Change Your Image
dctrevans
Reviews
Topkapi (1964)
Stands up quite well.
I saw this on TV for the first time in 1973 when I was aged 13 and noted in my diary at the time that it was 'the best film ever". And I'd already seen The Dambusters so that was praise indeed. Viewing it for the second time aged 63 I see no reason to change my opinion. Ustinov is marvellous as the blundering amateur criminal. Mercuri has that indefinable star quality and the heist scene is ridiculously tense: truly memorable. What could possibly go wrong. I'm shortly to be visiting the Topkapi Palace and this has given me an idea. The book that the film is based on by Eric Ambler is excellent as well.
The Man in the Sky (1957)
Brilliant Jack Hawkins
A film that takes us back to a Britain of medium sized businesses striving to make their way in the world of post WW2 austerity. Yesterday's Britain - a better Britain. You stand or fall by your own efforts and do not expect the State to bail you out.
What makes people do their duty above all other alternatives? Well, in order to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and when so many people's livelihoods depend upon your applying your training to the ultimate challenge all other considerations take a back seat. Hawkins' ability to exude a veneer of calm professionalism and blank out his fear for his wife and boys is unparalleled. A very moving scene at the end.
The Way We Live (1946)
Interesting snapshot of a city destroyed by the blitz
Plymouth is quite a lovely city but the post war urban plan illustrated here was a bit of a disaster. It looked very modern but the flat-roofed shops symbolise post war planning blight and soulless urban decay. They may have talked about asking the people but what they ended up with was a ruined church stuck in the middle of a busy roundabout. What was all that marching at the end? Very sinister. I quite liked the stark modernism of the shopping centre as a child of the sixties and The Hoe remains lovely - they couldn't touch that - it is thrilling to see Sunderland flying boats moored in the harbour.
Incidentally, the wife and I danced on The Hoe to an American dance band on the 40th anniversary of VE Day.
Only Two Can Play (1962)
Bittersweet comedy, brilliantly written and acted
Brilliant performances by Peter Sellers as John Lewis, a disillusioned junior Aberdarcy librarian with Kenneth Griffith his henpecked colleague and the tragic Virginia Maskell as his beautiful unappreciated wife. Based on "That Uncertain Feeling" by Kingsley Amis (who lived in Swansea for a while) we follow Mr Lewis's travails as he uses his magnetism for a certain type of bored housewife in an attempt to further his ambition to become an assistant librarian.
Mai Zetterling as the rich and socially confident Mrs Griffiths-Williams, married to a man chairing the interview panel, provides a potential leg up and leg over.
The scene of bitchiness between Lewis, who writes theatre reviews for a local paper, and Richard Attenborough as a poncy playwright called Probert at a soirée hosted by the Griffith-Williams' is superb (Probert has always had a thing for Mrs Lewis).
The excruciating librarian interview sequence is hilarious, firstly as Kenneth Griffiths' character is asked to state his name, " Ieuan Islwyn Owen Dafydd ap Jenkins sir."
"You are Welsh?"
John Le Mesurier recognises Lewis (who was pretending to be a plumber in an earlier encounter as Lewis attempted unsuccessfully to escape from the Griffiths-Williams' residence. Seller's ability as a physical comedian foreshadows his later triumph as Clouseau). The interview descends into farce and Lewis is convinced he fluffed it.
The whole thing is genius and delightful. Multiple viewings recommended.
The October Man (1947)
Tense, atmospheric thriller, wonderful cast, beautifully filmed.
An excellent Eric Ambler thriller in which John Mills plays Jim Acland, the ordinary-man-in-extraordinary-circumstances. Ambler's superb books often have this theme. Acland is a guilt-ridden, brain-injured convalescent who has been discharged from hospital a year after a tragic bus crash in which a child (played by Juliet Mills) is killed.
Clearly suffering from PTSD he moves into a rather seedy hotel and makes a poor impression with the other guests except the underwear model in the next room who has an unfortunate taste in father-figures. Careful Jim!
Jim resumes his old work at a chemical company and slowly begins to recover his equanimity, falling for his work colleague's sister, the fabulous Joan Greenwood, at a dinner dance.
When the girl from the next room is found strangled on the common Acland has no alibi, but a scrunched up cheque for £30 that he's lent to her is handily adjacent to the body. The prejudice of the other guests and the police regarding sufferers from mental health problems conspire to implicate Acland.
There follows an incredibly tense period during which Jim has to try and find out the real murderer whilst possibly believing he could himself be guilty. He's prone to suicidal impulses but determinedly seeks proof of his own innocence.
Blind Date (1959)
Taut police procedural
An excellent Stanley Baker in full Welsh-accented flow as the idiosyncratic DI David Evan Morgan unravelling the murder of a French woman at her oddly gaudy London flat. Baker keeps an unconventionally close rein on Hardy Kruger, who maintains his innocence whilst withholding enough information to keep the inspector interested in his relationship with the dead woman. Being found at the murder scene doesn't help the young Dutchman's situation. Some flashbacks give us the background to the tensions between the struggling artist and his muse.
Downing a considerable quantity of milk (peptic ulcers were the cause of the commonest surgical operation in the late 1950s - fewer cigarillos would help Stanley) Morgan has to juggle his quest for the truth with the usual insistence from above that a top level government minister is not to be embarrassed by the outcome.