Category Archive: FILM
Watch on the Rhine
At the Movies, London, 1943
(Dir. Herman Shumlin) (1943) Nazis, ISIS, Port Adelaide Football Club…the forces of evil bring us together and so it proves here, in Warner Brothers’ film of Lillian Hellman’s play about a member of the resistance and his family, seeking refuge from the Nazis in his wife’s family dream house in Washington DC, some time before Pearl Harbour shook the American lethargy… Bette Davis and Paul Lukas are given some very snappy lines, but they rise above them and give us performances that convince us of a couple driven to poverty and danger, for a cause. Bette Davis is wonderful (some thought her role marginalised and consequently…
Continue Reading →Paths of Glory
General, have you ever played Nectaris?
(Stanley Kubrick) (1957) The wise war-monger, Clausewitz, decreed that the objective should be relinquished when its value was not equal to the cost of its gain. There are many instances in human conflict where this seemingly trite point has been blanketed and lost in the fog, notably the struggle on the western front, 1914-1918. In Kubrick’s grey and gritty story, Kirk Douglas is given the ridiculous task of taking the ‘Ant-Hill’, a fortified patch of raised ground held by an enemy armed to the teeth. With the inevitable failure of this mission, the superior officer in charge needs a patsy, so three…
Continue Reading →The Adventures of Robin Hood
(Dir. Michael Curtiz, William Keighley) (1938) It might be a wall of corn, but as they say in showbiz, “the colour of corn is Gold”. This is the lushest, most colourful, most joyous blood-and-thunder adventure ever to burst out of Hollywood in the Golden Age, a filmed comic book that puts modern actioners in the shade. It has been written that Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland were very much in unrequited love, and this shines forth in the film. Olivia is pretty as a picture and she glows here, without the treacle-and-vanessa-redgrave emoting she sheds in, say,…
Continue Reading →The Curse of ”The Sound of Music”
(Dir. Robert Wise) (1965) We’re sorry, but we can only watch The Sound of Music in 15 minute increments. Any more attracts a risk of type-two diabetes. This cloying, sacchariferous, candied, 174-minute dollop of goo would have received one or less review stars from us, but for the superb cinematography, sweeping over and around the chocolate-box town of Salzburg and its surrounding mountains, and the overall production values, which are first-rate. The (bizarre and stupefying) success of both the stage musical and the film have led to endless revivals around the globe, the mawkish meld of Nuns, Nazis and warbling infants a seemingly irresistible combo. We are…
Continue Reading →A Unique Gent Joins the Great Majority
R.I.P.
Sir Christopher Lee (27 May 1922 – 7 June 2015) This imposing and elegant actor was often the best thing about the films he made. Whether as Dracula in a series of Hammer Horror films, the equally formidable baddy Saruman in the Lord of the Rings saga, the dotty impressionist Seurat in Moulin Rouge, the nasty aristocrat Evremonde in A Tale of Two Cities, or an unbilled spear carrier in Hamlet, he had a real presence that enlivened the great and petty villains he generally brought to life on screen. Of his 200 odd appearances over his 93 years, The Varnished Culture‘s favourite Lee role…
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