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Originally Posted by jackranderson
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From the original pressbook adverts included on Network’s Blu-ray, Gaumont British didn’t spare the hyperbole when pitching their first major picture shot at their new Shepherd’s Bush Studio, 1932’s
Rome Express, not only selling it as Grand Hotel on rails with an all-star cast but ‘one of the greatest pictures ever made.’ The stars may have faded with time but surprisingly the picture does a good job of living up to the claims thanks to a smart script by Sidney Gilliat that has hints of his later work on The Lady Vanishes and superb direction by Walter Forde that’s full of energy and visual invention. The opening sequence as the camera darts and tracks through a Paris railway station discovering and introducing some of the ensemble is a wonderfully invigorating bit of filmmaking and even when everyone’s aboard he finds ways to keep the pace from flagging through Günther Krampf’s terrifically kinetic camerawork and smart crosscutting that never feels like he’s just showing off.
On the passenger list: Esther Ralston’s movie star with a past (“One gets suspicious of old friends who know things”) and her huckster of a press agent Finlay Currie, sporting a very decent American accent (“Don’t forget, I was once press agent to Tom Mix’s horse!”); Cedric Hardwicke’s pompous businessman chasing a knighthood with big charitable donations while short-changing a waiter’s tip and begrudging his secretary Eliot Makeham eight francs for a taxi ride; Gordon Harker, looking and sounding for all the world like Lionel Jeffries in First Men in the Moon as the gossipy neighbour and golf bore who just would be on the same train as married (but not to each other) couple Harold Huth and Joan Barry; Muriel Aked’s pessimistic spinster (“I always go through life expecting the very worst. It’s so nice if it doesn’t happen”); Frank Vosper’s bug hunting French bore whose day job shakes things up; and, most importantly, Donald Calthrop’s art thief with a stolen Van Dyke in his briefcase trying to dodge his double-crossed partners in crime Hugh Williams and a banana-munching Conrad Veidt, who wants to arrange for him to take a long holiday….
Naturally almost everyone has a secret and some connection to each other, with possession of the painting and Calthrop’s increasing desperation as he jumps out of the frying pan and into the fire driving the plot as it twists and turns like a twisty turny thing with plenty of black wit: the scene where Harker assembles a poker party is a particular gem, but its constantly throwing one damn enjoyable thing after another into the mix. Everyone ends up getting what they deserve, and generally in the most entertaining way in a film that definitely deserves more of a reputation than it enjoys today.
Network’s Blu-ray comes from the BFI’s restoration, and it’s only fair to say the film doesn’t look like it was made yesterday: it looks like it was shot 80 years ago and the elements weren’t always as well looked after as they could be and needed to be pieced together from a variety of sources. But it’s equally fair to say that they’ve done a good job with what they had to work with and that this is the best it’s ever likely to look, and certainly better than it has looked for a long time despite the occasional bit of print damage (no dropped frames but some visible tears and scratches) and the odd contrast issue losing some but not all detail in a few shots, with the soundtrack pretty decently cleaned up but still offering optional subtitles (a rarity on Network’s discs) for those lines where the early sound recording presents a problem. Aside from the still and pressbook gallery there’s also a lengthy booklet with an excellent and well-researched appreciation by Neil Sinyard that covers the making of the film and its breakthrough success in the USA. All in all it’s well worth it, especially at the budget price – a first class film for less than a second-class return train fare to London, let alone Paris to Rome!
Boris Karloff’s first British film, 1933’s
The Ghoul, has long suffered from the reputation that built up around it while it was still a lost film and the disappointment that almost inevitably led to when it was rediscovered in a poor subtitled Czech print in the 70s. Since then considerably better master material has been found – Network’s UK Region B Blu-ray looks absolutely terrific – but it’s still best looked at as an adaptation of a typical old dark house play rather than the homegrown version of the classic James Whale Universal horror films that the teaming of Karloff and Bride of Frankenstein’s Ernest Thesiger may lead you to expect. Indeed, just looking at its cast of characters tells you that in many ways it’s closer a straight-faced slight parody of the conventions of the well-made play than a real spine chiller:
- Boris Karloff, looking like the Mummy even before he rises from the grave, as the dying millionaire Egyptologist (“I put my trust in my own gods.”)
- Ernest Thesiger sporting a Scottish brogue and a club foot as his servant (“He’s set in his ways, and they are the ways of the heathen!”)
- Sir Cedric Hardwicke’s rather Dickensian crooked lawyer (“I am not a sympathetic man”)
- Anthony Bushell’s deliberately unsympathetic leading man (“No doubt you will succeed in making a painful interview intolerable”) who hates leading lady Dorothy Hyson so much you know how that’s going to end up, though curiously it does so without him showing much in the way of a softer side
- Kathleen Harrison as Dyson’s working class friend, companion and comic relief (“This is the last time I’ll ever try to make coffee in a strange house!”)
- Harold Huth’s Egyptian archaeologist out to steal Karloff’s greatest treasure only to find himself the object of Harrison’s affections (“Don’t be alarmed. We’re not quite as uncivilised as people think.” “Oh don’t say that!”)
- Ralph Richardson’s disapproving vicar (“I don’t think you people realise quite how far Morelant’s queer ideas took him.”)
Everyone is after the Eternal Light, a jewel said to grant access to the afterlife to those who truly believe and worth a fortune to those who don’t, but despite the film being widely billed as the first British horror talkie, as with most films of the era the supernatural elements are all explained away in the end, just one more reason why the film has such a low reputation among horror aficionados. But go into it with low expectations and there’s enough to like to make it worth a look. In common with many Gaumont British films of the early Thirties, it has a rather Germanic look to it – perhaps not surprising since producer Michael Balcon had often collaborated with German companies like UFA (Hitchcock even served part of his apprenticeship in Germany) and the art director was Alfred Junge (Varieté) and the cinematographer Günter Krampf (Pandora’s Box and Nosferatu). Had it been made just a year later it might even have starred some of the German players that found themselves lured onto their books and away from the uncomfortable new regime at home.
Kathleen Harrison’s comic relief is certainly better judged than Una O’Connor’s screeching in her James Whale Universal horror films, playing off against Harold Huth’s phoney Sheik act fairly effectively, though it’s debatable whether the film needed any comic relief when the pointless family feud (“As far as I can make out it was started by my late uncle as a Christmas joke”) that sets Bushell and Hyson at each other’s throats is largely played for laughs. Yet it’s not without its atmospheric moments, not least Karloff’s defiantly pagan nocturnal interment. It’s perhaps best described and enjoyed as an impressively mounted slight film: not the lost classic people hoped for, but far from the worst thing Karloff did in that era either.
Supernatural thriller
The Medusa Touch is one of those films that seems to have evolved with time. When it came out it was a bit of a disappointment with a few good moments, then it went through a period of just seeming cheesey, and now, as it touches on disasters ancient – Jerico – modern – Apollo 13 – and yet to come – 9/11 and Chernobyl - it actually seems a lot more substantial and effective than the
Tales of the Very Much As We Expectedish movie it was back in 1978. Despite the budget limitations, it certainly draws a convincing picture of London in the aftermath of a major disaster that’s all too recognisable today (not so much in the debris and wreckage but other side-effects like diverted traffic, closed roads and full up hospitals).
Richard Burton is John Morlar, a controversial novelist consumed with hatred for society’s hypocrisies great and small who is left for dead after having his head bludgeoned with a bust of Napoleon yet whose brain is somehow keeping him alive by sheer force of will when medically he should be dead. As Lino Ventura’s detective investigates a crime which almost everybody in the country seemed to have a motive for, it turns out that that isn’t the only remarkable thing his mind can do: what initially seemed to his psychiatrist (Lee Remick) to be an obsession with being able to cause death or disaster just by willing it turns out to be far from a delusion, and even while unconscious his mind is planning a spectacular revenge on the establishment he despises…
Burton had already squandered the momentum the acclaim for
Equus had briefly given his reputation, and it’s pretty clear that at the time this was regarded as just another payday to fund his lifestyle by the critics, but this is no
Exorcist II, though there is certainly a lot of heresy. Certainly giving him a line like
“I have a gift for disaster” is a real hostage to fortune, but as the modern monster born – as he sees it - to do battle with the gods, he does a good line in Angry Old Man riddled with contempt as he spews and spits out his anti-establishment tirades. The international co-production casting works surprisingly well for once: by that period it was pretty unusual for a bigger budget British film to have a British lead, but Remick’s casting seems credible and they even manage to write their way around having a dubbed Lino Ventura as a French detective investigating a British murder, and there’s a very respectable supporting cast including Harry Andrews, Gordon Jackson, Michael Byrne, Derek Jacobi, Jeremy Brett and Alan Badel, while Michael J. Lewis provides an effective score. All in all, it mixes genres – whodunnit, disaster movie, science fiction, horror – to create an effective race against time thriller with a bit more ambition than most that stands up surprisingly well.
Network’s impressive special edition has an excellent commentary by director Jack Gold, though its film critics Kim Newman and Stephen Jones who often point out some of the more interesting background and the changes from the novel (like the odd sly injoke such as Ventura’s comment “I was expecting a man” referring to Remick’s character being male in the novel). There’s also behind the scenes footage of the finale, stills gallery and trailer.
All Night Long is a 1961 British jazz version of
Othello set at an anniversary party for jazz great Aurelius Rex (crazy name, crazy guy) and his wife, only for Patrick McGoohan’s devious drummer Johnny Cousin to plot to drive them apart because he needs her to sing in his new band. Before long he’s got the road manager smoking funny cigarettes again, pocketed Mrs Rex’s cigarette case and has thoughtfully re-edited an incriminating tape recording for his own nefarious ends while Charles Mingus, Johnny Dankworth (“So sorry Cleo couldn’t make it”), Dave Brubeck and others jam in the background.
Basil Dearden and Michael Relph’s enjoyably daft drama isn’t a lost masterpiece, but if you can take a jive-talking Richard Attenborough and some unintentionally amusing hep dialog, you’ll be rewarded by an entertaining and well-staged 90 minutes that even considerately throws in that happy ending that Shakespeare forgot.
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