Tag: British cinema

The Bank Job (2008) – A Movie Review

photog 2 Comments Movie Reviews, Reviews , , , , , , ,

“The Bank Job” is a 2008 British heist film that allegedly reveals the true circumstances behind an actual British bank robbery that happened in 1971 in London.  Whether it is mostly accurate about MI5’s involvement in the motive for the robbery is up for speculation.

It stars Jason Statham as Terry Leather the ringleader of the heist and he is likely to be the only actor whom an American viewer is at all likely to recognize.  Although I read somewhere that Mick Jagger had a tiny uncredited part.  But I never saw him on screen.

The plot has MI5 trying to figure out how to steal naked photos of royal family member Princess Margaret from the bank safety deposit box of a black nationalist revolutionary named Michael X who is using them as leverage to keep the British government from arresting and prosecuting him on various illegal activities.

The spies arrest a girl named Martine Love on drug charges and get her to agree to persuade her friend Terry Leather to use his contacts to rob the safe deposit boxes while the alarm system is conveniently down for repairs.  Terry agrees to run the job because his auto sales business is failing miserably and because the set-up seems simple and fool-proof.  He gathers his crew which include friends with various skills (most notably a fellow adept at using a “thermal lance” to cut through reinforced concrete.  The plan is to rent a store forty feet from the bank and over the weekend tunnel under the vault and cut their way through the floor.

But in many respects, the amateurish skills of the team cause the robbery to go off track.  A ham radio operator overhears their lookout man on the roof talking to the team on a walkie-talkie about the robbery in very explicit terms and he calls the police in.  A search across London is initiated to find which bank is being robbed and the gang has to bail before they can finish emptying all the boxes.  And worse, underworld figures who also used the safety deposit boxes to store records that can incriminate them, their powerful clients and crooked cops, begin the task of tracking down the robbers.  And they succeed.  One of the robbers is caught, tortured, forced to turn in his partners and then murdered.  Three others are found and two murdered.  One is held to blackmail Terry into handing over the records.

But when Terry finds out about the photos of Princess Margaret, he comes up with a plan to exchange the photos for immunity and new identities to allow them to escape the police and the underworld killers and keep the heist money.  Royal family member Lord Mountbatten acts as the intermediary between Terry and MI5 and trades the photos for the immunity.  And using the records that the underworld figures want back, Terry is able to use the police to rescue his associate and arrest the men who are hunting his crew.

Okay, so we really don’t know how much of all this is true.  But the important question is whether it makes a good movie.  I’ll say yes.  Jason Statham is a reliably entertaining actor and he provides the likeable character needed to give the audience someone to root for.  He’s got the working class persona with the wife and kids at home providing the pathos that the other characters don’t possess and he does get to beat up some bad guys which is his forte.  Regardless of whether the story is completely accurate the movie is entertaining and if you like heist movies I think you’ll enjoy it.

The Dresser (1983) – A Movie Review

photog Movie Reviews, Reviews , , , , ,

“The Dresser” is a very odd film.  It’s based on a stage play and since it involves the staging of a performance of King Lear, you could say theater suffuses the movie.  It takes place in England during WWII.  Albert Finney plays Sir; an aged Shakespearean actor of the old school, full of exaggerated gestures and overblown histrionic elocution.  He leads a company of actors travelling around Britain performing Shakespeare to the wartime population.  But it’s not going well.  Because of the draft, Sir declares that he must find his actors from amongst, “old men, cripples and nancy-boys.”  And he says this to his dresser Norman even though Norman is obviously one of those nancy-boys.

Tom Courtenay plays Norman as a somewhat flamboyant homosexual who assists Sir in preparing for his performances.  He bathes him, helps him apply his make-up and if necessary, reminds him of his lines from the wings.  But this assistance has of late become much more difficult because Sir seems to be having a mental and physical breakdown.  He becomes incoherent and agitated and is liable to run screaming through the streets shouting that he can’t go on.

On the day of his first performance in a new city he is hospitalized because of one of these fits coming upon him in public.  And the company and especially Madge the business manager are convinced that Sir has reached the end of his career and must retire to a rest home.  But when he shows up back at the theater Norman uses all of his knowledge of Sir’s psychology to calm him and orient him into the mental state needed to perform the part of King Lear.  Using visual and vocal cues he walks him through the ritual by which the make-up and costume of Lear bring Sir back into the mindset needed to perform.

And that is the film; Norman coaching, praising, wheedling and sometimes chastising the old man into producing a performance of Lear that the audience receives enthusiastically.  And during the performance and the breaks in the play when the Lear character is not on stage we learn about Sir’s relationship to his troupe; Madge’s basically unrequited love for Sir and his relationship with his wife; “Her Ladyship” who is playing Cordelia and how he stands with the other members of the acting troupe, who mostly fear him for his cantankerous temper.

And by the end of the play when Sir dies peacefully in his dressing room with only Norman there to witness his end we find out that Norman loved him too although it was completely unexpressed in life.  And he weeps over the body of Sir.

Now this is a very strange film.  And if it’s a pro-homosexual movie then it’s a very odd one.  Norman takes abuse by anyone outside the theater who sizes up his obviously gay speech pattern and mannerisms.  He’s told to “sod off,” “get stuffed” and “bugger off” by three different characters.  One of the actors who knows of his friendship with a homosexual actor who has been arrested, notes to Norman that, “The pansy fraternity is always upset when one of their own is caught.”  And even Sir, when discussing this actor’s arrest with Norman states that he himself “holds no brief for buggers.”  So obviously this is not one of the modern paeans to gayness.

But I found it quite entertaining.  Albert Finney’s portrayal of Sir is by turns; interesting, humorous, sad and extremely human.  The character of Norman is also well-drawn.  He’s a fussy, neurotic but loyal friend to Sir and a hard-working part of the acting company.  You can see that this acting troupe is his whole life and Sir’s death represents the end of his own small world.  He will be all by himself.

Recommending this film is difficult.  The gay identity of Norman may put off some viewers.  So, let’s put that in as a caveat.  If that doesn’t preclude someone from watching the film then I can recommend it from the point of view of entertainment.  The play within a movie keeps your attention and the characters are well-drawn and interesting.

This Happy Breed (1944) – A Movie Review

photog Movie Reviews, Reviews , , , , , ,

This Happy Breed is a fictional portrayal of life in working class England from the end of the First World War to the eve of the Second world War.  I won’t give any spoiler warnings because it’s not that kind of movie.  It’s an intimate look at a family in suburban London between the wars and all of the important and trivial things that make up human life.

Frank Gibbons (played by Robert Newton) returns from war to his family; wife Ethel (played by Celia Johnson), his teenage son Reg, his daughters Vi and Queenie, his mother-in-law Mrs. Flint and his sister Sylvia, all living under his roof.  His next-door neighbor Bob Mitchell is a war buddy and becomes Frank’s best friend.  And Bob’s son Billy will eventually become Queenie’s boyfriend.

Over the course of the twenty years that the movie covers we watch the children grow up, navigate the troubled economy of Britain between the wars, fall in love, marry and in one case die tragically.  Children rebel against their parents’ expectations and mores and come out the other side older and sadder and much like their parents.

The movie is a slice of life in three acts and a total of nine scenes spread across those twenty years.  I guess what I liked about the film is the feeling of believability about the characters but at the same time the likeability of most of them.  Even though they were Brits and from a time period before I was born, they felt strangely familiar.  And I was invested in their stories.  You could actually care how things turned out for them because they were decent people trying to muddle through their lives during a period of history when England was still reeling from the loss of a generation of young men in World War I and staggering under the global economic changes that would reduce them to a poorer nation.  Frank and Ethel love their family and try their best to steer their children in the right direction.

There are moments of pathos and humor.  And the acting is top notch without any flashiness or highbrow dialog.  Just simple people living their lives.  I’m not sure who I would recommend this movie to.  First remember that for Americans the British locale might make it a little strange.  But actually, I didn’t think it was off-putting.  Events like the death of their king or the 1926 General Strike might seem unfamiliar but not mysterious.  If the description I give here doesn’t sound interesting then give this a pass.  But I consider it a gem of a film that I’m surprised I never saw before.  Highly recommended.

The League of Gentlemen (1960) – A Movie Review

photog Movie Reviews, Reviews , , , , ,

This is an English bank heist film.  And it’s a good one.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The movie opens up with a man emerging from a London manhole cover dressed in proper evening attire and driving away in a Rolls Royce.  That should set the tone for the movie.  This same man, retired Lieutenant-Colonel Norman Hyde, is next seen cutting some five-pound banknotes in half and mailing the halves along with a paperback book about a bank heist called the “Golden Fleece” to seven different men.  Next, we meet each of these men as they receive their packages.  Each is a retired military officer.

Major Peter Race is now living as a down on his luck gambler.

Captain “Padre” Mycroft is a confidence man pretending to be a vicar.

Lieutenant Edward Lexy, played by a much younger Richard Attenborough, is an electronics technician who does side jobs “fixing slot machines for racketeers to shortchange the winners.

Captain Martin Porthill is a gigolo living off the largesse from middle-aged women

Captain Stevens is a homosexual masseuse.

Major Rupert Rutland-Smith is a piano player barely getting by.

Captain Frank Weaver is an unhappily married man.

Hyde is contacting each of them because they were dishonorably discharged from the military and therefore unable to make a good living in the civilian world.  He wants to offer them a share in a bank heist that he is planning.  Each of them has an expertise that will contribute to the success of his military style mission to rob a bank of a million pounds from which each will get an equal share.  One is an expert in explosives, another in communications, another a procurement expert who can forge car and truck license plates.  Two of them are combat veterans who are well trained in crowd control and unafraid to kill.  One is adept at hotwiring and stealing cars.  All have a desire to escape their present lives and live happily ever off of one enormous payday.

They all sign on with Major Race as Hyde’s second in command.  Their first objective is to steal enough weapons and explosives from a British military base to outfit the heist.  The men follow an ingenious plan of Hyde’s to decoy the personnel of the base with a phony inspection by top brass while the rest of the crew pillage the arsenal.

After this success the team moves forward on the plan.  They steal the vehicles they’ll need for the robbery.  They assemble the explosives and the jamming devices.  And they work out the schedule down to the minute.  And as soon as the armored car leaves the bank and turns the corner, the team springs the trap.  The utility shafts that house the alarm and phone lines are blown, the air outside the bank is filled with dense smoke and the team raids the bank brandishing machine guns.  They quickly wheel away the cart from the armored car delivery with the twenty boxes each containing fifty thousand pounds and escape with the money.

But completely coincidentally a little boy had copied down the license plate number of the getaway truck.  Later that day we see Hyde distributing the money to the team at his hideout.  The mood is celebratory.  One by one the team members take their cut of the loot and leave.  When only Hyde and Race are left, a call comes in on the telephone.  It’s Scotland Yard and they order them to come out and give themselves up.  Hyde demands to know which of the team turned them in.  Instead, they find out about the little boy and the license plates.

When they are escorted into the police-wagon we see the rest of the team already captured and manacled together.

I found this old bank heist movie a hidden gem.  I’d never heard of it and despite its “ancient” origin it was very well done, both in terms of the acting and the heist details.  The camaraderie of these total strangers is somewhat reminiscent of such military movies as “The Dirty Dozen” and “The Great Escape.”  But in this case the battle is a crime.  I highly recommend this movie to anyone who likes a good heist movie and to the general viewer of quality cinema.

Obsession (1949) – A Movie Review

photog Movie Reviews, Reviews , , , ,

“The Hidden Room” is a crime drama that was made in England.  It was released in the United States with the title “Obsession.”

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Dr. Clive Riordan’s wife Storm is cheating on him with an American named Bill Kronin.  After catching them together when they thought he was out of town he kidnaps Bill and imprisons him in a bombed out building on the outskirts of London.  He plans to murder him and then liquify the body with a corrosive chemical that he formulates in a lab in his medical office.  But Riordan has decided to wait before killing Bill until he is sure that the authorities don’t suspect him in Bill’s disappearance.  The majority of the movie is made up of Riordan’s visits to provide food and drink to Bill in his improvised prison cell.  Bill is shackled to a wall and Riordan has marked on the floor in chalk the areas of the room that are outside of Bill’s reach.  Riordan is a polite and even accommodating host, providing Bill with his choice of books and even cocktails.  And being a psychiatrist, he explains the psychological reason for his need for revenge.

But finally, after four months Riordan is convinced that it is safe to dispatch his guest.  However, Riordan’s wife has been in touch with Scotland Yard and eventually Superintendent Finsbury pays a visit to Riordan and this buys Bill a reprieve.  When Riordan overhears his wife on the phone with Finsbury, he decides to finish off Bill and he mixes a poison in Bill’s martini for the night.  But thanks to Finsbury’s actions Bill is rescued before the poison can take his life.  Riordan is arrested by Finsbury and Storm says goodbye to Bill in his hospital room before she leaves on a sea voyage to find a new man with which to stave off boredom.

None of the actors will be familiar to an American audience but this movie is interesting because of the scenes between Bill and Riordan.  Their strange companionship in these scenes is amusing and surprisingly compelling.  Since neither has anything to lose by being honest they both portray their thoughts candidly.  Not that murder is an acceptable social action but Riordan does explain openly his decision to punish his wife’s infidelities as a salve for his pride.  And Bill maintains his spirits believing that Riordan will back away from his murderous plan when the authorities maintain their pursuit of his disappearance.  The story is somewhat preposterous but I very much enjoyed it for the scenes with the prospective victim and murderer.  Their pleasant discussions of Bill’s upcoming demise make this a movie I can recommend.

Room at the Top (1958) _ A Movie Review

photog Movie Reviews , , , ,

This movie was part of the “Angry Young Men” school of post WWII British film.  It reflected the dissatisfaction with reduced economic opportunities in the British post-war era and the anxiety over the breakdown of traditional societal norms and class structure.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Joe Lampton (played by Laurence Harvey) is a working-class young man who has returned from three years in a German POW camp during the war.  He leaves the poverty of his hometown of West Riding to find opportunities in the more upscale town of Warnley.  He becomes a clerk in the Borough Treasurer’s Office where he meets Charlie Soames who becomes his friend and roommate.  And Charlie quickly learns that Joe plans to use his good looks to marry a rich man’s daughter.

Specifically, he finds that Mr. Brown, the local millionaire, has a daughter Susan who would be perfect for the part.  She’s young, pretty and susceptible to his charms.  Throughout the rest of the movie Joe takes every opportunity to charm Susan.  And he’s successful in fascinating her.  But her parents and her whole social circle reject his advances categorically and stand in the way of Joe ever spending any time with the girl.  They go as far as sending her to France on holiday just to keep them apart.

Meanwhile Joe has himself fallen in love with a married woman.  Alice Aisgill (played by Simone Signoret) is a French woman, older than Joe.  Her upper-class husband George is steadily unfaithful to her with women that he visits supposedly “on business.”  Joe’s working-class sympathies lead him to despise George and he easily falls into an affair with Alice that is conducted simultaneously with his campaign to wed Susan.

Eventually Susan finds a way to escape her parents’ protection and she and Joe wind up in bed together.  But Joe finds Susan’s company much less stimulating than Alice’s.  Susan’s prattle seems sophomoric and dull compared to his conversations with Alice.  Joe discovers that Alice is the woman he wants.  He plans to marry her as soon as she can get a divorce from George.  But George confronts him and tells him that he’ll never agree to divorce Alice and if she tries to leave him, he’ll blacken their names so badly in the courts that they’ll become pariahs.

And just after this meeting he is summoned by Mr. Brown to a fancy conservative club where he learns that Susan is going to have a child by him.  And Mr. Brown has decided to accept him as a son-in-law and bring him into the family business.  But the condition is that he must break off his scandalous relationship with Alice.

Joe goes to Alice and tells her of Susan’s pregnancy and the impossibility of Alice and him ever having a life together.  And he tells her that he plans to marry Susan and that Alice would never see him again.  Alice is devastated.  She goes out drinking and we learn afterward that she crashes her car and dies in the wreck.  Next morning as news of the impending nuptials between Joe and Susan circulate through the Treasurer’s office and Charlie and his other friends are congratulating him Joe hears of Alice’s horrible death and he goes into shock.

In the next scene Joe has gone on a bender in some dive bar.  He has taken up with a woman who’s also quite drunk and when her boyfriend shows up Joe threatens him and scares him off.  But later on, this man and his friends find Joe and pummel him into unconsciousness and leave him bleeding in the street.  Eventually the next morning Charlie finds Joe and takes him home.

The last scene is Joe and Susan’s wedding ceremony with the priest reciting the vows and Joe, after a perceptible pause, answering, “I will.”  As they drive off in the wedding limousine Susan talks about the meaning she found in the ceremony.  But she notices that Joe has tears in his eyes so she says, “You really are sentimental, after all.”  But he just smiles brokenly as the movie ends.

I always find English movies of this time period a little depressing.  And this film is certainly no exception but for all that I thought it had its merits.  Despite his mercenary attitude toward Susan, Joe’s working-class sensibilities and the snobbish cruelty of his upper-class persecutors quickly win over the sympathies of the audience.  His guilt and contrition over abandoning Alice and her subsequent death are meant to convince us that he has grown and might become a better man.  I can’t unreservedly recommend this movie for everyone.  But if based on my description it sounds interesting give it a try.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) – A Movie Review

photog Movie Reviews, Reviews , , , , , ,

This is a British film from the 1960’s and reflects the filmmaking conventions of that place and time.  This is seen in the realistic and drab scenery and even the look of the actors themselves.  The atmosphere is depressing and claustrophobic in the extreme.

Bill and Myra Savage are a middle-aged married couple.  Myra is a professional medium who performs seances for a small circle of believers who would like to communicate with the dearly departed.  Bill is a man who was forced to stop working because of health problems.  Myra is the dominant partner in the marriage and berates and orders Bill around.  But it is apparent that Myra is delusional about many things including her “gift.”  She wishes to be rich and famous for her ability to speak to the dead.

In support of this desire, she comes up with a plan.  It’s a carefully detailed plan to kidnap the young daughter of a rich man and hold her for ransom.  But in addition, the plan calls for Myra to use her “gift” to allow the girl to be found unharmed after the ransom is delivered.  And of course, Bill will have to perform all the active parts of the plan.  He is to kidnap the girl, make the ransom demand, pick up the ransom and drop the girl off for the return.  Myra’s part is to set up the room for the hostage and act as a “nurse” for the girl in the fiction that they will try to maintain that she is a patient in a hospital.  To that end they have a room painted white and a facsimile of a hospital bed set up in it.  And finally, Myra will contact the kidnapped girl’s family and claim that she is in contact with the girl through her spirit world contact, “Arthur.”  And when they have the money, Myra will tell the parents where to find their daughter after Bill has dropped her off at the pick-up spot.

Surprisingly, the plan is remarkably successful.  The girl’s kidnap goes off without a hitch and the ransom is collected by a complicated and circuitous route that the father has to follow going in and around the London Underground Railway.  But after the ransom pick-up the mother of the kidnapped girl shows up at one of Myra’s afternoon seances and we have the nerve-racking experience for Bill of trying to keep the little girl quiet as she calls out in a delirium of fever for her mother who is right in the next room taking part in a séance that is supposedly in contact with her.  At the climax of the séance Myra faints and the séance is stopped and the girl’s mother departs without incident.

But the excitement that Myra felt during this bizarre and dangerous charade has inspired a new and hideous change in the plan.  Myra tells Bill that Arthur, her spirit partner has asked that the girl be sent to him in the spirit world.  In other words, Myra wants Bill to kill the girl with chloroform and thus allow Arthur to have her spirit as his companion.

This madness horrifies Bill and he tries to force Myra to confront her delusions.  Arthur is the dead child of Bill and Myra but whereas Myra believed that Arthur was a child in their lives into his school age years the reality is that “Arthur” was a stillborn baby.  He tries to convince her that there is no Arthur and all these fantasies are her imagination.  And that killing the girl is madness.  But Myra raves on about her gift and Arthur and screams at Bill until he agrees to do her bidding.

In the next scene we see Bill leaving the child’s body in a wooded area and then rushing away to his vehicle.  When he gets home Myra is delighted at the way the plan has worked out.  But suddenly there is a knock at the door.  Bill answers it and comes back with three plainclothes policemen.  They ask Myra if she will perform a séance to help the police locate the girl now that the ransom has been paid.  She agrees and begins the performance with Bill and two of the policemen forming the circle around the table with her.  Myra goes into her trance and starts talking to and for Arthur and slowly she begins to repeat the conversation that Arthur must have had in her mind about killing the child.  When she lapses into silence where she is pantomiming herself cradling a small child in her lap the senior officer looks at Bill and says, “Where did you hide the money sir?”  And Bill replies, It’s in the coal cellar.”  Then Bill adds, “You found the girl alright?”  and the detective says, “Yes, she’s alright.”  And there the movie ends.

This is one weird and creepy movie.  Myra is a deranged lunatic and Bill is a pathetic weakling.  But he actually loves her.  And the atmosphere and plot are quite effective at providing suspense and interest in the story.  Interestingly, Bill was played by Richard Attenborough, the guy who played John Hammond, the man who built Jurassic Park in that movie.  Taken all in all I recommend this movie to fans of suspense movies.  It’s not as shocking as Psycho but it is a similar experience.

The Four Feathers (1939) – A Classic Movie Review

photog Movie Reviews, OCF Classic Movie Reviews, Reviews , , , , , , ,

This 1939 British version of the story stars John Clements as Harry Faversham a young Englishman whose family has a centuries old tradition of military service but who himself fears the reality of war.  He is engaged to Ethne Burroughs daughter of retired General Burroughs and sister to Peter Burroughs his best friend and comrade in the Royal North Surrey Regiment of the British Army.  Ralph Richardson plays Captain John Durrance, Faversham’s rival for Ethne’s love and the main cast is rounded out by Jack Allen as Lieutenant Willoughby.

As the marriage approaches the British Army is about to send an expedition from Egypt to Sudan to reconquer Khartoum ten years after the Mahdi had captured it from General Gordon.  The Royal North Surrey Regiment is called up for service but Faversham resigns his commission to avoid fighting.  His three friends send him a package that consists of a box with three white feathers attached to cards with each of their names.  When he arrives at Ethne’s home her father will not even speak to him and because of Ethne’s sorrowful reaction to his actions he takes a white feather from her fan and tells her he will add it as her contribution to his collection of white feathers.

Now feeling himself to be the coward that his friends have declared him he visits his father’s old friend Dr Sutton and works through his feelings with this mentor and decides that he must restore his honor by going to Sudan and proving himself.  But of course, he’s no longer in the British Army so he goes to Egypt and recruits the help of an Egyptian friend of Dr. Sutton who disguises him as a native.  But to hide his lack of knowledge of Arabic he is branded on the forehead to appear as one of the mute Sangali tribe.  In this guise he travels to Sudan and joins the work gang that is helping to transport the British Army under Kitchener to Khartoum.  And he is just in time to save Captain John Durrance from death when his company is surrounded by the Mahdi’s army during a diversionary action that the British planned to allow the bulk of their army to escape a battle at the enemy’s stronghold.

Durrance has suffered a heat stroke and is now blind.  When his position is being overrun Faversham is able to save his life although both of them are wounded and left for dead by the Mahdi’s men.  Burroughs and Willoughby are captured and taken back to Khartoum for imprisonment or worse.

Faversham continues the impersonation of a mute while he transports Durrance across the desert back to the British territory and medical help.  Before escaping from the British Faversham manages to place the feather that Durrance gave him back in Durrance’s wallet.

Now Faversham travels to Khartoum and manages to give his two friends a file that they can use to saw through their shackles in prison.  He ends up being discovered as an Englishman by the Mahdi and tortured for information.  He is thrown into the prison with his friends.  He reveals himself to his friends and tells them his plan.  If the Mahdi is beaten by Kitchener in battle, he is likely to retreat back to Khartoum and kill his prisoners before the British can take the town and free them.  So, Faversham’s plan is to use the file to free as many of the prisoners as possible and wait until the Mahdi’s army sets out for battle then overwhelm the few guards and take possession of the arsenal building that will provide them with the weapons and walls they need to survive until the British take the town.

Things work as Faversham expects until the British army follows the Mahdi’s army and begins bombarding the arsenal.  To save themselves from being blown to bits they manage to find an old British flag from the former regime and raise it over the arsenal just in time to save their lives.

Returning to England with his comrades Faversham finds himself forgiven his former cowardice and indeed a hero.  But most importantly his fiancée revives her plan to marry him.

The movie has several things going for it.  It was filmed on location in the places depicted in the story.  The cinematography is impressive and the production was able to enlist British soldiers in period costumes to film the battle scenes.  Large forces of men on camels and horses also adds drama to these scenes.  The story is highly improbable but the action is enjoyable and the characters are interesting.  One standout is C. Aubrey Smith’s portrayal of General Burroughs.  In several scenes Burrough’s laments the present-day army’s lack of toughness.  In each case he uses food found on a banquet table to reenact the Crimean War, Battle of Balaclava.  By the end of the movie, to the relief of the audience, Faversham is in a position to finally shut up his prospective father-in-law by correcting his mistaken narrative of how Burroughs’s actually began the famous charge.  I like these old tales from the British Empire.  They are filled with adventure and the ethos of the time.  Highly recommended for fans of high adventure.

Libel (1959) – A Movie Review

photog Movie Reviews, Reviews , , , , , ,

Libel is a British courtroom drama. The legal case is a libel charge against a man, Jeffrey Buckenham, who claims that an imposter stole the identity of an English baronet.  Buckenham claims that during WWII in a German POW camp, a fellow POW who looked remarkably similar to Sir Mark Loddon stole his identity during an escape from the camp.  Buckenham claims that during their escape the imposter, Frank Welney, escaped but Lodden perished.  Dirk Bogarde plays both Loddon and Welney.  Olivia de Havilland plays Lodden’s wife, Lady Margaret Loddon.  Paul Massie plays Buckenham.  And finally, familiar character actors Robert Morley and Wilfrid Hyde-White play, respectively, the prosecuting and defense attorneys.

The story develops with us seeing that the man assumed to be Mark Lodden suffers from extreme amnesia of his pre-war life and is also haunted by recurring nightmares that include a snatch of song and an image of a face in a mirror.  His wife provides patient support during all his agony but as the trial progresses the story told by Buckenham begins to eat away at her belief in her husband and his identity.  Buckenham relates details about Welney’s behavior that makes it plausible that he might have pulled off the impersonation.  He was a professional actor.  He had pumped Lodden for details of his private life.  Welney had a missing finger that the present Sir Lodden also claimed to have lost to a bullet wound during his escape.  Buckenham even testified that he overheard Welney talking to himself about impersonating Lodden if he ever returned but Lodden didn’t.  Before the end of the trial Lady Margaret Loddon becomes convinced that she’s married to an imposter that did away with her actual fiancé.

The testimony by Buckenham and Lodden are portrayed with flashbacks of the wartime interaction of the protagonists in the POW camp.  The acting is good.  The script is relatively taut for such a convoluted story and the tension is well maintained.  The finale is a bit of a twist and is as plausible or implausible as the rest of this slightly unlikely story.  I recommend it.