Category Archive: Drama Film
Where Eagles Dare
"Liebchen, Liz doesn't understand me..."
(Dir. Brian G Hutton) (1968) Clive James once wrote that the film that followed him about the world was The Naked Jungle. Our own bete noire is Where Eagles Dare. The Varnished Culture has gone to the cold heart of country Victoria, to take the waters and sweat out the toxins of popular culture, and what do we find, after a purifying mineral ritual, massage and facial? Where Eagles Dare on the television! P’s late father-in-law loved this film, and what red-blooded man wouldn’t? Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood talking English/German/American/English as they infiltrate a Nazi fortress deep in the Alps, gain vital…
Continue Reading →The Burglars
"Confidentially...I never pay here."
(Dir, Henri Verneuil) (1972) A nifty cat-and-mouse jewellery heist caper set in Athens, in a time when you could get a decent meal for a fistful of drachmae. Omar Sharif is very good as the oily and corrupt copper, who is on to Jean-Paul Belmondo and his gang of emerald thieves. A top car chase, fights, romance, double-dealing and a unique climax in a grain hopper. A little cheesy but a relief to watch nowadays if you’re sick of Fast and Furious # 43. Vale Omar Sharif (10 April 1932 – 10 July 2015). He was not a great or imposing actor…
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 →Odd Man Out
"When I was a child, I spake as a child."
(Dir. Carol Reed) (1947) A classic, sad and dreamlike treatment of a gang of IRA thugs and their leader, wounded and on the run after a mill robbery. Only, the leader is post-war dreamboat James Mason, and we are forced to be sympathetic by virtue of his great, Christ-like playing and the pathos-drenched script and direction. A powerful example of the potency of superior film technique, enlivened by some grand Irish-potato character roles, a very stern and noble Denis O’Dea as the Police Inspector, the impressively louche, kind and desolate Tober (Elwyn Brook-Jones), plus an eye-rolling, lip-smacking, face-twitching, whirling dervish cabaret turn by Robert…
Continue Reading →The Manchurian Candidate
"...when I take power they will be pulled down and ground into dirt for what they did to you and for what they did in so contemptuously underestimating me."
(Dir. John Frankenheimer) (1962) This is a nifty thriller, based on the intriguing brain-washing novel of 1959 by Richard Condon. While not entirely satisfactory, it features a wild, paranoid but plausible plot, great narrative drive and top drawer performances. Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is given a Congressional Medal of Honour and general acclaim after his return from the Korean War, which is passing strange, since his entire unit hates him and there are several gaps in the story. Meanwhile, his vicious Mum and his churl of a stepfather, Senator John Iselin, a Joe McCarthy facsimile, have designs on the…
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