Up.jpg" /></a>Ealing’s occasional drift into the supernatural has featured
in this blog before, with fantastic scenarios and superstitions informing films
as diverse as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">They Came to a City </i>(1944),
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Halfway House </i>(1944) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ship That Died of Shame</i> (1955). This
film, late in Ealing’s output (one of the last fifteen produced by the company),
embraces its supernatural conceit and makes it both the pivot around which the
narrative revolves, and the central theme the characters debate.</div>
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The presence of superstition is emphasised early on,
before the film’s title even appears. After Michael Balcon’s credit, a title claims
‘There were 8 passengers, 5 crew...’ before the number ‘13’ is emblazoned on
the screen, under the title <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Night My
Number Came Up</i> – confirming exactly what number is being referred to.</div>
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<br />‘If we changed our plans every
time somebody had a </div>
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dream, we’d be in chaos.’ </div>
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The narrative concept is simple: at the home of civil
servant Owen ‘Robbie’ Robertson in Hong Kong, Commander Lindsay (Michael
Hordern) relates a dream he had about a plane crash that featured eight
passengers, including his friend Air Marshall John Hardie (Michael Redgrave), an
official, a beautiful woman, a coarse, flashy man, and a man who has to be
restrained. While they all reject the concept of the dream as a premonition (dismissed
as a medieval concept), Robbie becomes more anxious and jumpy as elements of
the dream fall into place: Hardie’s Tokyo-bound ‘Liberator’ plane is changed to
a ‘Dakota’, trade official Lord Wainwright (Ralph Truman) joins the passenger
list, as does Robbie, Hardie’s assistant McKenzie (Denholm Elliot), stenographer
Mary Campbell (Sheila Sim), Wainwright’s secretary, and, after a stop in
Okinawa, the loud, brash Walter Bennett (George Rose) and his secretary George
(Geoffrey Tyrrell). With the radio out, the plane off course, and flying into stormy
weather, the passengers and crew begin to wonder if the dream really will come true...</div>
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[yet, despite the colourful and fantastic topic – or possibly
because of it – the film is also set in a very grey world. The studio sets are
largely drab and unadorned, the basic decoration of remote airbases and
airplane interiors dominate, with the only real splash of exoticism the early
scenes in and around the Robertson home]</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ko0ofEhZtOQ/T8ULFD_EYRI/AAAAAAAAATU/S_ViQ0bZ8TU/s1600/The+Night+My+Number+Came+Up+-+KW+image.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ko0ofEhZtOQ/T8ULFD_EYRI/AAAAAAAAATU/S_ViQ0bZ8TU/s320/The+Night+My+Number+Came+Up+-+KW+image.JPG" width="225" /></a>The undercurrent throughout the film is the balance of
reason and superstition, using the Hong Kong setting to link to Chinese beliefs
that dreams are ‘a glimpse into the future sent for their guidance.’ Unlike
other Ealing supernatural films, it is the specificity of the non-English
setting that allows such debates to occur, set against the long history of
Chinese customs that Robbie has encountered. The other characters present
different viewpoints: Hardie is more straightforward, relying on what he can
see; Wainwright thinks it is all local nonsense; while McKenzie and Campbell
gradually come round to Robbie’s position. Yet the film undercuts the more
rationalist positions by noting the superstitions of pilots, the uncertainty of
having a girl on board, various characters’ belief in God, and by bookending
its narrative with Lindsay’s dream coming true. Wainwright’s words that there
are different kinds of learning – ‘from books... [and] from experience’ – also seem
to cast doubt on science and reason versus the long history of Chinese belief
in the supernatural.</div>
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Like many of the Ealing films viewed for this blog, the importance
of the special effects department cannot be emphasised enough: the film
requires extensive shots of the central airplane landing and taking off, flying
in the air, its wings icing up, or it almost crashing into a Japanese fishing
vilage. While some of these are achieved on location (there are several
impressive images of Hong Kong and surrounding areas), the bulk of those shots become
the responsibility of the effects team, and the results are impressive,
particularly when intercut with reaction shots and live action sequences (the
plane narrowly avoiding the village is a strong example here, and the film’s premonition-based
narrative allows it to be shown three times).</div>
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<br />
Given the simple narrative set-up, most of the enjoyment
in the film comes not from the drip-feed revelation of dream elements, but from
the characters that inhabit the small plane. Redgrave plays Hardie as solid and
reliable, if a little stuffy; Knox expertly plays Robbie’s increasingly
unhinged behaviour; Elliot looks suitably haunted (McKenzie had a wartime
breakdown); while Rose plays up Bennett’s brash and annoying side. Sim, as Mary
Campbell, has little to do but react to her male co-stars: she and Elliot get
some nice moments in the bar at Okinawa and on the plane, but any sense of a burgeoning
relationship is lost in the impending worries about crashing. Given these enjoyable
character moments, the most fun is likely the final pay-off from Lindsay. Having
helped direct search-and-rescue teams to the correct location, Lindsay reveals
to the local commander that his dreams often come true and, in fact, he just
had one about the commander. As Lindsay leaves, he mysteriously notes ‘If you do
disappear, I’ll tell the authorities where to go looking for you.’ Rather than
offer a rational explanation, or curtail the supernatural element at the close,
the film relishes the possibilities of casting Lindsay as a Trickster figure, and
Hordern plays this with a knowing look and an impish tone.</div>
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<br />
[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Night My Number
Came Up </i>is available on DVD from Studio Canal UK. See <a href="http://www.studiocanal.co.uk/"><span style="color: blue;">www.studiocanal.co.uk</span></a> for more details]<br />
<br />
Next time, the first 'official' Ealing Comedy? We look at <em>Hue & Cry</em> (1947)...</div>Keith M. Johnstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09486936538577641893noreply@blogger.com1