Category Archive: Classic Film
Remembering Charles Laughton
1 July 1899 – 15 December 1962 Today we recall the great Charles Laughton, an immense, thick, boiled ham, but top-notch ham none the less. David Shipman described him as a “big, brazen, show-off actor. He went overboard sometimes…but as well as the bold, daring gesture – the hallmark of the great actor – he could perform with infinite delicacy.”* He was superb in big-time historical roles, playing Henry VIII, Rembrandt, and Captain Bligh; or in lush, epic sagas such as Les Miserables or The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but he could quite good in comedy as well – see It Started With Eve,…
Continue Reading →Dracula
(by Bram Stoker) (1897) (Dir. Tod Browning) (1931) It was, perhaps, an unlikely brace of circumstances: odd that a 19 year old (Mary Shelley) would create one of the two most potent horror figures of our epoch – Frankenstein, and equally odd that a clerk-turned-impresario, Bram Stoker (1847-1912) would the other. Dracula evokes all the lip-smacking pleasures of pure, endogenous evil, and combines myth, misanthropy and eroticism with the false promise of immortality. The Universal film, made about 500 years after the birth of the man who inspired the book (Vlad the Impaler), is the definitive classic version, an eerie, atmospheric, surreal,…
Continue Reading →Psycho
(Dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (1960) A secretary is given a fortune to bank and takes it on the lam, in a wild and foolish scheme to hook-up with her lover; by the time she comes to her senses, it’s too late. Meanwhile, her sister (and others) are on her trail, leading them to the Bates Motel (I’ve been to the Bates Motel on a studio tour: it’s even creepy in broad daylight). Norman, the young man who runs the place, confirms that Marion stayed one night but then she went on her way. But where? And does Norman’s mother know something about it? This blackest…
Continue Reading →Killer Quotes from “Withnail & I”
This delightful film has abundant gems within its script: Withnail to the farmer: “We’ve gone on holiday by mistake…are you the farmer?” Withnail drank a lot in the car, and now: “I feel like a pig shat in my head.” And earlier: “I feel unusual.” From the car, earlier: “Throw yourself into the road darling! You haven’t got a chance!” Withnail in the tea rooms to Miss Blennerhasset: “Balls. We want the finest wines available to humanity, and we want them here and we want them now.” Withnail: “We’re out of wine, what do…
Continue Reading →Séance on a Wet Afternoon
(Dir. Bryan Forbes) (1964) “This is to notify you that your daughter is in our possession. She is quite safe, and if you follow instructions, she will remain safe.” Mark McShane’s ingenious psychological thriller was read by director Forbes whilst on holiday in the South of France, and became a stunningly original, doom-laden film, full of rain-drops, sadness, loss, longing and self-delusion. Myra Savage (Kim Stanley, in a miraculous performance) is a medium (not a charlatan – the real thing, at least in her own mind). Invalid husband (we didn’t know “being wet” could get you a disability pension) Richard…
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