Red hair spells danger... Peeping Tom (1960), BFI Restoration, Cinema Unbound

 

This screening showcased a sparkling digital screening of the BFI's new 4k restoration of Michael Powell’s controversial big budget masterwork and it was followed by a discussion panel involving Archer’s expert Ian Christie, filmmaker Carol Morley and fashion designer John Foley, hosted by Doesn’t Exist magazine’s editor, Victor Fraga. Two shibboleths were dismantled, the first by Ian and concerning Peeping Tom being the film that basically ended Powell’s career. As he pointed out, Powell’s career had already been in trouble before Peeping Tom and not just because of the Honeymooners (1959); the kinds of films Powell wanted to make were at odds with the cinema of angry young men (and women) and he wasn’t about to make a Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Taste of Honey or Room at the Top. The Archers had made two crowd-pleasing war films for their last two collaborations but when it came to magical realism and post-expressionism, the early 60’s were not welcoming.

Another point Christie made was that far from ending his career, Peeping Tom was an enduring statement of his talent that would be picked up in the late 1970, 80s and 90s by film studies departments. Indeed, Carol Morley remembers watching it for the first time as she screened it at St Martins. Mr Fraga seemed intent on asking about the male gaze and the film’s treatment of women, whether such a film could still be made, and Carol’s was the voice we needed to hear on this question, remining us that Peeping Tom is restrained in its violence and that so many contemporary dramas offer sexualised violence against women regularly and on mainstream television too.

Ian Christie, Carol Morley, John Foley and Victor Fraga

Her point is also that here, as elsewhere, Powell’s women have agency and are not just victims, tokens or plot devices. Anna Massey’s Helen, Redhead no. 1, is the film’s hero and, when finally confronted with the horrific crimes of Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm), she doesn’t runaway, she doesn’t cower, she wants to know why he has done these things and her force of personality provides Mark with the only unconditional support he has ever experienced in a life ruined by the cruel experimentation of his father (Michael Powell… yes, of course). As Carol points out, the men are largely rubbish, the Police not enquiring enough, the film-within-a-film Director (Esmond Knight) seemingly incapable of motivating his female star, Diane, Redhead No. 3 (Shirley Anne Field, so vibrant here and sadly, now just today she has passed… what a fabulous talent and an amazing career she had) and the consumer of under-the-counter pornography who looks remarkably like a certain director (Miles Malleson, take a bow sir!).

There was some debate about whether the title was appropriate given that Mark doesn’t really fit the traditional model of a Peeping Tom but then surely, it’s the audience who are Peeping Tom’s too along with the director who, was perhaps reflecting on his contemporary from Hackney who once stated that he wanted to turn the audience into voyeurs. Carol Morley referenced the origin of the phrase, Tom the only one in Coventry who looked at Lady Godiva. Like Tom, Mark just has to “look” and, so do we.

RIP, Shirley Anne Field (1938-2023)

One of the subjects of that business, the renowned Pamela Green (don’t tell me you don’t know her…) plays a world-weary model called Milly and sees through every male gaze in her direction. Murderee and Redhead number 2. Vivian (Moira Shearer) expresses the intelligence and clear talent that have been overlooked by the film company whilst dancing for her would-be killer; yet another director who just wants her to react to his prompting, a Lermontov… a Powell. Given their history, it is interesting to see Moira dancing for Powell again and by this stage she’d decided to not only dance but live and had married and had four children. She danced here and again in the French film Black Tights (1961) and we’ll simply never know why she wanted to dance but she was an incredible talent and person.

Insert subliminal message here: go watch The Red Shoes, go read Pamela Hutchinson’s wonderful book on The Red Shoes… then go watch The Red Shoes over again and repeat.

Anyone who has already followed one of both of those instructions could see a film like Peeping Tim coming, the intensity of the men around Shearer’s character, Victoria is controlling, passionate and bordering on the indecent. You can see both films as not such much an exploitation but an exposure of the damage the obsessive male gaze can do and, if Moira ever wanted an apology from Mickey, here it partly is.

Carl Boehm and Anna Massey

Sadly Vivian – not Vicky – dies in vain as Mark is not satisfied with her demise on camera and goes off in search of another victim. It’s not that they must die but that they must die in the way he wants. He’s a relentless perfectionist, with his own rules and that cruel upbringing, guiding him ever onward to record the perfect, most cruel and terrifying death imaginable. This is what his own upbringing has brought him too and when he plays his father’s recordings of incessant cruelty to his childhood self, Helen feels pity and even love. Forgiveness perhaps not but understanding and sympathy… no wonder contemporary critics were so aghast. Is it so much to ask the audience to reach out to this murderous character at the same time?

All of which is why Ian Christie is right, how many have created so many timeless pieces of work with a supremely talented collaborator such as Emeric Pressburger and then gone on to make a film of this depth and quality? As ever, it’s about what we have seen and not what we might have seen and we are lucky that we not only have the very best of Powell but so many of his other solo efforts that only hint at what’s to come and what has gone.

"'ere mate, got any copies of Sight and Sound?"

I'm a location saddo so today I went to Newman Passage where the first murder takes place and it's pretty much unchanged, well, apart from the lack of police presence and crowds trying to glimpse the body as Mark calmly records everything...

I think the studio were up for anything.. Cert X

On Chesil Beach… The Small Back Room (1949), BFI, Cinema Unbound

What I really want sir is a bit of expert guessing and some expert advice on how to handle it when we get our hand on one…

 

This is another one of those films that just has to be seen on the big screen and the BFI’s restoration-in-progress digital 4k presentation brought home every nuance and, especially, bead of sweat on David Farrar’s brow as he battled alcohol addiction in his nightmarish confrontation with a giant bottle of scotch and then struggled to retain composure in a very personal battle with a fiendish German bomb lying amongst the shifting pebbles of Chesil Beach. This confrontation between man and booby-trapped explosive has never seemed so tense, more visceral and further away from my own experience of that stretch of beach from Abbotsbury to Weymouth.

This is also a return to top quality Powell and Pressburger after three well-made and under-rated films that are all good but just not this good. We’re set up for Sammy Rice (Farrar) and this fateful meeting by a devastating cameo from Renée Asherson as an A.T.S. corporal who has to relay the doomed attempt to defuse another of the bombs by another officer, and it’s never hit me so hard as she repeats his words, his brave joking about the situation – Wembley being packed for the FA Cup final between man and bomb – before getting to his last words as he realises the bomb has an inexplicable second wire… Not only has a character we like lost their life but we relive the detail through someone else’s grief. That’s inventive and leaves the audience helpless as the next man steps up.

 

Kathleen Byron

The Small Back Room is packed with such moments; overloaded with great cameos, humour and spirit. If you don’t want to live in a world in which Sidney James runs your local pub and Kathleen Byron has your best interests at heart, then I can’t help you. This is probably David Farrar’s finest moment or jointly with Black Narcissus and in both cases that’s down to Kathleen; it takes two to tango and whilst Sammy can’t dance – not with a tin leg he can’t – the relationship between Byron’s Susan and him is the core of the film. Kathleen perseveres with Sammy not just because she can see how far he’s fallen but because she sees how far he could still rise and she’s not willing to give up on her love, not by a long chalk!

Based on the 1943 book by Nigel Balchin, a psychologist who wanted to show the inner struggles not just of addiction but also of brave men injured and worn down by the War. Sammy has lost his leg in an unsuccessful attempt at bomb disposal and this has led to constant pain, suppressed by a mixture of “dope” – codeine? – and drink. He is too proud to take his tin leg off in front of Sue and every day is a constant struggle between using the drugs or hitting the hard stuff. She is with him all the way though, as they keep a bottle of Scotch to test his mettle in his flat and, whilst she lives across the hall, she and her cat, seem more at home in Sammy’s place.

 

Robert Morley and Jack Hawkins

The film is also about the “boffins” of the small back room tasked with developing new weapons. Sammy reports into Professor Mair (Milton Rosmer) and the unit is overseen by a-low content careerist called R.B. Waring (Jack Hawkins giving it the full narcissist...). Politics abounds and nothing appears to have changed with their low-content glad-handing minister, (Robert Morley credited as "A Guest") paying a visit and having to be entertained by a made-up experiment. He has no more idea what they do than the next fop and is by no means secure in his position and this could have all kinds of unpleasant ramifications for the team.

 

The unit is involved in testing a new gun and there’s a splendid sequence at Stone Henge with Sammy watching the test as Colonel A.K. Holland (Leslie Banks, last seen by me in the Powell Quota Quickie, Fire Raisers!) not impressed with the evidence of his own eyes; on the battlefield this new gun could cost lives. There’s another set piece when the unit has to present its findings to a committee of the Minister of War, civil servants, rival scientists and the General. It’s played partly as farce with loud roadworks obscuring the details and the minister looking at paintings for the ministry during Sammy’s reading of the statistics. But then the General asks him for his opinion and, to his credit he tells it like it is even though it’ll cost him the approbation of his seniors.

 

Michael Gough and David Farrar

“I’ll… hand it over to Susan. She’s got it all worked out in the way women always have… She’ll take it and make it into what she wants…”

But Sammy is mired in his own disability and frustrates Susan’s attempts to not only count his blessings but also to exert his force of personality and expertise. In the novel he’s over-thinking everything and relying on her to provide momentum, overlooking his achievements in a pattern Balchin well recognised from his patients’ struggles with what we would now term PTSD and imposter syndrome. He’s a work in progress and that’s something seen on both paper and on screen.

Yet Sammy is sharp as a tack and compassionate with it, a natural leader of men with more moral courage than most. Even as he is so hard on himself, he shows such emotional intelligence in dealing with a nervy co-worker, Corporal Taylor (another quietly striking cameo from Cyril Cusack), who is having marital issues and doesn’t want to accept his own weaknesses at work. Sammy firstly asks his advice about trembler fuses and then coaxes him to ask for help, agreeing to his leaving early to help his wife. Beautiful interplay between the two, Farrar raising his game alongside Cusack in another of the film’s poignant moments.

David Farrar and Cyril Cusack

The film starts with Captain Dick Stuart (Michael Gough) making his way to see the unit and explaining the mysterious items that may or may not be new German bombs. Sammy Rice is your man advises Professor Mair and with Susan’s help, Stuart locates him in the pub run by "Knucksie" Moran (Sid James) who has just advised her man against drinking whiskey, he knows he can’t handle it. Back at Sammy’s flat Stuart explains the explosive enigma and Sammy’s hooked… Mair’s right about his intuiting and expertise. The two take an instant liking as does Stuart to Susan who he offers to walk home before she tells him she lives across the hall. It’s one of Gough’s best roles too.

We’re hooked too and are rooting for these three from now on. If any film shows the importance of the Archers’ combination of script and direction it’s this one, the quality doesn’t really drop throughout and the whole team is magnificent. A micro-managed masterpiece of dramatic thought on screen. I look forward to the finalised restoration from the BFI, it’s worth every second of their painstaking devotion!

You've got to make up your mind whether you want to spend your whole life being a person it's just too bad about or not...

Try harder Sammy.

Myth makers? The Battle of the River Plate (1956), BFI, Cinema Unbound

Ian Hunter and Anthony Quinn

Why do British filmmakers revert so often to the War for inspiration, ten years after its end, and what need in their audience do these films, probably the most consistently popular output of British studios, satisfy?

John Gilbert, Sight and Sound, winter ’56-‘57

 

Well, Mr Gilbert, they were still making war films ten years later when I was a boy, and we grew up reading The Victor Book for Boys and Commando stories, watching Dad’s Army well into the 1970s, before recent politics began quoting the greatest generation as proof of our national heritage. Now certain sections do indeed, as the writer also suggested, look back on the war, “almost nostalgically” as a time when allegiances were clean-cut, “unsullied by the doubts… of an uneasy peace.”

 

Back in 1956, the grief and exhaustion were first hand and a marking one of the war’s remarkable incidents was something audiences were understandably interested in no matter how much some cineastes wanted more forward thinking. Pressburger and Powell undertook this task with due diligence and a documentary approach and they were following in a tradition established after The Great War with “re-enactments” such as The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands (1927). Powell even wrote a novel, The Last Voyage of the Graf Spee hoping that future generations would “absorb it into their experience.”

 

For The Archers perhaps, war films were there not as a celebration but a reminder of sacrifice and human decency at the heart of disaster. Pressburger had been displaced by Nazism in the early thirties and the conflict was personal in different ways for them both. As with Germans from Conrad Anton Walbrook’s Schuldorff in Blimp, Peter Finch’s Captain Langsdorff is credited with decency and bravery. The actual character didn’t sink merchant vessels until the crews were evacuated and he shows respect to the captains of those vessels. At the start of the film, we see him extending hospitality to Captain Dove (an excellent Bernard Lee) who’s ship he has just sunk; the men behave with professional dignity even though Dove thinks his ship was in neutral waters.

Peter Finch and Bernard Lee

At the end, Dove is there to commiserate with Langsdorff, a decent gesture and important to show as Europe triad to mend bridges but Pressburger always knew there were good people in Germany even during the height of the conflict. Pressburger had been given a copy of Captain Patrick Dove's book I Was Graf Spee's Prisoner (1940) which helped inform his treatment of the two men and to show the group of captured captains at the heart of the battle.

 

The pocket battleship had been sent to the southern hemisphere before the start of the war with the knowledge that Britain, despite its vastly superior navy, relied on importing food and supplies in a way Germany didn’t. Shortly after hostilities began, she started sinking supply ships a cross an area from the Indian Ocean to the South Atlantic and by changing her livery she was able to hide her identity and location, being re-fuelled by a supply ship only she would know would be in a certain quadrant on a certain date. The British sent out hunting parties to try and intercept the enemy but the sea is vast and the sinkings continue.

 

Christopher Challis is on hand again to give us some stirring shots of the ships at sea against the giant sky and there’s one especially breath-taking sequence when fuel and passengers are transferred from a supply ship to the Graf Spee as both steam along through the waves.

 

The Graf Spee is “played” by the US Navy’s heavy cruiser, Salem whilst the four British ships feature two of the original vessels, the Leander-Class light cruiser, the Birkenhead built HMNZS Achilles (by this stage assigned to the Indian Navy as INS Delhi) and the County Class heavy cruiser HMS Cumberland which missed the battle but was there for the finale. The York class heavy cruiser, HMS Exeter is portrayed by HMS Jamaica and a second Leander-Class cruiser, HMS Ajax by HMS Sheffield. The action is shot in the Mediterranean and Powell does a superb job of presenting the battle although a lot depends on the actors’ responses from the various bridges.

 

Both sides play a full-scale game of Battleships in which the stakes couldn’t be higher with one merchant naval ship able to give details of the type of ship and location before being sunk. The Commander of the British squadron, Commodore (later Rear-Admiral) Henry Harwood (Anthony Quayle) works out that the battleship’s most likely course of action will be to head towards Buenos Ares for refitting. There are tense moments when, in the early hours of the day when she’d arrive based on her cruising speed of some twenty-eight knots – only a few British ships were as fast – with the crew of all three ships nervously scanning the horizon for signs of smoke.

 

Once seen the three ships immediately rush to engage following Harwood’s plan to minimise the Spee’s advantages of firepower. Achilles and Ajax attack from one side whilst Exeter attacks another, splitting the German’s fire but all sustaining severe damage. The film is so very procedural and there are many shots of reacting sailors willing the shots to miss and hoping for direct hits. The actual engagement lasted for around an hour and here is following in real time for the initial encounter before presenting some 20 minutes of action. By this time sixty-five shells had hit the battleship and Exeter had been so badly mauled she had to limp off to the Falklands – she would survive to fight another day. The Graf Spee needed repairs herself and headed off to Montevideo with the two other ships in pursuit.

 

Anchored in neutral waters the battleship is only allowed to make repairs to her superstructure and not weaponry and a diplomatic game of big cat and three mice, after the Cumberland arrives. Could the three take on the battleship or will she manage to wait it out… Powell and Pressburger use an opportunist American journalist (Lionel Murton) as a means of commentating on events and there’s a cast of thousands on the harbour watching events unfold.

 

The film was criticised in some quarters for its length but it still grips on the big screen especially on the 35mm print we saw… It’s my age but the crackle and pop of analogue media roots me in a cinematic mode I’ve known since childhood from the Abbey Cinema in Liverpool to the Odeon, Astra and many more. Cinematic ships of the night if we’re going to be nautical.

 

The performers give their finest in terms of martial resolution and a number had served in the navy during the war such as Scouser John Gregson who plays Captain Frederick "Hookie" Bell of HMS Exeter and Jack Gwillim playing Captain Edward Parry, HMS Achilles served 20 years in the Royal Navy, rising to the rank of Commander. Peter Finch, who served in the Australian Army during the war is also so good as Captain Hans Langsdorff who earns so much respect, perhaps the rope hanging from the yardarm when Captain Dove comes to give him his best wishes, is a tip of the hat to his fate three days later when he committed suicide?

Lionel Murton broadcasting on all channels as Christopher Lee sulks

Brian Easdale’s score is suitably stirring; he never puts a wrong note, does he? On the technical side, and so important given the film’s realism, the props team does especially well in recreating the end of the Graf Spee with a 23-foot-long model of Salem in a six-foot deep tank at Pinewood Studios being convincing enough to show the damage done in battle and the final end.

 

They also serve who only stand and paste, clearly.

There are some excellent shots of the model in the studio on the superb Reel Streets site, which is simply on of the best film resources on this internet.

No, not giants but a scale model...

The Archers’ final shot… Ill Met by Moonlight (1957), BFI, Cinema Unbound, film on film

Though they would work together again, this was the last film Powell and Pressburger made through their Archers production company and as with the first of their collaborations it was a war story shot in black and white. Much had changed in the intervening 18 years and, unusually for the pair, this was not an original story but one based on the memoires of W Stanley Moss who was indeed involved in the successful kidnap of the German general Heinrich Kreipe, commander of the German forces on Crete. Kreipe was successfully shipped off to Egypt and only released in 1947. He was reunited with his kidnappers on a Greek television programme in 1972… and, an educated man, much like the British officer who led the audacious mission, Major Patrick "Paddy" Leigh Fermor the two apparently remained friends. Kreipe perhaps was a real-life example of one of the Archers’ “good Germans” exchanging Latin quotes with Paddy during his capture.

 

For today’s screening there was much delight when we arrived to find that the last two members of the cast, Dimitri Andreas (80) who played the young Niko and George Eugeniou (now 92) who played Charis, introduced the film in an interview with Jo Botting, Curator of the BFI’s National Archive. Both men were still passionate about their director’s work, it was Dimitri’s first film and he had been introduced to Powell by George as he was looking for a boy who had experience with goats. He has gone on to have a long career in film, incredible how the World can turn with one chance encounter, but seeing his youthful energy you can understand what Powell saw in him and why his talent has endured.

George Eugeniou, Jo Botting and Dimitri Andreas

George Eugeniou also shares this disposition and talked not only of Powell but also his involvements with Joan Littlewood as a member of her theatre company and then his role in Sparrows Can’t Sing (1961) one of the classics of kitchen sink drama and her only film. He featured in small parts in both Pressburger’s Miracle in Soho as well as Powell’s Peeping Tom and is still angry at the way that film effectively ended the director’s mainstream career in this country, especially when compared with Hitchcock’s more clearly exploitative Psycho. George founded the Theatro Technis Company Limited in 1957 and has dedicated most of his career there with the aim of presenting "radical and total" theatre aimed at breaking down barriers between nationalities, religions, genders, sexual orientations, classes, ages and languages. The Technis is still a vibrant presence based in Crowndale Road in Camden and more details can be found on their site.

It was a privilege to see both men and to learn of the impact the film and the Archers had on them and, as Dimitri then came and sat beside me in Row D, to watch them on screen, 67 years ago, on the BFI’s 35mm copy was the kind of surreal treat you only get on the Southbank; the audience and the filmmakers watching film as history, history as film…

Dirk Bogarde and George Eugeniou

George plays one of the local Cretan resistance fighters, mountain “wolves” waiting to prey on the fat German sheep who populated the valleys during the occupation. Major Patrick "Paddy" Leigh Fermor (Dirk Bogarde), also known to the locals as Philedem, after a traditional Cretan song he liked so much his comrades used it as his nickname. He’s undercover travelling to one of his Cretan contacts to discuss his audacious plan of abduction with a local (Wolfe Morris) who suggests that commandeering the general’s car is the only chance even though this will mean passing through numerous roadblocks.

Another British officer, Captain W. Stanley "Billy" Moss (David Oxley) arrives on the island and we get to meet the rest of the team, Captain Sandy Rendel (Cyril Cusack), who hasn’t washed for six months, Zoidakis (a barely recognisable Michael Gough with huge moustache), car-spotter Elias (John Cairney), Yanni (Paul Stassino) and the excitable Charis (George Eugeniou). Plans are made and the team lies in wait, stopping the car with Paddy and Billy dressed in German police uniforms before knocking out the driver and driving off with the General (Marius Goring) squashed under three men in the back seat.

Dimitri Andreas

They successfully evade capture, speeding through the road checks – 22 in all – and escaping to the hills before the Germans realise that their commander is missing. Now the adventure really starts as the small unit has to escort the General at altitude across the hills to rendezvous with a British boat. On their way they encounter a young boy, Nico (Dimitri Andreas) who helps them pull the general along on a donkey – Geneva Convention dictating that capture generals deserve appropriate travel provision – runs local errands and ends up playing a crucial role.

Along the way, there’s ample opportunity for Goring and Bogarde to trade glamour and tonality, whilst the cinematography of Chris Challis is of course splendid although what we’re seeing is not Crete but the Alps Maritime in southern France near the Powell’s hotel; how the crew musts have loved humping their heavy cameras up to those “views”.

 

At the crucial point neither of the British officers knew the morse code to contact the Royal Navy motor launch ML842 and they had to wait for another officer – in this case Sandy – to turn up and show them how. I have seen this listed as an example of the film’s shortcomings but it’s absolutely the case. The gods were with the Cretans and British that night.

 

Dirk and the actual Paddy...

Powell vs Pressburger…

As with their previous film, The Battle of the River Plate (1956), the fourth most popular film in Britain in 1957, Ill Met also did good box office being the seventh – the films were released just six months apart - and yet the cracks were certainly appearing between the two creators and, more to the point, around them. Powell described it as one of The Archers' "greatest failures” in Million Dollar Movie (Heinemann, 1992) and partly blamed Emeric’s script although he was also disappointed in Dirk Bogarde, a great actor but “a charmer… as subtle as a serpent, and with a will of steel.” Dirk gave the film a lighter tone and didn’t follow direction, drawing the other actors with him, all except regulars Goring and Cusack one imagines.

 

For his part, Kevin Macdonald quotes his grandfather in The Life and Death of a Screenwriter (Faber, 1994), about the contract dilemma they faced with John Davis, a situation which would restrict their independence but would guarantee more productions. He’d become a good friend of Leigh-Fermor and whether this made him over-think the script is anyone’s guess but he and Powell just could not agree on the film’s narrative objectives. Macdonald mentions that the location was a constant issue, chosen partly because of the difficulties in Crete at that time but also to assuage Powell’s then girlfriend. Dirk Bogarde is quoted on the intensity of the ill-feeling which impacted the entire set and film editor Judith Buckland was amazed that the bitter disagreement she saw did not ruin the men’s friendship.

 

At the end of the day, what we saw on screen still has moments of magic, Goring know the score and gives good General (he had made it to Colonel in the war) whilst Bogarde couldn’t help but give a Byronic twist to the Englishman on an daring mission – he had also served in the army from 1943, mainly as an intelligence officer. David Oxley is less convincing as Captain Bill Stanley Moss but his role is less well developed, yet he’s likeable enough as are the rest of the troop* in what stands as a celebration of a remarkable action.

And, returning to the opening interview, there’s no denying the inspiration the experience gave to two young actors who would both go on to make their mark!

* There are also two small parts for Christopher Lee and David McCallum, the former speaking as a German police officer and the latter pointing meaningfully in silence at the more code signal on the beach…