Hot media... Film on Film 2025 (Part One), BFI

 

The hottest day of the year and we were all indoors staying cool with the nitrate as The Man Who Would Be Compo made like a cockney Cagney* in London’s criminal underworld. Downtown forties London, I swear the lights are much brighter there with sharp pin pricks of brilliance illuminating Sheila Sim’s earrings and the West End streetlights as various cops following sundry robbers and Richard Attenborough’s taxi was ahead of them all as he sped on to avenge the death of his friend.

 

Dancing With Crime (1947), 35mm Nitrate

 

Jo Botting, the BFI’s Curator of Fiction, BFI National Archive introduced this most vibrant of Brit noirs and quoted a press report which had a confused customer apparently asking the actor for a lift, clearly unaware of the film crew. It’s a nice touch which illustrates the film’s items at realism on a budget an authenticity it manages to convey through the excellence of the cinematography and the verve of the key performers. Directed by John Paddy Carstairs, scripted by Brock Williams from an original story by Peter Fraser, it’s a fast-paced tribute to the kind of drama Hollywood excelled in even on a budget.

The Brit Pack: R. Attenborough, Sheila Sim and Mr Bill Owen

If American post-war noir was dominated by mistrust and paranoia for the Brits in this film at least, it’s about choices and how to make a living in Civvy Street after serving their country and perhaps not getting the recognition they deserved. For the dutiful Ted (Richard Attenborough) it’s the long way as a cabbie, taking his time to establish himself and his sweetheart Joy (real-life wife Sheila Sim, who lived with Dickie in a house very much like the one she so loved in A Canterbury Tale). His best pal Dave has different ideas though and has a lust for life and an urgency to grab success by the throat. Dave is played by William John Owen Rowbotham, later to re-title as Bill Owen, not just an actor but a successful songwriter, with a later stint at Sadlers Wells Opera showing his versatility – no wonder he carries the bounce of the Yankee Doodle Cagney.

Woman: Excuse me, are you dancing?

Detective Sgt: No, it’s just the way I walk…

Sadly, Dave’s doings land him in gangland trouble and he is shot leading Ted on a mission to avenge his fallen comrade with the aid of Joy who takes a job at the south London dancehall where the criminals are based. It’s got style as well as humour with some fab adlibs from Garry Marsh as Detective Sergeant Murray in particular. Barry Jones is all clipped malevolence as gang leader Mr. Gregory whilst there’s also an uncredited appearance from Diana Dors as one of the dancehalls hostesses.

It was a surprise and such an enjoyable thrilling ride which, enhanced by the nitrate sparkle, kicked off the weekend for me in some style.

 

Marion Grierson with movie camera

The Grierson Sisters: Today We Live 35mm

There was actuality to follow with four documentary films (on 35mm) from the Grierson sisters Pat and Marion which illustrated the familiar flair for producing compelling narratives about the way we live with breath-taking seaside scenery from the south coast featured in Marion’s Beside the Seaside (1935) including precious shots of the old Palace Pier in Brighton. Some of this material was used in Penny Woolcock’s film From the Land to the Sea Beyond (2011) and the cover star of Sea Power’s superb soundtrack CD duly cartwheeled her way not once but twice in front of the camera: people enjoying life and summer holiday freedoms, in the moment and captured for ever by the Grierson camera.

If any newcomer to the documentary field should require a handy compendium… relating to the craft, they will find all that they need in Beside the Seaside. Miss Grierson has incorporated practically every apposite screen-device…

Sight and Sound, Winter 1935-6 on 35mm

Here indeed is the art of the documentary with editing, context and narrative invention on such vibrant display. A shot at the end of Brighton’s now skeletal pier looks to have been taken from a 1930s drone but the reverse shot explains all as a ship sails by in close quarters. All human holiday is here, the sun, the ice creams and the over-heated children all captured with humour and clarity of purpose.

The same is true of Marion’s So This is London (1933), out of the trap with what Ros Cranston, the BFI’s Curator of Non-Fiction, identified as a poetic realism. Sister Ruby’s films, here Today We Live (1937) and They Also Serve (1940) were gifted with the same flair but perhaps more concerned with straightforward depictions of social reality. In the former she shows a women’s group converting a barn into a community centre and in the latter she showed the importance of British housewives to the war effort. No doubt the working-class women she interviewed found her more relatable than many a male director of the period, then again she was Scottish and no nonsense would be the order of the day.

 

Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas and Brandon de Wilde

Hud (1963), in 35mm Panavision

 

Christina Newland and festival curator James Bell introduced a wide-screen Panavision spectacular in which Paul Newman plays against the type we always want him to be as a southern man with the darkest of hearts and a twinkle in his eye. The film’s a warning about such men and doesn’t provide any easy way out for the viewers expecting redemption: we have to take the lessons for ourselves and God only knows, never more so than now.

 

Directed by Martin Ritt, who also produced with Newman's recently founded company, Salem Productions, it was filmed on location on the Texas Panhandle, an aptly named flat and baren landscape which, thanks to cinematographer James Wong Howe is used to both foreground and isolate the tempestuous relationships on screen. Newman clearly wanted a character to stretch his technique and he’s wonderful as the titular rancher who disappoints himself and everyone else at turns when selfishness and inconsideration over power his decision making. Oscars were given to Melvyn Douglas as his father Homer and to Patricia Neal as their housekeeper Alma, loyal, good-hearted yet tough but another ultimately let down by Hud, in spite of himself.

Homer and Hud have a far more deep-rooted beef and not just because the latter had been driving when his brother had been killed in a car crash leaving Homer and Hud to bring up his son Lon played by Brandon de Wilde. The fact that de Wilde had been in Shane (1952) as the hero-worshipping lad Joey adds an extra dimension to the post-modern “revisionist” western and Hud is certainly no Shane… The story is about a potentially ruinous foot and mouth outbreak on the ranch but it’s obviously about the distances between nature and nurture, with the widest of screens giving us no peripheral escape from the cruelty of love.

  

Norma Shearer and Ramon Novarro

The Student Prince of Old Heidelberg (1927), with Carl Davis’ score, 35mm

 

This bittersweet treat was a heart-rending reminder of the intoxicating fragilities of love and the inconvenient truths of duty… I had previously seen the 2017 Pordenone screening with composer Carl Davis conducting an orchestral performance of his score drawn from late German romanticism with hints of the emotional turbulence of Mahler and Strauss reinforcing the drama on screen. Davis’ daughter Hannah was there to read from her father’s diary about his approach to composing his 7^th silent film score in 1984 and his co-conspirator Kevin Brownlow was also on hand to give his finest Ernst Lubitsch impersonation regarding his struggles to get Norma Shearer to be more Prussian barmaid. She called in fiancée Irving Thalberg to mediate and he played it just right by saying “Darling, I’m sure we can all learn a lot from Mr Lubitsch…” I suppose having dealt with Herr von Stroheim on Merry-go-Round (1923) another variation on Old Heidelberg; he appreciated a man with the discipline to work within his budget a little more!

 

In fairness to Norma she does an lovely job of being in love with Roman Novarro’s child-like Prince, sent from his duties to study at the titular university and for all Miss Crawford’s apparent distaste for the five-time Oscar nominee and one-time winner, she’s able to combine vulnerability and strength, an experienced actress at 25 with her talkie glory years just ahead. Jean Hersholt is joint MVP though as the playful, and long-suffering Doctor Jüttner, mentoring the wayward Prince struggling to keep pace with the fulsome ale quaffing, cigar smoking and dancing of his charge at the grand old age if 43?! Roman Navarro has energy of his own of course and whilst he doesn’t have the flexibility and nuance of these others he is a more than capable leading man here, sulky and watchable!

 

This was also an opportunity to admire the comedy stylings of Aberdeen’s most famous son, George K Arthur who will also be appearing in Herr von Sternberg’s The Fortune Hunters in Bologna next week. Yes, it’s George K Arthur Month on IThankYou Arthur and I just don’t care!

 

Back to the film can in hand, this is a film to luxuriate in as is the score and the combination with a packed out NFT1 was quite something, my head partly back in 2017 and the 1902 of 1927… with the promise of 2025 successfully ignored for two blissful hours.

 

And there’s more tomorrow! This is analogue beauty with a tangibility of experience most cinemagoers are mostly denied so, let’s keep it physical so far as possible shall we? I have seen the future of film and it’s got sprocket holes and is really quite difficult to manage… the BFI do us proud!

*Courtesy of Mr Mark Fuller!

Old career in a new town... Brannigan (1975), BFI Blu-ray out now!

My mother-in-law is Dr Sylvia Hardy, noted scholar, a past secretary of the HG Wells Society, and an academic with a string of qualifications in English as well as Film. She can run rings around me on James Joyce, post-structuralism and literature – she recalls every book she’s read in outstanding detail – and, since she was a small girl watching films in Weymouth’s picture houses, she’s loved John Wayne. Despite Wayne’s politics and his attitudes to women and minorities, a whole list of things they would have argued about, he’s still one of the great stars for her.

 

She even likes Brannigan, a British-made film that allows Duke to carry off a tough-guy role at 68 although she feels he’s perhaps missing a horse… and it’s true, there is something charming about this film perhaps because we know his next film was Rooster Cogburn and we know he’s near the end but also because his persona is intact. He’s helped, of course, by a great supporting cast as well as superb backdrops of London: Brannigan is a real time-capsule film that takes in everything from Tower Bridge to the Garrick and RAC Clubs via Park Lane, Battersea and Piccadilly.

 

 

Mr Wayne

Directed by Douglas Hickox, Brannigan afforded Wayne the chance to ape the Clint Eastwood style (he had turned down Dirty Harry only to regret it) and allows a fresh twist by transporting his unchanging cowboy act to Blighty: a horse-wrangler out of water as it were... There are repeated moments in the film which play on this from attempts to get Brannigan to not carry his gun and to follow native procedures. There’s also a nice running contest between the character and his British counterpart, Commander Sir Charles Swann (Richard Attenborough) which plays up every known cliché about the “special relationship”.

 

Brannigan’s assigned liaison officer, Detective Sergeant Jennifer Thatcher (the marvellous Judy Geeson) quotes her father in saying that there’s only three things wrong with “yanks”: “over-paid, over-sexed and over here…” But you know mutual respect won’t be far behind and, age-appropriate at that, here Wayne is more of an uncle figure being three times Geeson’s age.

 

It’s entertaining and undemanding fun and very well put together. There’s also a fine example of a hard-top e-type Jaguar and you can’t say further than that for men of a certain age, especially with Morris Minors, River 800s and so many classic cars on view.

Judy Geeson

Lieutenant James Brannigan is a Chicago cop who has his own way of doing thing but (you guessed it…) he gets results. He’s tracking down one particularly nasty crime lord, Ben Larkin (John Vernon, a tad "Larger than life" here...), who has been caught trying to flee to England. Somewhat against his will – and to the audience’s delight – Duke… sorry, Brannigan is sent to bring him back. Somehow, we sense that it’s not going to be quite that simple… and the old dog’s unconventional methods will be all the more so in London Town.

 

Brannigan arrives and is treated like a red-hot cinder by the locals as Swann and his number two, Insp. Michael Traven (John Stride – who was excellent in the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead I saw a few years later…in Manchester), struggle to reign him in. Miss Thatcher is altogether more understanding and there’s an under-current of fatherly affection between her and the old grump. But where did they get that second name from? The “Milk Snatcher” was a shadow cabinet minister at the time…

 

Meanwhile the plot has really kicked in. A hit man is assigned to off Brannigan by Larkin’s team led by Mel Fields (Mel Ferrer) – he’s Gorman (Daniel Pilon) the nastiest in the business but at least he drives that e-type. Then Larkin is kidnapped from his health club by two Brit gangsters played by Charlie-the-Handle (played by The Genius, James Booth!) and Drexel (Del Henney) whose aim is to hold him to ransom.

John Vernon

 

So now Brannigan has to help the Limeys save face as well as catch his man. The first attempt to snag the kidnappers fails as they extract the money from a drop in Piccadilly by drilling a hole beneath a post box.They seem to be one step ahead of the local Plod, but not Brannigan of course.

 

There are some lively police-procedurals as Brannigan and co set about scaring the truth out of the likes of Brian Glover and Tony Booth (Cherie’s dad) not to mention the far less threatening Tony Robinson – “look kids it’s Baldric!”, “Who?”, “Er… the guy out of Time Team!”, “Oh yeah…”

 

There’s also - of course - a classic bar brawl at a pub in Leadenhall Market in which Attenborough joins Wayne in slugging it out on that violent but harmless way of every good-humoured scrap since The Quiet Man: glassing with a smile and mutually respectful manliness all round. Personally I've only ever turned the other cheek - all my fighting has been outside of the pub, but it's a strange cinematic ritual of male bonding even now.

 

Sir Richard Attenborough

Then there’s a car chase which is very well executed and shows off some of the highlights of central London including Tower Bridge over which the cars fly as the draw bridge lifts higher. Famously Telly Savalas made an advertorial about Birmingham at around this time saying how good it was, "my kinda town!" and, in its way, Brannigan shows the love for London as well as the legend around whom the script and action was so carefully constructed. 

 

All the while Brannigan’s hit-man gets closer and closer to the kill, narrowly avoiding nailing Miss Thatcher as the dead-eyed cop reacts just in time to put him off. Predictable it may be but the plot is well constructed as the main elements race to a satisfying conclusion as the double-crossing crosses over itself in the inevitable deserted offices of decaying docklands (probably now the home of gastro pubs and luxury flats).

 

Wayne still convinces and went on to make Rooster Cogburn next, his best late period film and he met Kathryn Hepburn for the first time in London during filming and this is how she became involved in that classic. When I was younger, I was less generous to his attempts to stay in the game but this was all he knew from being an extra in silent films in the late twenties, he worked for over 50 years in cinema.

 

Duke explains modern badness to the limeys

Apart from featuring so much British talent living their best life acting with Wayne, cameos from Don Henderson and Lesley Anne Down among others, the film is worth watching for the cars and the streets of 1974. There’s an article on the BFI website looking at the locations then and now and it’s truly fascinating to watch the city in high resolution almost 50 years ago. It’s changed, we’ve changed… and yet, in some ways, it and we haven't. 

 

A couple of years later, The Squeeze showed a sleazier and more authentic side to London’s criminal classes, followed by others, but Brannigan helped keep the British crime flick alive at a time of struggle.

The booklet cover says it all!

This BFI Blu-ray is presented with the usual high-quality extras:

 

·         Presented in High Definition

·         Audio commentary by Steve Mitchell and critic Nathaniel Thompson (2017)

·         A Duke Out of Water (2023, 37 mins): reminiscences from the people who made Brannigan.

·         Frank Henson on Brannigan (2021, 4 mins): the veteran stuntman looks back on doubling the Duke.

·         Take It to the Bridge (1905-1956, 23 mins): historical glimpses of the Thames, Tower Bridge and other Brannigan locations.

·         A Policeman’s Lot (1896-1973, 35 mins): a copper’s clutch of films concerning crimefighters and crooks, proceeding from the very earliest days of cinema towards the Brannigan era.

·         The Guardian Interview: Richard Attenborough (1983, 89 mins, audio only): the award-winning actor and director, and John Wayne’s Brannigan co-star, reflects upon his illustrious career.

·         An extensive selection of location photographs, featuring cast and crew.

·         Original trailer

·         Illustrated booklet with new essays by Johnny Mains and John Oliver, notes on the special features and credits.

 

You can order the set direct from the BFI Shop and if you’re quick you’ll get the limited edition of 2,000 which includes the fascinating essay booklet.

An education… The Guinea Pig (1948), BFI Dual Format - out now!

How are you going to mix a boy whose father is a general with a boy whose parents keep a grocer’s shop in Pimlico?

Seventy years on this film is still not without relevance with its debate about the need to reconcile the state school system with public schools. Lord Fleming’s Report for Rab Butler’s Board of Education had proposed that 25% of state school should go to the public sector but in the end rows over funding stopped this from happening. Still, playwright Warren Chetham-Strode wrote of how this might work in practice and it’s a stirring story still infused with the wonderful spirit of post-war optimism: the idea that it was possible to see the other’s point of view. Who then would have imagined this to be such a radical idea now?

Newly restored on this spanking new BFI Blu-ray/DVD dual format release, The Guinea Pig is stirring entertainment from a time when the idea of social mobility wasn’t just an ideal but a practical necessity in a country almost as ravaged by victory as the defeated. In his booklet essay, John Oliver explains that the Boulting Brothers saw cinema as an “educative source” and they followed the socially inclusive Journey Together (1945) with this film, perhaps the first to really address the need for change in British educational system.

Joan Hickson and Bernard Miles

The film is emotionally forceful with just about the only thing stretching credibility being the 24-year old Richard Attenborough as 14-year-old Jack Read, the titular Pig. But you soon believe in his cockney pluck, as the young lad from Pimlico sent by his hardworking parents to Saintbury school, founded by King Henry VIII no less and stuffed to the rafters with alien traditions and manners. Jack’s parents are played by Joan Hickson and Bernard Miles with the latter getting a co-writing credit for fleshing out the working-class characters and dialogue – this ain’t the first film to feature the word arse but it’s up there.

The film opens with Jack being seen off at Waterloo Station by his folks as Mum wonders if he’ll be alright and Dad, knowing full well the risks of the endeavour, looks on with war-weary optimism. As they head back to their tobacconists Jack settles in with his new school mates on the most unmagical of “Hogwarts Expresses”. He meets Tracey (Thomas Bateson) a thoroughly decent sort who is to look after the newcomers and he also shares a carriage with an incredulous Miles Minor (young Anthony Newley) as he tells his new pals which “prep-school” he went to.

Master Newley on the right

I can see how the film would play to general audiences but I wonder how the public-school fraternity would have viewed the unfolding events at stately Saintbury – actually Sherborne school in Dorset. In fairness the film gives full credit to both sides of the argument for inclusion but is Jack a little bit more polite and resilient than more of us state school lads would have been and are the conservative masters and pupils also just a little too understanding?

On arrival, Jack meets another thoroughly decent chap in the form of Nigel Lorraine (Robert Flemyng who was born in Liverpool) a former army officer who lost a leg in the war and is giving the boys the benefit of his experience. He’s a hero and the film’s nod to his good nature and his service is heart warming in itself. As he guides Jack to his House, you know he will be key to Jack’s success or failure.

Thomas Bateson, Dickie, Cecil Trouncer and Edith Sharpe

Jack meets his House Master, Mr Hartley (Cecil Trouncer) who is altogether less welcoming than his wife (Edith Sharpe) but the two are almost stock public school characters; she the mother most of them literally never have and he the stern voice of unyielding tradition; a grumpier version of Mr Chips yet we know what happened to him…

Jack soon encounters lots of attitudes and traditions that don’t agree with him; he’s picked out by one of the prefects to be his fag before he’s even finished his tea, whilst the others rag him about his accent and he’s teased at the traditional welcoming ceremony in which the new boys have to bow three times to the statue of founder Henry whilst getting their rears kicked. But Jack won’t have it and fights back… reminding me of my response to a similar situation in the Merton College "Freshers’ Blind".

Anthony Nicholls and Robert Flemyng enjoy a smoke watching the cricket

Jack’s resilient but even he tries to escape only to be stopped at the school wall by Mr Lorraine who was on a moonlit walk with the Hartley’s lovely daughter Lynne played by the always excellent Sheila Sim who had married Attenborough in 1945. Sheila too was from Liverpool, starting life off overlooking Calderstones’s Park not far from where John and Paul would live.

Sim and Edith Sharpe add a lot of light to what would otherwise be an all-male environment and one in which Jack falls foul of the strictures regarding talking to women. He wolf whistles the neighbouring girl’s school and gets beaten for just walking and talking to Bessie from the bookstore (Maureen Glynne).

 Edith Sharpe and Our Sheila

The film’s trajectory isn’t entirely predictable and gradually the emphasis shifts from Jack’s struggle to fit in and to succeed onto the reactions of the school board and old Mr Hartley: will they accept any success for the guinea pig and will this influence their approach to inclusion going forward. It all comes down to a choice between investing in the school’s already splendid infrastructure and scholarships that may help make more opportunities for Jack and others.

It is surprisingly moving and well played by the Roy Boulting and his sparkling cast.  It may just have been the flicker of long dead optimism – the changes suggested were hardly revolutionary after all - or the genuine hope that we can work across backgrounds, but I suggest you have your hankie ready.

Happiest days of our lives?

The restoration from the BFI looks splendid and it comes with a chunky booklet with John Oliver’s excellent essay Bridging the divide: class and consensus in The Guinea Pig, and another on the creative curiosity of the Boulting Brothers from Corinna Reicher. There’s also a host of quirky archive extras including short films about schooling from silents to the sixties as well as slices of life in ration-book Britain: I love the way the BFI fill out these releases with so much special content.

The film is available on dual format direct from the BFI online or from their soon to re-open shop. It’s a cracker!