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thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

thedullwoodexperiment

Tag Archives: The Fifties

Phantom Thread (2017)

14 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Daniel Day-Lewis, Drama, Haute couture, Lesley Manville, Paul Thomas Anderson, Review, Romance, The Fifties, The House of Woodcock, Vicky Krieps

D: Paul Thomas Anderson / 130m

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, Lesley Manville, Camilla Rutherford, Gina McKee, Brian Gleeson, Harriet Sansom Harris, Lujza Richter, Julia Davis

In Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest movie, we’re introduced to the splendidly named Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis), a London-based couturier to those with money and prestige and power. Woodcock’s name is a byword for quality, and his meticulous designs and ability to match the outfit to the client has brought him his own versions of his clients’ money, prestige and power. He is fastidious, particular, uncompromising, and resolute. When he meets a waitress, Alma (Krieps), a relationship develops between them, and she moves into the home which also serves as his fashion house. Alma becomes Woodcock’s lover, and also his muse and assistant. But Woodcock proves to be a difficult partner to please. His daily routines are ingrained and not to be interfered with, and his idea of a relationship is that it comes second to the work he does. Alma rails against this, but it’s only when Woodcock falls ill and she nurses him back to health that their mutual need for each other becomes apparent and things improve between them. But Woodcock’s mercurial yet pedantic nature soon reasserts itself, and Alma’s importance in his life becomes even more precarious…

Coco Chanel once said, “Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.” In the world of Reynolds Woodcock, he would no doubt amend Chanel’s statement to read “remember the designer.” Woodcock is a creative genius who basks in the reflected glory of the outfits he designs, his position within the upper echelons of 50’s London high society assured because of the work ethic he has devised, and because he doesn’t deviate from that work ethic. And he expects everyone around him to fit in with that work ethic also; for Woodcock, nothing is more important than the dress or the outfit he’s creating. The beauty of Anderson’s foray into The House of Woodcock is the challenge to his authority from Alma. Can she break through the barriers that Woodcock has erected over the years, and can she get him to focus on her rather than his designs? Anderson wants you to think she can, but at the same time he won’t make it easy for her, and his script is often a series of brutal rebuttals punctuated by moments of calm that offer both Alma and the viewer a sense of hope. Alma, though, is just as stubborn as Woodcock, and just as tenacious in what she wants. This is force majeure for lovers.

Anderson is on dazzling form here, his own considerable creative energies in service to a story that is formed of strong emotional undercurrents and perceptive examinations of the shifting balances of power within a relationship that is both mutually beneficial and destructive. It all plays out against a rarefied world that’s much like love itself: heightened and demanding, but also incredibly rewarding. Woodcock and Alma battle against each other for dominance, and their war brooks no attrition, and yet Anderson never allows the viewer to lose sight of the fact that they are in love with each other. It’s a compelling, sometimes devastating story, and each twist and turn is superbly orchestrated by Anderson, and delivered impeccably by Day-Lewis and Krieps, their performances drawing you in and making you understand fully the characters and their motivations. They’re ably supported by Manville as Woodcock’s no-nonsense yet sensitive sister Cyril, tremendous cinematography and production design (by an uncredited Anderson, and Mark Tildesley respectively), and yet another hugely impressive score by Jonny Greenwood. This is a beautiful, meticulously assembled movie that looks austere from the outside, but which has an energy and a passion seen all too rarely in modern cinema.

Rating: 9/10 – a movie that explores a world few of us will have any direct knowledge of, but which guides us through it with so much assurance, Phantom Thread is like a love letter to a different age: enchanting, exhilarating, and exquisitely depicted; on this evidence, Anderson is possibly the finest writer/director working today, such is the confidence he shows here in detailing both the narrative and the characters.

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Poster of the Week – The Unearthly (1957)

11 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Horror, John Carradine, Poster of the week, The Fifties, The Unearthly, Tor Johnson

unearthly_poster_02-jpg-html

Another jam-packed poster from the Fifties, this tells you all you need to know about the movie it’s promoting in so many sections it’s a wonder they had room for the title. A ghastly horror movie made on a B-movie budget and with Z-movie aspirations, The Unearthly has to be seen to be believed (yes it’s that bad/good), and yet, this particular broadsheet once again confirms that often enough, the humble poster has more to offer than the movie it’s advertising.

The eye literally has too many places it can go at first glance, but the top left hand corner is a good place to start. “Lured!” it says, a comment that is at once alluring itself – lured? lured by what exactly? – and also slightly dangerous in intent. Lured – that can’t be good. And so it proves: the rest of the strapline makes it clear with its reference to monsters. But the poster’s designer then adds something that’s a little bit clever and unexpected. He or she drags the word “monsters…” down towards the doorway that an amply proportioned woman is about to enter. While John Carradine looks in her direction, almost urging her through the doorway, the woman looks uncertainly, and worriedly, behind her. (Modern day audiences might wonder if she’s thinking, does my bum look big in this? She probably isn’t, though.) It’s a neat way of drawing the viewer’s attention in a specific direction, and having a shapely damsel in imminent distress is always an attention grabber.

Across the middle of the poster is the title, with its large, uneven lettering and promise that “there’s no escape from…” The red letters against the sickly green background make for an effective colour counterpoint, and there’s definitely no escaping that. And then there are those eight images from the movie itself, several of which feature men transformed into hairy beasts with wild, staring eyes (Carradine’s evil Dr Conway performs illegal experiments to prolong life but for some strange, inexplicable reason they always go wrong; talk about persistence over experience). These identikit Mr Hydes look like the special effects department raided the Cro-Magnon man exhibit at the nearest natural history museum, and as such are about as frightening as hairy mannequins can get.

Other images display one of Dr Conway’s ill-fated operations, a man trying to embrace the bars of his cell, and dear old Tor Johnson carrying a bosomy starlet. If for no other reason than that the movie featured Tor Johnson, you’d know it was bad; he played the same character in every one of his movies and, sad to say, he was awful in all of them. With Tor’s expression-free features on the poster, any remaining likelihood that the movie will be worth watching is despatched immediately. And further evidence that suspicions about the movie should be encouraged lie with the credits and the director’s name: Brooke L. Peters. Never heard of him? That’s no surprise, as it’s a pseudonym for Boris Petroff. Never heard of him? That’s no surprise either.

While the credits occupy a modicum of space and focus on the leading actors, the poster manages to include one last “surprise”: a rosette declaring that the movie is “guaranteed to frighten”. Similar claims were foisted on dozens of low budget horrors during the Fifties, almost as if the makers were daring people to come and watch their movie. But the rosette is a nice touch – if a trifle over-confident – and as a final flourish to the poster and its overall effectiveness, it’s a little like having a piece of cake with a cherry on top. The Unearthly may not be the best movie in the world – it’s probably not even the best movie released on 28 June 1957 – but this poster has far more going for it than the movie, and has too many elements that work well individually and taken as a whole. A deceptively clever poster then, and one where its design and construction can be rightly celebrated.

And for fans of dear old Tor Johnson, here’s a lobby card where he features more prominently:

the-unearthly-lobby-card-1957_4

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Monthly Roundup – August 2016

03 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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A Perfect Day, Aid workers, Animation, Benicio Del Toro, Blue Sky, Curt Siodmak, Denis Leary, Drama, Espionage, EVP, Fedja Stukan, Fernando León de Aranoa, Galen T. Chu, Harrison Gilbertson, Haunt, Haunted house, Horror, Ice Age: Collision Course, Ione Skye, Jacki Weaver, Jean Byron, John Leguizamo, Ken Hughes, King Donovan, Liana Liberato, Little Red Monkey, Mac Carter, Mélanie Thierry, Meteorite, Mike Thurmeier, Morello Curse, Murder, Nuclear scientists, Olga Kurylenko, Queen Latifah, Ray Romano, Review, Richard Carlson, Richard Conte, Rona Anderson, Russell Napier, Sci-fi, Scrat, Simon Pegg, Spaceship, Sylva Langova, The Balkans, The Fifties, The Magnetic Monster, Thriller, Tim Robbins

The Magnetic Monster (1953) / D: Curt Siodmak / 76m

Cast: Richard Carlson, King Donovan, Jean Byron, Harry Ellerbe, Leo Britt, Leonard Mudie, Byron Foulger, Michael Fox

The Magnetic Monster

Rating: 6/10 – a sample of selenium, bombarded with alpha waves, becomes a lethal danger to mankind as it develops exponentially – and only the A-Men from the Office of Scientific Investigation can stop it; an exposition heavy sci-fi thriller that takes time out for (stranger) domestic interludes involving Carlson and Bryan, The Magnetic Monster packs a lot in to its relatively short running time and is unexpectedly entertaining for all its techno-speak and overly serious demeanour.

Haunt (2014) / D: Mac Carter / 86m

Cast: Harrison Gilbertson, Liana Liberato, Ione Skye, Jacki Weaver, Brian Wimmer, Danielle Chuchran, Ella Harris, Carl Hadra

Haunt

Rating: 3/10 – a family move into a house where tragedy struck the previous owners, and the son (Gilbertson), along with abused neighbour Sam (Liberato), discovers that the place is haunted by a vengeful spectre; muddled, confused and scare-free, Haunt aims for unsettling and frightening but misses by a mile thanks to weak plotting, a jumbled storyline, stock characters, absentee direction, and an overbearing score (and that’s without mentioning the performances, particularly Weaver’s – which is dreadful).

Ice Age: Collision Course (2016) / D: Mike Thurmeier, Galen T. Chu / 94m

Cast: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, Simon Pegg, Keke Palmer, Adam Devine, Wanda Sykes, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, Jennifer Lopez, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jessie J, Nick Offerman, Chris Wedge

Ice Age Collision Course

Rating: 5/10 – while Scrat does his best to keep his acorn safe aboard a spaceship, his actions lead to a massive meteorite heading for Earth, which in turn leads to Manny (Romano) and the usual gang having to formulate a plan to avoid the extinction of them all; while the series can still manage to sprinkle a handful of inspired visual gags throughout each entry (and this is no different), the law of diminishing returns is having a savage effect on the storylines, with this outing proving less than inspired, and leaving the characters teetering on the edge of becoming their own caricatures.

Little Red Monkey (1955) / D: Ken Hughes / 71m

aka The Case of the Red Monkey

Cast: Richard Conte, Rona Anderson, Russell Napier, Sylva Langova, Colin Gordon, Donald Bisset, John King-Kelly, Bernard Rebel, Arnold Marlé, John Horsley

Little Red Monkey

Rating: 7/10 – when several nuclear scientists are murdered, and the culprit appears to be a little red monkey, Scotland Yard and a visiting US State Department agent have to make sure that defecting Professor Leon Dushenko (Marlé) doesn’t end up dead as well; an agreeable, fast-paced thriller, Little Red Monkey mixes international espionage, early Cold War paranoia, romance, and intrigue to good effect, and thanks to the script by Hughes and James Eastwood, has a discreet Hitchcockian vibe that benefits it tremendously.

A Perfect Day (2015) / D: Fernando León de Aranoa / 106m

Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Tim Robbins, Olga Kurylenko, Mélanie Thierry, Fedja Stukan, Eldar Residovic, Sergi López

A Perfect Day

Rating: 7/10 – a group of aid workers in the war-torn Balkans try to have a dead body removed from a well that provides drinking water, and are met by every type of obstruction possible – bureaucratic, cultural, and just plain bizarre; A Perfect Day‘s very good cast can’t mitigate against the episodic nature of the story, or de Aranoa’s offhand treatment of some of the minor characters, but otherwise this is a pointed, unsentimental look at the quieter horrors that war can throw up, and when it wants to be, uses black humour as a trenchant counterpoint to all the tragedy.

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“Science or no science, a girl’s got to get her hair done” – 10 Female-centric Sci-fi Quotes from the 1950’s

19 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Actresses, Dialogue, Quotes, Sci-fi, The Fifties

The Fifties were a great time for sci-fi movies. But if you were an actress appearing in a low budget sci-fi movie – in a starring role or even further down the cast list – then chances were you’d be saddled with some of the lamest, dumbest, sometimes sexist dialogue this side of an Ed Wood feature. To “celebrate” those “difficult roles” that actresses such as Joan Taylor, Mara Corday and Andrea King did their best to play straight (against almost impossible odds), here are ten quotes that show just what they were up against.

1 – “So I decided after one bad marriage to bury myself in science.” – Ann Anderson, It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

It! The Terror from Beyond Space

2 – “The only reason I open my trap is to keep my teeth from chattering.” – Vicki Harris, Target Earth (1954)

3 – “Well, flying battleships, pink elephants, same difference.” – Sally Caldwell, The Giant Claw (1957)

4 – “How is it you’re so strong, Ro-Man? It seems impossible.” – Alice, Robot Monster (1953)

Robot Monster

5 – “Can’t I just dust around the fingerprints?” – Mrs. Porter, The Blob (1958)

6 – “Miz Hawthorne, she deal with the Evil One.” – Louann, the maid, The Alligator People (1959)

7 – “It’s the Sermon on the Mount… from Mars.” – Linda Cronyn, Red Planet Mars (1952)

Red Planet Mars

8 – “I love you, Doug, and I must kill you!” – Lambda, Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)

9 – “For a few dollars you can hire a woman who’ll fulfill all your fetishes. And when you get tired of her you can run down to the employment agency and hire another.” – Claire Anderson, It Conquered the World (1956)

10 – “Caught me unprepared. I’ve been cooking over a hot creature all day.” – Marisa Leonardo, 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)

20 Million Miles to Earth

NOTE: The quote in the title is from Tarantula (1955), and is spoken by Stephanie ‘Steve’ Clayton.

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Brooklyn (2015)

18 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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1952, Colm Tóibín, Domhnall Gleeson, Drama, Emory Cohen, Enniscorthy, Ireland, John Crowley, Julie Walters, Literary adaptation, New York, Review, Romance, Saoirse Ronan, The Fifties

Brooklyn

D: John Crowley / 111m

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters, Jane Brennan, Brid Brennan, Jessica Paré, Fiona Glascott, Emily Bett Rickards, Eve Macklin, Nora-Jane Noone, Michael Zegen, Eva Birthistle, Eileen O’Higgins

Adapted from the novel by Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn is the tale of a young Irish girl, Eilis (pronounced A-lish) (Ronan) who, in 1952, travels from the small town where she’s lived all her life, to the Big Apple, and specifically the borough of Brooklyn. It’s a chance for her to make a future for herself, to escape the narrow confines of rural Irish life. She’s supported by the local Catholic diocese, in the form of Father Flood (Broadbent), and goes to live in a boardinghouse run by God-fearing, opinionated Mrs Keogh (Walters). With a job in a department store lined up for her as well, Eilis has all she needs to do well.

But she misses home, and her widowed mother (Jane Brennan) and well-liked sister, Rose (Glascott). She writes to Rose a lot to try and combat her feelings of homesickness, and at first, finds it hard to fit in with the other young women at Mrs Keogh’s. As she struggles to find her place in this overwhelming new world, she meets a young Italian boy, Tony Fiorello (Cohen), at a dance. He’s sweet, good-natured, and has a winning smile. Eilis likes him straight away, and they begin seeing each other. He meets her when she gets out of her evening bookkeeping course; they go to the movies together and to other dances; and they go to Coney Island where Eilis learns the tricky etiquette behind wearing a bathing suit.

Saoirse Ronan in Brooklyn

Their relationship makes Eilis more confident and self-assured. She helps out at the local shelter at Xmas time, providing food for the homeless Irish. She gains the respect and approval of her supervisor (Paré) at the department store, and she sails through her first year at night school, earning Father Flood’s admiration. And then Tony tells her he loves her. At first she doesn’t know how to respond to this, and Tony believes she doesn’t love him back, but Eilis overcomes her fears and admits she loves him too (though she’s still a little uncomfortable about it). Unexpected, tragic news comes from home, and Eilis feels compelled to go back. Tony urges her to marry him before she goes, afraid that if they don’t have such a strong tie to bind them, Eilis will never come back. They tie the knot and Eilis returns to her home town of Enniscorthy.

Though she agrees to stay until after the wedding of her close friend, Nancy (O’Higgins), Eilis’s return is viewed by many in the town as a permanent one. She lands a job at a local firm doing their books for them, and attracts the attention of Jim Farrell (Gleeson), a young man who’s regarded as a bit of a catch. Eilis and Jim begin spending time with each other, and she begins to feel conflicted over her marriage to Tony; she leaves his letters to unopened in a drawer in her room. With the weight of local expectations pressing down on her, will Eilis stay in Enniscorthy, or will she return to Brooklyn and her husband?

If you’ve already seen Brooklyn, then you’ll already know that the summary above covers most of the main points in the movie, and that Eilis’s journey from smalltown girl to big city woman isn’t without its fair share of ups and downs. But you’ll also be aware – hopefully – that these ups and downs lack a certain dramatic impact. It’s not that Eilis’s story is short of incident, far from it, but what incidents there are just don’t have any weight behind them, making the movie feel under-developed. Despite being adapted from Tóibín’s novel by Nick Hornby, this is one screenplay that doesn’t do the source material justice.

Brooklyn - scene2

Having said that, it’s likely any subsequent adaptation would have the same problem that Hornby had: much of what transpires is only moderately dramatic, and it’s very difficult to see how the material could be strengthened without harming the observant nature of the narrative. In essence, we’re invited to watch how Eilis Lacey deals with the various problems and positives that come along in her life, but we’re not really asked to participate in them, or to become involved with her. It’s like hearing about someone from someone else: you only get the flavour of a person and their life, and not the detail.

Part of the problem is that nothing really happens, certainly not enough for Eilis to feel as emotionally burdened as she does for a lot of the time. And the script never really puts Eilis in a place where she has to make any really important decisions. Yes, she agrees to marry Tony, yes, she has to make a choice between staying in Enniscorthy or going back to Brooklyn, but that’s it. Even the notion that she might fall for Jim Farrell and stay becomes unlikely as soon as the viewer realises that all they do is go for walks on the beach together, and Eilis isn’t showing the slightest romantic interest in him. Iin a movie lasting nearly two hours, there should be more drama than that, and as romantic love triangles go it’s bland and unconvincing.

Despite all this, the movie still has plenty of things going for it, not the least of which is Ronan’s performance as Eilis. Ronan is a gifted actress, and while she’s not given too much heavy lifting to do, she still impresses as the awkward young girl who grows to adulthood in a foreign land. Her oval features are used to good effect as Eilis becomes more self-assured, and her faltering grasp on love allows Ronan to display a guarded excitement that is entirely appropriate to the character. She’s ably supported by Cohen and Gleeson as the men in her life, though Gleeson has a hard time making Farrell seem more than just a puppy dog waiting for Eilis to play with him. Walters provides a good deal of the comedy, and Broadbent is a capable substitute figure for Eilis’s father.

Brooklyn - scene1

Behind the camera, Crowley, who has yet to make a movie that fully realises its potential – his last was Closed Circuit (2013) – does a great job in recreating the period, and with DoP Yves Bélanger, keeps the camera focused on Ronan’s face, all the better to catch her slowly dawning self-awareness and confidence. Bélanger also keeps the movie looking rich and inviting while Eilis is in Brooklyn, and naturally beautiful when she’s in Ireland. But with the material lacking bite, there’s only so much he and Crowley can do to keep the audience involved and following along in Eilis’s wake. Things aren’t helped either by an intrusive score by Michael Brook that doesn’t so much amplify what little drama there is, as try and become it.

Rating: 7/10 – though it tells its story plainly and with few attempts made to elevate the drama, Brooklyn is the kind of movie that would suit on a wintry Sunday afternoon in front of the fire; that it never really achieves any great dramatic heights is a shame, but it’s nevertheless an enjoyable watch if you don’t expect too much from it.

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For One Week Only: Women Directors – 3. Maya Deren & the Fifties

12 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

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Alexander Hammid, At Land, Avant garde, Chao Li Chi, Døden er et kjærtegn, Edith Carlmar, Experimental movies, France, Jacqueline Audry, Japan, Kinuyo Tanaka, Love Letter, Maya Deren, Meditation on Violence, Meshes in the Afternoon, Norway, Olivia (1951), Shirley Clarke, The Fifties, Women directors

Introduction

Women directors had been prevalent during the Silent Era, but with the advent of sound, many prominent careers foundered or were unable to continue. In Hollywood, only Dorothy Arzner maintained a career within the male-dominated heirarchy that viewed women directors as “box office poison”, and she did so by making moderately successful, conservative movies that weren’t transgressive in any way at all. In 1943, she made her last movie before making the switch to television. But while Hollywood showed no interest in encouraging would-be women directors to replace her, elsewhere, there were women who, like Ida Lupino at the end of the decade, weren’t letting Hollywood tell them how to make movies…

Maya Deren (1917-1961)

Maya Deren

An experimental movie maker, Deren made a series of short, avant garde experimental movies between 1943 and 1948 that remain some of the most impressive movies of their type ever made. Her first movie, Meshes in the Afternoon (1943) is a surreal tale of a woman whose dreams may or may not be happening in reality, and is technically astonishing for the scene where there are multiple Derens at a table (the movie was filmed using a 16mm Bolex camera). It’s dreamlike (naturally) and enigmatic, but fascinating to watch nevertheless.

She followed this with Witch’s Cradle (1944), a collection of images and static shots that wasn’t as well received, and in the same year she and her husband Alexander Hammid collaborated on a documentary short The Private Life of a Cat. She ended the year by making At Land, a haunting study of a woman’s trek through various foreign environments that she encounters; her sense of herself in these environments and her reaction to them makes for an intriguing study of isolationism and the need to belong.

In 1945 she made A Study in Choreography for Camera, a movie that packs so much about time and motion through the movement of a dancer in its four minutes that it’s almost dizzying how much Deren has managed to include in that time. It’s a movie that confronts ideas about space and time and motion that are so stimulating, it makes the viewer wonder why there aren’t more movies like it. Dance was also the main feature of her next project, Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946); its blend of dance and surrealism, allied to notions of freedom of expression, makes for some very eloquent and poetic imagery.

In 1946 her work was acknowledged with a Guggenheim Fellowship for “Creative Work in the Field of Motion Pictures”. She also won the Grand Prix Internationale for 16mm experimental film at the Cannes Film Festival (for Meshes in the Afternoon). Deren’s last movie in the Forties was Meditation on Violence (1948), a collaboration with martial arts expert Chao Li Chi that looks at the ideals of the Wu Tang philosophy. It’s a cloistered affair with the movie being rewound part way through, thus obscuring the message (unfortunately). It’s still an intriguing look at a way of living life in a particular fashion, and Chao is a mesmerising figure.

Meditation on Violence

The 50’s

At the same time that Ida Lupino made her last independent movie, The Bigamist (1953), a member of the New York avant garde modern dance movement called Shirley Clarke made her first short movie, Dance in the Sun. Clarke had wanted to be a choreographer, but she was unsuccessful at this, and on the advice of her psychiatrist, followed her interest in movies instead. She made several more shorts in the Fifties, including A Moment in Love (1957) and Bridges-Go-Round (1958). All were well-received, and Clarke continued to make her own kind of experimental movies in the Sixties.

Shirley Clarke

Maya Deren made two more short movies in the Fifties, Ensemble for Somnambulists (1951) and The Very Eye of Night (1958), two similar explorations of dance form and composition that also looked at ritual and expression as shown through movement. Deren stayed true to her beliefs about the nature of film, and her sudden death in 1961 was a tragedy in every sense of the word. She once said, “I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick”; but what she achieved in such a short directorial career was nothing short of miraculous, and she remains a tremendous influence on experimental movie makers the world over.

1953 was also the year that saw Japanese actress Kinuyo Tanaka make her debut as a director with Love Letter. Only the second woman to have a career as a director – after Tazuko Sakane – Tanaka’s romantic drama was entered into the 1954 Cannes Film Festival. She made five further movies between 1955 and 1962, one of which, The Moon Has Risen (1955) was co-scripted by Yasujirô Ozu. Tanaka had a surety of touch behind the camera and her visual style was eloquent and disarming. She maintained her career as an actress, and won several awards later on, but her movies, though hard to find now, show a smart, capable movie maker who was comfortable behind the camera because of how comfortable she was in front of it.

Kinuyo Tanaka

In France, the career of Jacqueline Audry, which had begun with the short Le Feu de paille (1943), flourished in the Fifties, and she had particular success with a series of adaptations of novels by Colette, Gigi (1949), Minne (1950), and Mitsou (1956). Audry often tackled topics that were considered controversial, such as the relationship between a schoolmistress and one of her pupils in Olivia (1951), a movie that has come to be regarded as a “landmark of lesbian representation”. With the rise of the French New Wave her more traditional style was at odds with the prevailing trends in French cinema, and she only made three movies in the Sixties, but overall her career shows she was a woman who wasn’t afraid to challenge conventional notions of sexuality and female submissiveness (even if it meant her movies were often heavily censored).

Jacqueline Audry

Another actress who made the transition to directing was Norway’s Edith Carlmar. In 1949 she made what is regarded as the very first film noir directed by a woman, Døden er et kjærtegn. It was a success, and she followed it up with a drama about mental illness called Skadeskutt (1951). Another female director who wasn’t afraid to tackle serious issues that most mainstream (male) directors wouldn’t go near, Carlmar made a total of ten movies between 1949 and 1959, and each one was both a box office success and critically well-received, a remarkable achievement for the period, and one that makes her one of the most successful female movie directors of the last seventy years.

Edith Carlmar

Even though these women were forging careers for themselves, and were making sometimes controversial, challenging and experimental movies, they remained a minority in an international industry that still didn’t trust women to be successful or able to attract audiences in the first place. But this misogyny was about to face its first real, and proper, challenge, as the movement towards female empowerment that began to express itself in the Sixties encouraged women movie makers to become bolder and to demand more of an equal place in cinema.

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Mini-Review: Queen & Country (2014)

29 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Army, Caleb Landry Jones, Callum Turner, David Thewlis, Drama, John Boorman, Korean War, National Service, Pat Shortt, Regimental clock, Review, Richard E. Grant, Sequel, Tamsin Egerton, The Fifties, The Sphinx, Vanessa Kirby

Queen & Country

D: John Boorman / 110m

Cast: Caleb Landry Jones, Callum Turner, Pat Shortt, David Thewlis, Richard E. Grant, Vanessa Kirby, Tamsin Egerton, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Sinéad Cusack, David Hayman, John Standing, Brian F. O’Byrne, Julian Wadham

Nine years after the events depicted in Hope and Glory (1987), eighteen year old Bill Rohan (Turner) is nurturing a desire to get into movie making. But National Service comes along and Bill is conscripted into the Army, where his skills lead him – and his friend Percy (Jones) – to teaching other conscripts how to type. With the threat of being transferred to the front line in Korea hovering over them, Bill and Percy make the best of their lot, including continual run-ins with their immediate superior, the punctilious Sergeant-Major Bradley (Thewlis). They find a comrade in skiver Private Redmond (Shortt), and resolve to steal the regimental clock as a two-fingered salute to one of their senior officers, the pompous, overbearing RSM Digby.

While Bill and Percy circumvent the rules with seeming impunity, they also find love: Percy with nurse Sophie (Edwards), and Bill with emotionally distant Ophelia (Egerton). But the course of true love fails to run smoothly for either of them, with Ophelia proving complicit in an abusive relationship, and Percy showing no signs of committing to Sophie. Their run-ins with Sgt-Major Bradley escalate to the point where they turn the tables on him, a decision which has unforeseen consequences. The search for the regimental clock leads Private Redmond – suspected by Digby and Major Cross (Grant), the officer in charge – to ratting on Percy to avoid being sent to Korea. With his friend facing a court-martial, and his affair with Ophelia offering no comfort, Bill’s rite of passage to adulthood proves a rockier experience than he ever expected.

Queen & Country - scene

Widely reported as John Boorman’s swan song movie, Queen & Country is a largely disappointing end to a career that has had some tremendous highs – Point Blank (1967), Deliverance (1972), The General (1998) – and one incredible low – Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). What’s disappointing is that Boorman has failed to inject the same kind of nostalgic bonhomie that made Hope and Glory such a joy to watch. And though the movie is based on Boorman’s own experiences in the Fifties, there’s little here that resonates as effectively as his experiences of World War II. It’s a shame, as the movie will generate a lot of interest due to the warm regard held by its predecessor, but anyone persuaded to watch this as part of a Boorman double bill with Hope and Glory would do well to choose something else (the undervalued Leo the Last (1970) perhaps).

This isn’t to say that the movie is a complete disaster – Boorman is too good a director for that, and the material does have moments where it’s both affecting and heartfelt. Bill’s despair at the actions of Ophelia tugs at the heartstrings, while Bradley’s officious nature hides a man struggling to maintain his sanity. The performances range from the credulous (Jones, all sniggering, body-wracking obnoxiousness), to the pantomimic (Grant, operating at a level of high-strung anxiety that would look less out of place in a drawing-room farce), while Egerton strikes a chilling note as an upper-class object of desire who has no idea of her own self-worth. Turner is okay as the older Bill, but thanks to Boorman’s script, is hampered by being too likeable throughout, and isn’t allowed to show any other facets of the character. But the standout is Kirby as Bill’s rapacious sister, Dawn, a force of nature that the script – thankfully – fails to keep a lid on. References to Bill’s family living near to Shepperton Studios hint at his future endeavours and there’s a lovely final shot that is as succinct as it is emotive. If Boorman is persuaded to continue making movies, his take on starting out in the industry would be well worth waiting for.

Rating: 5/10 – awkwardly irreverent in its dealings with the Army, but on surer ground in its more emotional relationships, Queen & Country is a mix of drama and comedy that never quite gels; with some scenes that feel extraneous, and others that seem burdened by the need to harken back to Hope and Glory, this is a movie that – sadly – promises more than it actually delivers.

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