Peeping Emeric… Miracle in Soho (1957), BFI, Cinema Unbound

“The more I saw of the district the more extraordinary it began to appear to me… I soon realised that, as with most places in the world today, the unusual events and happenings in life were taken for granted…” 

Emeric Pressburger

  

I was all ready to go with the angle that, by some act of cinematic synchronicity, both Powell and Pressburger turned to the subject of Soho when, towards the end of their collaboration they started dating other filmmakers. But no… although in some ways yes. Pressburger had originally written what became The Miracle in St Anthony’s Lane about a group of German exiles in Paris in 1934 before changing it to London after migrating here. The script was sold and resold during the 30s but it only made it to screen in 1957 directed by Julian Aymes and not his partner for almost two decades.

 

Powell thought the story lacked substance and that they had covered some of the ground in films like AMOLAD and Blimp leaving, as Kevin Gough-Yates suggested in Sight and Sound (Dec 1995), only the bare bones of the idea of a special love and two people connecting almost immediately in an almost mystical way. Whether or not there is an actual miracle in the film is open to debate and if there is, surely it’s the way that John Gregson’s character Michael Morgan, decides to stop running and open himself up to the risk and possible reward of a life with Belinda Lee’s Julia Gozzi, an Italian immigrant who is due to move on herself with her family to Canada.

 

Seeing so many of Pressburger’s films in such a short space of time in this Season of All Seasons, his interest in the immigrant experience is clear and even across a span of 22 years his intentions with this film were, as always, to show how immigrant communities find common ground and grow together united by faith, retailing, hospitality and everyday human experience as well as the inevitability of road works. They’re also united by the GPO or Royal Mail as it’s now known with local postie, Sam Bishop (the protean Cyril Cusack who, only last Monday, was pure evil, scheming the downfall of That Elusive Pimpernel) who also doubles up as local Salvation Army captain. He's such a good observer of character and motivation, you see exactly why he was fascinated by Soho's mix of people.

 

Cyril Cusack's postie maintains order

The impact of Michael Morgan is felt even before he arrives as a vengeful husband arrives to deck one of the workmen, also called Michael, in the mistaken belief that he’s the man who was making merry with his Suzie. Then a young woman called Maggie (young Billie Whitelaw!) arrives in search of Michael, who tells her she’s misunderstood their relationship “this is the way it was with us…” he says, she has deceived herself as he’s never less than frank about his golden rule of engagement, one purely based on the location of his work and nothing more… besides, he’s already got his eyes on the tight sweater of barmaid Gladys (Barbara Archer).

 

Michael is part of a group of workers called in to re-lay the tarmac on St Andrew’s Lane, a made-up street in a studio-bound Soho. The massive sets, designed by Oscar-winner Carmen Dillon, evoke a London of time just past – lots of familiar brands in the pet shop but with long gone beers in the pub: you’ll have to go to The Coach and Horses on Greek Street, or the Edgar Wallace off Fleet Street to see still-extant advertising for Double Diamond and other lost ales.

 

It’s a street full of the new influx of immigrants who helped build Britain from the thirties onwards, who opened restaurants, hairdressers, dance studios and shops of every type to bring vibrancy to the streets. There’s a harmony in the film’s Soho that may not have been entirely matched by contemporary reality but Pressburger wasn’t just an optimist he had been welcomed by this country as had many others. It’s a lost world in many ways but surviving from this time there is still the French House, Bar Italia, Maison Bertaux (from 1871) and a few others.

John Gregson and Barbara Archer

 

Michael sets about hammering the old road up and befriending his workmates whilst arranging to view Gladys’ sweater in closer quarters. He has to make a quick exit as they are interrupted by the arrival of her boyfriend Filippo Gozzi (Ian Bannen at his most un-Scottish) an intense young man who manages a wine merchants and is intent on marrying Gladys. Filippo is part of an Italian family whose father (Peter Illing) plans on moving them all to Canada to find a new life. Daughter Mafalda (Rosalie Crutchley) is the eldest and resolved to marrying a convenient man whilst youngest Julia (Belinda Lee) is still to be disappointed by life – she is not ready to compromise.

 

Naturally Julia catches Michael’s attention and the question will be whether she will be just another “best girl in the street” for the itinerant Romeo or whether he’ll finally be brought to ground and, even if he is, will anything stop her joining the family exodus to Canada?

 

Viewed on its own terms and without the baggage of Archers expectation, Miracle is a very likeable and effective film and, filmed almost entirely on Carmen Dillon’s huge sets in Pinewood’s Stage A, there’s a cosiness that focuses on the human interactions and which suggests that this is more fantasy than reality whereas Peeping Tom’s staged settings have the opposite effect entirely. Emeric was looking to show diversity in action bound by the commonality of experience, Michael was digging deeper into the psych of cinema’s creators and the audience, making voyeurs of us all just like Hitchcock. That said, I’ll take on anyone who says Peeping Tom is any more vicious than Psycho; Alfred was always more perverse than Michael.

 

Belinda Lee

There are good performances from Crutchley, Bannen and Cusack as you’d expect whilst Belinda Lee is charming enough to anchor any wanderer’s affections.  Scouser John Gregson pushes the envelope on his natural likability and, whilst his Irish accent frequently deserts him, he’s spot on as decency takes hold. There’s also an interesting relationship with his own father, played by granite-faced Wilfred Lawson, the kind of tough-hearted man that survived work and war with an unyielding hardness that took generations to soften. Michael might well be a softer lad than he thought and as he sits alone on a Saturday night listening to the radio broadcast of the classical concert Julia has gone to, his old man scoffs, drinking his tea from his saucer. The film has "class" too, Pressburger knew "us" so well.

 

The presence of regular collaborators, cinematographer Christopher Challis and composer Brian Easdale adds to the Archers’ feel but as with any well-tuned duo, it feels like there’s something missing and for all Powell’s efforts on Tom, most of the films he would make without Pressburger would feel that way too. I’m looking at you, The Honeymooners and you The Queen’s Guards. Miracle in Soho as sweet a film as Peeping Tom is a disturbing one; different aims and different outcomes… one heart-warmingly good film, the other a terrifying masterpiece that shook British critical opinion to the core and saw Mr Powell out of the director’s chair for all too long.

 

We watched the BFI’s gorgeous National Archive 35mm print which, despite a few issues here and there with the sound, ran through the gates in a very satisfying way. When was the last time this film was screened on film? When will it be shown again? Thank you BFI!

 

 

Liz Taylor is in… The Driver’s Seat (1974), BFI Blu-ray Out Now!

One should always be kind as long as one can. It might be your last chance…

 

This is indeed a strange film and one that allows Elizabeth Taylor to take us places we never thought we’d go as her mastery of masked torment pulls us in to the mystery of a character it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing. She unsettles throughout as a character never truly revealed and keeps us guessing with every outburst that may or may not be revelatory… her anger at being offered an “easy-care” dress, her outlandishly colourful style – she’s mocked to her face by her landlady but ignores her – her sexuality and relationship to the men: “I can’t stand being touched!”. Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Not her… she doesn’t appear to fear anyone or anything and we have to work out why.

The commentary from film curator Millie De Chirico is fascinating and as she says, this is a film that repays repeated viewing so props to the BFI for releasing it now on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK – it never even had a theatrical run. As De Chirico says Taylor was making really bold choices at this stage of her career – not just in a trashy “psycho-biddie” direction – but, because as a child star and product of the Hollywood system, loosing that pressure at this stage of her life – financially independent and just 42 - makes films like this feel like her reclaiming her freedom and image.

 

Liz poses with The Walter Syndrome

She and Richard Burton, were both to be in Italy, he filming The Voyage with Sophia Loren, but they split up, after ten years’ marriage, just before filming and this may, or may not have impacted her playing; she was so much the actor that it’s impossible to tell. They remarried in 1975 but we clearly have to view Taylor’s decisions on their own merits – she made her first film at 12 and her first marriage at 18, she was all about choices.

 

Based on a novella by Muriel Spark, who considered it one of her best works, the film was directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi who adopted Spark’s non-linear narrative, the story flashing forward and back as the impact of Taylor’s character Lise on others is shown in startling fashion. It’s a very effective device, earnest reality trying to identify her person and the reasons for why she will choose to do what she does… not that we know until the very end. It’s a mystery but one told in jumbled fashion, all the better to shock us.

 

Lise starts off selecting just the right dress for a trip she is taking to the South of Italy, her interactions with others are out of joint and she looks round the airport with suspicion at the men especially just as the screen freezes and CCT images are shown with a policeman’s voice instructing others to check through newly issued visas and passports, the beginning of the non-linear narrative.

Flash forward, the police at work

“Usually, the cover is more promising than the inside…”

 

At the airport an elder woman asks her advice on the best sadomasochistic book to choose, she takes this in her stride, bemoaning the lack of content to match the covers but telling her to take potluck. She chooses The Walter Syndrome by Richard Neely, a then popular slice of pulp fiction, about a psychotic killer of women and brandishes it throughout the film.

 

On the plane stranger interactions occur, a young man sat next to her, Pierre (Maxence Mailfort), who changes seats in a panic, whilst on her other side there’s the laughing presence of a off-the-charts Bill (Ian Bannen) who introduces himself with a demonic laugh talking about his macrobiotic laugh… he’s quite direct about his need for daily intercourse but Lise is not interested in his appetite or diet. Then we switch to the police, a lead detective played by Luigi Squarzina, interrogating the young man about his change of seats and relationship to Lise… What has she done, what will she do?

Landing in Rome – she selects the Villa Borghese Gardens as a meeting place later on - there’s a terrorist incident as the police shoot and chase a suspect, to add strangeness onto strangeness, a pale English aristocrat (played by Andy Warhol… oh yes…) returns Lise’s pulp fiction to her. Andy was in town filming Flesh for Frankenstein and makes the perfect otherworldly cameo.

A greeting from the extraordinary Ian.

 

Lise travels with the over-excitable Bill who fails to seduce her with his self-improvement small talk and drops her off at her hotel, leaving her and us cold. Next, we shift forward and he’s trying his dubious charms on the investigating police after what is going to happen happens… if Lise is having a mental trauma, what are we to make of Bill?

 

There’s a man staying there that I want to avoid and at the same time, I can’t find the one that I have to meet…

 

Lise arrives at her hotel room and there’s one of a number of exchanges with other women in service as she angrily requests a clean glass after finding dirt in the one in her bathroom. She’s exacting and used to giving orders; short and to the point rude every time with those she considers subordinate. She them takes a long time to apply her make -up… she’s feeling her age and relates to older women far more than those with youth from dancing shop assistants to less than un-rigorous room cleaners.

 

There’s now a sequence with Mrs Helen Fiedke (Mona Washbourne) as the two go shopping to the Standa department store as the elder woman talks at some length about her life, her late husband and her nephew who is due to arrive soon… someone Lise increasingly feels may be her type just like the man on the plane, and definitely not Bill. She talks at length about the kind of man she is looking for, something that could be “round the corner, at any time…” it sounds romantic, like destiny…

Liz and Mona Washbourne in the back seat

 

Next there is a violent terrorist attack in the streets and then the narrative shifts to the police interviewing the manly Carlo (Guido Mannari), someone we assume would be many women’s type but who we later see, sexually assaulted Lise. Typical of the abusive males that will have blighted Lise’s life and, most certainly, not the type she is looking for.

 

Lise’s mission cannot be revealed but, whatever her mental state, she wants to control her own destiny. According to De Chirico, it’s “…an audacious repudiation of the misogyny in popular culture, from cinematic serial-killer-thrillers to pulp crime fiction where women serve as passive victims…”  It’s a disturbing experience but she has been driven to extremes by casual abuse.

 

You’re all so suspicious, suspicious, suspicious!

 

The faded fantasies of our lost department stores.

It’s also worth mentioning the sparse piano score from Franco Mannino which perfectly fills the gaps between our understanding and sympathy for Lise. It is a film that piques your curiosity and leads the viewer to the darkest of conclusions. Taylor is on remarkable form and it’s great to see her away from Hollywood making a film so far away from the formulas of even lower-budget studio fare. Giuseppe Patroni Griffi directs with control and the cinematography from three-time Oscar® winner Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now), is superb. A treat in 4k!

 

The extras are, of the high-quality we have come to expect from the BFI.

 

• Restored in 4K by Cineteca di Bologna and Severin Films and presented in High Definition
• Introduction By Kier-La Janisse, author of House of Psychotic Women (2022, 6 mins)
• Audio Commentary with curator and programmer Millie De Chirico (2022)
• A Lack of Absence (2022, 22 mins): writer and literary historian Chandra Mayor on Muriel Spark and The Driver's Seat
• The Driver’s Seat credit sequences (1974, 4 mins)
• Waiting For… (1970, 11 mins): a young woman embarks on a filmmaking project when some mysterious men give her a camera and tell her to capture her everyday reality
• The Telephone (1981, 4 mins): a young woman enacts an imaginative revenge on her boyfriend for being unfaithful in this short film by Chris Petit (Radio On)
• Darling, Do You Love Me? (1968, 4 mins) in a hugely entertaining parody of her media persona, Germaine Greer stars as a terrifyingly amorous woman who pursues a man relentlessly.
• National Theatre of Scotland trailer (2015, 2 mins): The trailer for the National Theatre of Scotland's 2015 stage production of The Driver's Seat

 

As is tradition, with the first pressing only - there’s also a handsome illustrated booklet featuring new writing on the film by the BFI’s Simon McCallum and Canadian artist, writer and filmmaker Bruce LaBruce. Also includes Kier-La Janisse’s writing on The Driver’s Seat, previously published in her acclaimed book, House of Psychotic Women.

 

You can order the blur-ray direct from BFI and it’s out today!

Andy, Lupa, Romulus, Remus and Elizabeth

Emeric alone… Miracle in Soho (1957)

It’s 1957 and the greatest team in British cinema history has reached the end with Ill Met by Moonlight; Michael Powell will go on to make Peeping Tom and leave for Australia eventually finding Helen Mirren and James Mason on a beach. But what of Mr Pressburger, the man who contributed at least as much to put the arch in The Archers?

Miracle in Soho was directed by Julian Amyes from a script Pressburger had originally written in 1934  it does actually feel like half of a P&P film in spite of the contribution from two of their main collaborators: cinematographer Christopher Challis and composer Brian Easdale (not to mention Cyril Cusack). That doesn’t make it a bad film though; it’s a very interesting film even if, at this remove, it’s hard to tell how authentic the Soho in the picture was: when did the pet shops and Salvation Army get replaced by “models” and clip joints?

A glimpse of your actual Soho and then on set

The film is a celebration of multi-cultural London written by a Hungarian Jew who had only arrived in this country a few years earlier. Had he been welcomed or was he, in the manner of A Canterbury Tale, calling for a jot more tolerance by evoking the natural inclusivity of “Britishness”? There’s redemption for everyone by welcoming in others to help, supporting each other, solidarity with mates and a church that not only holds family together but can also summon convenient ruptures in the water supply…

Entirely British

Lead character Michael Morgan (John Gregson who’s nicotine-stained hand reveals perhaps a far more anxious character than the one he is playing) is very much an island; picking up and discarding girlfriends in every street he works and moving on relentlessly not wishing to be tied down by the responsibility of genuine affection.

The negative impact of this is seen in the opening scenes as firstly a vengeful husband arrives to deck one of the workmen, also called Michael, in the mistaken belief that he’s the man who was making merry with his Suzie. Then a young woman called Maggie (a youthful Billie Whitelaw – so classy at any age) arrives in search of Michael, who tells her she’s misunderstood their relationship “this is the way it was with us…” he says, man-splaining (as my daughter would say) his dispassionate view of their open engagement, one purely based on the location of his work and nothing more… besides, he’s already got his eyes on the tight sweater of barmaid Gladys (Barbara Archer).

Billie and Babara at the bar

Michael is part of a group of workers called in to relay the tarmacadam on St Andrew’s Lane, a made up street in a studio-bound Soho. The massive sets, designed by Oscar-winner Carmen Dillon, evoke a London of time just past – lots of familiar brands in the pet shop but with long gone beers in the pub: you’ll have to go to The Coach and Horses on Greek Street to see still-extant advertising for Double Diamond and other lost ales.

Cyril Cusack looks over The War Cry to disapprove...

It’s a street full of the new influx of immigrants who helped build Britain from the thirties onwards, who opened restaurants, hairdressers, dance studios and shops of every type to bring vibrancy to the streets. There’s a harmony in the film’s Soho that may not have been entirely matched by contemporary reality but Pressburger wasn’t just an optimist he had been welcomed by this country as had many others and – surviving from this time there is still the French House, Bar Italia and Maison Bertaux (from 1871 actually).

Cyril and Rosalie Crutchley

Michael sets about hammering the old road up and befriending his workmates whilst arranging to view Gladys’ sweater in closer quarters. He has to make a quick exit as they are interrupted by the arrival of her boyfriend Filippo Gozzi (Ian Bannen) an intense young man who manages a wine merchant's and is intent on marrying Gladys.

Filippo is part of an Italian family whose father (Peter Illing) plans on moving them all to Canada to find a new life. Daughter Mafalda (Rosalie Crutchley) is the eldest and resolved to marrying a convenient man whilst youngest Julia (Belinda Lee) is still to be disappointed by life – she is not ready to compromise.

Belinda Lee's belting smile floors John Gregson

Working his way up the street as either postman or Salvation Army “captain” is Sam Bishop (Cyril Cusack – who masters a lovely high-pitched busy-bodied tone throughout), who acts as a one man Greek chorus.

Around them are bit parts from well-known faces as expectant husbands, blondes in need and sagacious watchmen… there’s a lot of life in this street.

The actors ignore the distraction of all those ancient brands...

Naturally Julia catches Michael’s attention and the question will be whether she will be just another “best girl in the street” for the itinerant Romeo or whether he’ll finally be brought to ground and, even if he is, will anything stop her joining the family exodus to Canada?

Miracle in Soho is a gently compelling film given extra intimacy by the unreality of its camera-angled sets. There are good performances from Crutchley, Bannen and Cusack as you’d expect whilst Belinda Lee is charming enough to anchor any wanderer’s affections.  John Gregson pushes the envelope on his natural likability and, whilst his Irish accent frequently deserts him he’s spot on as decency takes hold.

The family that sings together...

With far grittier kitchen sinks just around the corner, the film looks back rather than forward but still has a cosy charm all of its own and the magic realist tone you would expect from its author and producer. Brian Easdale also delivers a nuanced score – he knew where to find the buried meanings in Emeric’s words.

The film is available at reasonable price from Movie Mail and Amazon – probably not entirely essential but if you love The Archers you will like this.

The old man prefers his tea from the saucer...me too!