The 37th Parallel… In Search of the Castaways (1914), KBTV, with John Sweeney and Colin Sell

Another fascinating presentation from the tireless Kennington Bioscope team and special guests. Again, we saw two films from the EYE Filmmuseum’s Jean Desmet Collection which according to MC Michelle Facey, has some 900 items which should see us through to sometime mid-century if the lockdown continues…

The main feature, In Search of the Castaways (1914), also known as Les enfants du Capitaine Grant, was an adaptation of Volume 6 of 54 of Jules Verne's "Extraordinary Voyages", first printed in 1867 between From the Earth to the Moon and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Michelle’s introduction was provided by Bioscope regular and Jules Verne scholar Alex Kirstukas who has a fascinating history with the French author and in particular his reputation in English-speaking countries where he has been poorly served by translators. As with Swedish author, Selma Lagerlöf, who’s poetic realism was stifled by the over-literal interpretation of her US translator, Verne’s vision was compromised by stilted contemporary English interpretations.

Alex majored in this subject at St. Olaf College, Minnesota, producing a paper on Verne’s use of intertextuality in The Children of Captain Grant which was presented to the North American Jules Verne Society in 2014. His aim was: to show how “… misunderstood Verne’s novels are in the English-speaking world, and what the authentic Verne can tell us about combining creativity and rationality in our lives and work…” , he wanted to show the “.. real, authentic Verne…”.

The Duncan - Victorian technology at its most thrilling!

Every cinematic adaptation is a visual and textural translation and the wonder is how much of the real Verne is in this film. His book was some 900 pages long and dedicated, as with his other works of this time, to showcasing the World – above and below - to eager readers in the age of European empires. In a film, there is only so much you can carry across in just over an hour, but directors Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, Henry Roussel and Joseph Faivre do their best with the assistance of Michel Verne, son of Jules.

 

Part One: Concerning the finding and deciphering of an almost illegible document.

The story begins at sea, on Lord Glenarvon’s yacht, The Duncan, upon which he has been enjoying a cruise with his wife, Lady Helena (Josette Andriot, one of the few cast members identifiable). Their sailors recover a large fish within which is a bottle and, of course, a message. The letter in the bottle is partially destroyed but they do see enough to know that it came from a Captain Grant who, along with two of his crew, have survived the sinking of their ship, Britannia, only to have been taken captive by natives in Patagonia.

Sadly Josette Andriot - in the dress - is the only cast member I can identify

Glenarvon tries to find out more by placing an ad in the paper and discovers Captain Grant’s two children, Mary and Young Robert, who persuade him to help rescue their father, wherever he may be on the 37^th Parallel… the Longitude sadly being illegible on the letter!

Quite by chance they enlist the help of “learned geographer and ever absent-minded professor…” Jacques Paganel who, having bought a ticket from the White Star company from Liverpool to Bombay – and possibly had a few too many in the White Star Pub in Matthew Street (I know I have) – mistakenly boards the Duncan. He is soon onboard in more ways than one and offering his eccentric genius in the search for Grant.

Forty Two days later, they have clearly rounded the notoriously dangerous Cape Horn and found themselves in Concepcion, Chile. Oddly the British Consul has no record of a missing ship and so Paganel decides that they should traverse the whole of the 37^th Parallel in South America and be picked up by the Duncan on the other side in the hope of bumping into Grant.

This was a big budget effort but the Great War put an end to such ambition

There’s some excellent location shooting here, the film was mostly shot in Normandy but they must have used the Alps to stand in for the Andes as they’re clearly at altitude and the cast are indeed struggling on ice ridges and glaciers. It’s not quite a Berg Film but extra points for the altitude!

An earthquake leads to them falling down hill whilst a huge eagle carries off young Robert only to be shot down by a friendly local tribesman, Thalcave, Chief of the Patagonians who helps get them across the Pampas. They encounter wild bulls, floods and lightning before finally reaching the coast and the comfort of the Duncan. But daft of Professor Paganel – who must be a Mad Professor – realises that they should be looking in Australia!

PART TWO: Australia bound… and the Irish get a bad name.

It is now that we meet the oddly-named Ben Joyce who, stereotypically, is a dodgy Irish man with a secret identity as a goodly mill owner but who is really a crook called Ayrton who was thrown off Grant’s Britannia for mutiny and who now even has a secret base set impressively against a backdrop of waterfalls.

Honestly, no relation, although there's a few of my forefathers in Australia for obvious reasons...

Joyce/Ayrton offers to help find Grant who he says is being held by natives… but what he really wants is to take control of the Duncan and turn it into a pirate ship. From now on Ayrton causes a lot of the mischief but Grant’s son Robert proves intrepid and not only spots that Joyce is a wrong ‘un, he also races a train on horseback to save Lord Glenarvon from certain death.

The group eventually get captured by a tribe of Maoris; some 200 extras who had to be painted green to look the right shade of grey. It’s breakneck stuff and the group finally escapes over the shore to be rescued by the Duncan. But, where is Grant? There is only one place left to check on the 37^th Parallel and that’s New Zealand… 

There IS a lot of action crammed into just over an hour and yet it was mostly understandable and was, above all, enjoyable. This was in no small part due to John Sweeney, who played up a storm and, as Michelle suggested, obviously relished the chance to return to a facsimile of New Zealand! Mr Sweeney is an adventure specialist and can cope with the breadth of Verne’s story, the sudden twists and turns and the need to underpin a wayward narrative with moral force and characterful flourishes. English translators may have struggled with Verne’s prose but Mr Sweeney is a fellow traveller in wonder and unquenchable inquisition!  

Contemporary reviews damned with faint praise, Variety saying that whilst the film was action-packed and visually exciting, "...there were some scenes that could not be readily understood..." whilst film historian Brian Taves, says that the film has more of the feel of a pageant of illustrations than a thorough film adaptation. I’m not so sure though as with the aid of John Sweeney’s music and excellent translation work from the Bioscope’s Tod Higginson, who added additional “conjectural” intertitles to explain the fuller narrative context, and helped us to enjoy a more rounded story. Which brings us back to the Alex Kirstukas’ call for intertextuality and a more informed translation of Verne’s work. With John interpreting the moods and Tod explaining the action, the film made more sense than probably at any point since it was first shown in this country.

Can you ride tandem? Apparently not...

Can’t go without mentioning the hilarious short film shown first, Une Partie de Tandem (1913) or as Todd translated, The Wife and I Go Cycling. This involved a succession of wild downhill rides and crashes across Paris, from restaurants to road works, and even the Eiffel Tower. Great stunt work and lively accompaniment from Colin Sell.

 

So, a massive tip of my pith helmet to the whole team. The Bioscope may seem to specialise in screening silent films but what they really do is to interpret them and to bring their meaning back to life as much as their images. So, another five-star effort; enjoyable and thought provoking!

Every silent film discovery leads you onwards to another and to a wider search for context and meaning. I look forward to reading Jules Verne as he intended to be read!

 

Free festival… Storm Over Asia (1928), Silent Film Days Bonn, Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Stephen Horne

Valéry Inkijinoff

With the exception of Bristol’s Slapstick Festival, so glorious and so long ago, this year is likely to be festival-free for me thanks to our global pandemic and quarantine strictures. The 36^th Silent Film Days in Bonn is one of the first to run in Europe and the organisers having decided to stream some of the films along with the live accompaniment mean that for a few days, those of us who couldn’t make it, can experience something of the immediacy and ambience of the festival.

 

So it was that I huddled my laptop, in Berlinale t-shirt with Pordenone mug topped up, to watch this crystal clear restoration of Vsevolod Pudovkin’s Storm Over Asia (1928) and listen to the visceral interplay between accompanists Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Stephen Horne on headphones… and it was almost like being there; the most exciting stream I’ve watched in lockdown.

 

This is the first time I’ve seen this third part of Pudovkin’s so-called revolutionary trilogy – after Mother (1925) and The End of St. Petersburg (1927) – and it has the same paced intensity as those films but, moved to the steppes of Mongolia, is a simpler and lighter film that ultimately carries as much emotional force. It’s an almost symphonic film with the restored version including even more shots of the sunning countryside which punctuates the human interactions and the remarkable story arc of Bair, the Mongol (Valéry Inkijinoff). It’s easy to imagine sense being lost in these endless deserts and Blair’s journey is bewildering, comic and ultimately ferocious.

 

These 143 minutes of shifting moods and fortunes could ask for no finer accompaniment than that provided by Baldry and Horne. Stephen and Elizabeth-Jane first collaborated on a score for Stella Dallas which was as the former says on an interview on the Festival site, not “through composed” but a mixture of composition and improvisation. Since that first collaboration they have mostly worked with “a plan” which allows them both space to improvise and to join together on some pre-medicated sections whilst they know each other so well they also play on spec, and sometimes sight unseen. The beauty of their method is that most of us can’t spot the join and I’d be hard-pressed to guess how much of what they played for Storm was composed beforehand.

 

Pudovkin’s film is full of shocks and sudden turns as well as lengthy sections of pastoral outlooks and monastic calm and between piano, flute, accordion, harp, bells and wooden percussion, the two musicians had everything covered in a seamless flow of invention, uncanny interplay and some delicious melodies. Their choice of notes followed the lines of narrative but also the most pleasing of musical decisions, themes that chimed exactly with the watcher’s emotional response as well as the characters. They make it sound so easy but even as a man sitting on the end of the row in a virtual seat, I felt the live audience’s reaction to the mix of sound and sight.

Valéry Inkijinoff with silver fox fur

 

The film was shot in the Buriat-Mongolian republic, in and around the capital, today called Ulan-Ude, in south-central Siberia, just north of Mongolia. The restoration shows how fine the cinematography of Anatoly Golovnia is and there look to be far more location shots than in the older copy I was watching at the same time for the English translation – two laptops, one notepad, and a pint of something brown.

 

The story begins in these wastelands as a dying man (star Inkijinoff ‘s actual father) sends his son off to market in order to bring back food. He gives his son, Bair (Valéry Inkijinoff) a silver fox pelt which will buy them security and food, but a visiting priest wants to take the fur as the family’s contribution to the upkeep of the temple. Bair and the priest tussle and as the former prevails, the priest’s amulet falls to the ground and, as he leaves, Bair’s mother picks it up, later to gift it to her son.

Inkijinoff gives an extraordinarily powerful performance and was a graduate of Vsevolod Meyerhold’s “biomechanical” theatre – as was Sergei Eisenstein – which aimed to allow a greater range of emotional expression than the naturalistic approach of the time. According to Professor John Mackay of Yale University, Pudovkin asked Inkizhinov to produce “a deliberately narrowed range of movement to indicate emotion, and explosions of accumulated energy in sudden fury…” and edited the film around his actor’s remarkably controlled physical expression. Such control and release is, of course, a rhythmic gift to the accompanists and the interplay between actor and editor, piano and harp was more exhilarating than any Sunday afternoon solo silent film stream had any right to be!

Viktor Tsoppi is the face of imperialist exploitation

 

Bair heads off across the steppes to market where we find lots of fascinating faces – the film is full of them, all used by Pudovkin in the manner of Eisenstein to create a physiological discourse on their own. Among this local colour the western features of unscrupulous fur-trader, Henry Hughes (Viktor Tsoppi) stands out like a bad pelt. He tries to under pay for Bair’s silver fox fur leading to a riot. The troops are called in and Bair ends up in the mountains where he gets caught up helping a group of partisans in fighting the British!?!

 

It’s interesting now to consider Great Britain’s place in the World in 1928, a time when, incredibly as it might seem, we were even more unpopular than we are now… The British were never a colonial power in Mongolia although at the time the film is set, 1920, we were certainly supporting the White Russians in the civil war against the new Bolshevik regime. It seems that the British, being the imperial power, bar none, were the perfect casting for the film’s bad guys; unlike his previous two films, Storm was not based on domestic events and was more of a revolutionary fable; none the less powerful as propaganda and, in some ways, more enduringly affecting… I was certainly ready to run out and take on the powers that be in Hertfordshire by the end.

 

Fantasy it may be, but Storm is meticulous in the details it presents of Mongolian life and none more so than in capturing the Buddhist ritual Feast of Tzai near the residence of the lama. There’s a lovely sequence when preparations for the feast are juxtaposed against the preparations of the British Commandant (I. Dedintsev) and his wife (L. Belinskaya) as their extensive collection of toiletries and state paraphernalia contrast with the holy symbolism of the ritual dress and circumstance. There is a distinctly un-revolutionary preference for the traditional rituals but they represent the independent culture of the un-conquered souls of the native population.

 

The Feast of Tzai

Away from the temple, the business of imperial rule must continue as British soldiers attempt to take two hundred cattle from the locals by force only to be met with resistance from the partisans and Bair. In the skirmish Bair is captured and sentenced to execution by a decent-looking soldier who reluctantly marches him off to a lonely ridge to do the deed. Bair has no idea of what his fate is to be but as he slumps off to his doom the British notice his amulet and open it to find an ancient script confirming that he – or rather the priest – is the descendent of Genghis Khan.

 

This makes Bair ideal for a puppet leader and the Brits scramble to counterman their orders only to find that he has been shot, twice, and fallen over a deep sand bank. He is carried back and there are bloody scenes of surgery as he’s brought back to life almost like a Golem and finally stuffed into evening clothes and given respectability and new rank. It is here that Inkijinoff’s physicality is at its most powerful; he doesn’t smile or react, he just is… an unyielding, taught body, refusing to connect or even drink, eyeing up the goldfish captured for display just as surely he has been.

 

Now, just when you’ve almost forgotten, that silver fox fur returns to the story as a gift from Henry Hughes for the Commandant’s daughter (Anel Sudakevich) and it proves to be the catalyst for Bair’s re-awakening. Events begin to speed up towards a breath-taking finale that literally sees the Mongol whip up a storm that blows away not just the British but all possessions and the shackles of empire. Stephen and Elizabeth-Jane joined in the revolutions, bringing the noise in a perfectly paced crescendos of chaotic chords and tumultuous tones; you have to wonder how long piano and harp would take to re-tune but it was worth it!

 

So, a taste of the unique atmosphere of the Bonn Silent Film Festival and a combination I look forward to being replicated in the UK whenever possible.

 

The film is no longer streaming on the Bonn site but there’s an interview with Stephen and Elizabeth-Jane. There’s also a link to donate to the Festival as this helps provide the support to keep it going in these impossible times. You must keep believing though, what would Bair do? 

Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Stephen Horne

 

So bad it’s bad. Trapped by the Mormons (1922), Grapevine DVD

 “Trapped by the Mormons is such absolute rubbish that to exhibit it is nothing short of an insult to public intelligence…“ The Daily Mail, 1922

Grapevine video do a tireless job of providing otherwise unavailable films on digital media, existing in the grey areas of silent cinema copyright. Here they’ve really gone to town with a new organ score from Blaine Gale recorded in 4.0 surround sound, special features and a full-length commentary track from film historian James D’Arc. Is it worth it? Well yes, very much so from an historical perspective and in terms of presenting one of Evelyn Brent’s rare surviving British films - she made ten and few survive. However, in terms of the film’s creative content, it’s not always entertainingly awful; it’s a competent plodder and at times, so bad it’s irritating.

But, please, DO NOT let that put you off from seeking out this DVD and let me explain why… without, let us hope, a Moomins joke.

Firstly, there’s Evelyn Brent, Hollywood’s Lady Crook as biographer Lynn Kear described her after her films with Josef von Sternberg and later low-budget talkies, who, after an early start in Hollywood spent time in Europe between 1919 and 1922. British filmmakers were impressed with her American experience: “… there were pictures to do at £30 a week, which was phenomenal to me and which I only got because I had had the American experience. You could have got anything there at the time on that premise.” *

"Look into me eyes, not around my eyes..." Louis Willoughby

 

Brent was being modest of course as she’d been in pictures since 1914 and had played alongside John Barrymore and others. She acted on the British stage too and is undoubtedly the pick of the bunch in this film with H. B. Parkinson making the most of her in numerous close-ups and relying on her to add emotional weight to a fairly daft plot.

British actor Louis Willoughby is also given a lot of close-up work as the evil Isoldi Keene, leader of the Mormons and a hypnotist to boot, able to twist the perceptions of innocent English girls in pursuit of his scarcely religious aims. These close-ups are often great fun with widening eyes and dramatic face pulling that, as James D’Arc says, owed as much to the success of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Munau’s Nosferatu as any documented Mormon talents.

D’Arc’s commentary is good value and helps to explain the context for this view of The Church Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as the Mormons are properly addressed. Founded in the 1830s by Joseph Smith who was replaced by Brigham Young after being murdered, the Church grew in popularity with its desire to return to Christian basics. They represented a challenge to existing orthodoxies by their fundamentalism which was bound to align poorly with "modern" sensibilities.

Evelyn is alarmed

 

Famously the Mormons believed in their men being able to marry more than one woman at a time and I had to snort when D’Arc set up a context for this by saying it was only practiced by 20-25% of adherents and even then usually just limited to the two wives. That’s surely widespread enough to cause moral unease from more conventional Christians and so it’s not hard to see why the likes of Winifred Graham were unnerved by them even after the practice had been outlawed in the USA. The Church changed its position in 1890 but small groups broke away to continue polygamy.

 

Graham campaigned against the sect from the 1900s though to the late twenties and wrote a number of books including, The Love Story of a Mormon (1911) upon which this film is based. Grapevine have included a digital copy on the DVD so we can read for ourselves the author’s take on the religion she so opposed. It’s fascinating especially as it’s based in Liverpool which, for the purposes of the film, is changed to Manchester; perhaps the producers didn’t think it was credible for Scouse lasses to be so easily taken in?

The concern about Mormon influence was real enough though and no one dedicates thirty years and numerous books to campaigning against beliefs without being seriously concerned by them. Such were the times though with older certainties breaking down against a backdrop of industrialisation and then war and Graham was also concerned about US soldiers of the faith dragging innocent English girls back home with them.

A Mormon bapstism, looks kinky eh?

 

So, then we come to Master Films, the British production company who funded this film and dashed it off in around a month. They were into quickies well before the quota and keen to hit the concerns of their audience although as British film historian, Rachel Lowe said, they often underestimated their audience, serving with old fashioned melodramatic slop when they could have been more challenging.

This film was designed to provide easy entertainment and to present a horror adventure as much as anti-Mormon propaganda. When it works, that’s the aspect that makes it happen, although it’s pretty hit and miss in terms on emotional impact, overall tone and pacing whilst the three parallel perils presented at the end are purely perfunctory.

Keene has targeted Nora for conversion and marriage in Utah and fills her head with his dodgy dogma as well as convincing her he’s got mystic powers by arranging to apparently bring a dead gypsy woman back to life. This impresses Nora and her equally impressionable girls’ book group but it’s a cynical set up arranged by Keene and his crew.

 

Cecil Morton York is concerned

Back home there’s tension between Nora and her disabled father (Cecil Morton York) not to mention her fiancé Jim (George Wynn). She’s beguiled by Keene and asks her father to break off her relationship with Jim, but both start to suspect something is wrong and Jim vows to find out what it is and win her back.

 

Nora is taken in by the Mormons in preparation for a move to Utah and, she hopes, marriage to Keene who keeps on talking of her as a flower to be plucked/crushed. She’s looked after by his sister Sadie (Olive Sloane) who helps to provide a cover story as a writer in need of Nora’s assistance.

 

But, horrors, is Sadie really Keene’s sister or is she actually… no, I cannot say it!! Jim tracks Nora down but can he and the local bobbies rescue her in time or will Keene continue to have the evilest of ways?!

Can Jim (George Wynn) save the day?

The score from Mr Gale is great fun and not just for the fact that a full-blown organ is exactly what Trapped requires! I listened on headphones and it is constantly inventive, uplifting the narrative with nimble thematic textures and it sounds crystal clear and powerful; one of the most satisfying organ scores I’ve heard. I’m normally a piano man when it comes to accompaniment but this is far better than the film deserves and lifts the whole film.

 

Trapped obviously did good business as Brent also starred a few months’ later in Married to a Mormon (1922) a kind of follow-up – albeit as a different character – alongside Clive Brook who would be Rolls Royce to her Feathers in von Sternberg’s Underworld (1927). The Times was lukewarm: “(It) gains a spurious interest owing to the fact that it is more or less topical, and Miss Evelyn Brent and Mr Clive Brook act well in it.” The film is lost but we’re done with Mormons now, we know about the movement against them and their plural marriages. We know all about religious intolerance in fact and religious extremism.

Don't listen lass! He's a wrong 'un!

 

These days even unbelievers have their own religions and where none had previous beliefs, they can simply latch on to QAnon or any one of a thousand conspiracies designed to convince us that we’re good because we’re simply not as bad as pure evil. In that respect nothing has changed since Winifred Graham’s time.

 

Trapped is camp as all get out and is perfect for a group watch but there’s a sincerity behind it all that not only undercuts this but makes you want to understand more about the context and the purpose. Film historian Anthony Slide** reported Evelyn Brent watching the film and "her worst performance" with some amusement and not a few "salty comments" but she always looked like great company!

 

Trapped by the Mormons also includes a Thomas Edison short, A Trip to Salt Lake City (1905) as well as well as a documentary on the film and on the score with Blaine Gale discussing his score and shown playing at Peery’s Egyptian Theatre’s mighty Wurlitzer. You can – and must - order direct from Grapevine and all in all it’s a very worthy project from Grapevine and heartily recommended on historical as well as Evelyn Brent grounds!

 

*Confessions of the Stars: Evelyn Brent Tells Her Untold Story, Gladys Hall, Motion Picture Classic, June 1929

 **Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses, Anthony Slide, University Press of Kentucky (2002)

All's fair… The Good Die Young (1954)/ When Giants Fought (1926) BFI Dual Format, out now

‘All the good boys got themselves killed in the war or should have done. The good die young; that’s what we were meant to do. But we didn’t die. Oh no – we fooled them, we stayed alive. And, worse than that, we came back. So now we’re in the way, we’re redundant. We’re not wanted.’

 

Another BFI release from the post war era and one that reveals concerns from the dried-out beginnings of the 1950s with four men in desperate need of an even break and some money. For three of them, the fault is not really their own, they’ve had bad luck, whereas the fourth has made his own luck wasting away opportunity until he has nothing left but to risk the fate of others to find his fortune.

 

It's no surprise that of the actors on show, Laurence Harvey is the real bad apple, but even he comes up with a story of bitterness blaming the War in which the “good” were first to die, as the motivation for his entirely self-centred existence. As with all good noir there is so much shade but also choices to be made and few who had witnessed the sacrifice of the war generation would have much sympathy for his self-pity. The others, on the other hand all retain some relatability which makes the film especially nuanced at a time when few criminal characters could expect to get away with much in British film let alone be willed on by the decent crowd in the darkness.

Harvey, Baseheart, Ireland and Baker

 

Directed and co-scripted by Lewis Gilbert, the story is based on a novel by American writer Richard Macauley and the events transposed to austere London with a number of notable US performers including Richard Basehart and the glorious Gloria Grahame as flighty film star, Denise Blaine. Grahame gives enough here to see why she is still so highly rated; she’s got an almost out-of-time aggressiveness and her timing is superb uplifting every second she is on screen. By comparison, home-grown starlet Joan Collins seems under-powered and more than a little miscast as the rather timid Mary Halsey, a young married who just can’t escape her clinging mother.

 

For Brit-grit and screen presence look no further than Stanley Baker as down on his uppers boxer Mike Morgan, a man clinging onto a career after multiple defeats and going into his last fight with a broken hand and even his brother-in-law Dave (James Kenney, who was so memorable in Cosh Boy) betting against him. But, somehow, Mike prevails and has won enough to retire and look after his wife Angela only Dave is now deep in debt and on the run from some unforgiving gangsters… blood is thicker than water and Mike finds his funds all gone towards the preservation of lost causes.

Gloria Grahame and John Ireland

 

Talking of which, over in New York City Joe Halsey (Richard Basehart) quits his job to try and bring his wife Mary (Joan Collins) back from England where her mother (Freda Jackson) keeps on inventing illnesses and other excuses to keep her girl at home. It’s a heart-breaking choice in the best of circumstances and probably a fairly common scenario for a lot of war brides, but something has to give and there’s no way Joe can get the work he needs and Mary is pregnant, forcing the issue to a head.

 

From dreary suburbia to Knightsbridge hotels and the even unhappier life of glamourous Gloria as flighty Hollywood starlet Denise Blaine married, just about, to American airman, Eddie (John Ireland). The two are moving in increasingly elliptical orbits as she shoots in locations and he gets transferred to Germany; they were clearly equal once but now Denise is showing more interest in her co-stars.

Richard Baseheart and Joan Collins

 

The catalyst for bringing these three desperate husbands together is Harvey’s Miles 'Rave' Ravenscourt, a decorated war “hero” married to Eve Ravenscourt (Margaret Leighton) or rather her money. Rave is your classic public-school waster, disappointed in love, life, war and pretty much everything and who keeps on losing what ever money he has in gambling. Eve refuses to advance him anymore and there’s even a lovely cameo from Robert Morley as Sir Francis Ravenscourt, Rave’s exasperated father. Sir Francis gives the film’s biggest clue yet as to the soulless void behind his son’s relentless flippancy… in the eyes of post-war viewers his ceaseless betrayals surely rank as high as any more physical crime.

Rave it is who pulls the others together after the encounter each other by chance in a public house which, incidentally, is exactly the kind of pub I’ve been looking for after four months of lockdown! He gradually nudges them towards the idea of one big payday and sets out a sure-fire way to rob a post office that will bring them tens of thousands each; more than enough to set them free for a second chance.

 

Rene Ray, James Kenney and Stanley Baker

The film opens with the four of them sat in a car about to undertake the robbery and, having gone full circle, the raid takes place and their fates are played out in a breathless final segment. No spoilers, but at one point a shocked Mike observes that Rave has never seemed more alive than with a gun in his hand and with men to kill…

 

The film is that dark and Harvey’s key lines quoted at the top were cut from the British release as the BFI’s Dr Josephine Botting reveals in her booklet essay; perhaps it was felt that this was too cynical and disrespectful or maybe the powers that be felt it might strike to much of a chord? Dr Botting’s essay gives fascinating background on the production and there’s also an article on Lewis Gilbert from Peter Rankin.

Laurence Harvey and Margaret Leighton - apparently Laurie kept the pictures for "personal use"...

The set includes the worldwide home entertainment debut export version of the film an extended, alternative cut of the film – featuring material not included in the British release version. There’s also Not Like Any Other Director: Lewis Gilbert (1995) an edited excerpt from a 1995 onstage interview with the director held at the National Film Theatre with Michael Caine is on hand to introduce his friend. Gilbert directed Caine in Alfie (1966) and Educating Rita (1983), two of my favourite Michael’s!

 

As is traditional, there are also a selection of delicious shorts from the BFI archive including Midnight Taxi (1946) Norman Hemsley’s look at bustling London after dark and Under Night Streets (1958) Ralph Keene’s documentary showing how an army of workers cleans the London Underground in the four hours between close-down and rush-hour.

Frank Craig goes out to battle Tom Cribb

 

The highlight for me is When Giants Fought (1926), Harry B Parkinson’s tale about the first black contender for Britain’s heavyweight bare-knuckle boxing title in 1810. Frank Craig plays the real-life Tom Molyneaux who fought champion Tom Cribb (Joe Beckett) over 35 rounds in 1910 and, by some accounts, should have won. It is a fascinating film and Frank Craig’s plays Molyneaux with conviction and pugilistic poise.

The story uses the framing device of an old man telling tales in a Holborn alehouse many years later. He regales his audience with the battle of a sailor and soldier for the love of a country maid and this ends up being a wager on the outcome of the fight. The threesome’s reaction to the course of the fight – and the watchers in general – reveals much of the Twenties’ creative’s views of Georgian racist attitudes and some of the language on the intertitles is shocking another century on even although they also reveal which side the filmmakers were on.

In the end Molyneaux is cheated of his deserved victory by Cribb’s team and a lenient referee… and there’s a twist in the tale of love too. All’s unfair in love and boxing.

 

Another reason, if you needed one, to buy this new set. It's available from the BFI online and on the Southbank. Another winner!

Great locations too and Mr Gilbert does a grand job with creating dramatic tension and a sense of place, especially during the closing sequence!