THE THIRD MAN (1949)

On the 21^st August 2014 my friends organised a party to celebrate the fact that I was still alive after sixty years of drunken debauchery. Part of this celebratory event was a screening of one of my favourite films, prior to the party getting underway. It was my friend (and bromance partner) Andy’s idea to choose The Third Man as he had discovered through nefarious means that it was my favourite British film. About thirty minutes into the screening Andy leaned over to me and asked, “Are you sure this is your favourite British film?”

“Yes,” I replied, “why?”

“It’s a bit slow isn’t it,” he said.

I gave him the kind of look you give to someone who has just said something momentously stupid and said, with as much derision as I could muster, “You fucking philistine. This is not an action movie. If you want an action movie go home and watch The Expendables 3 or Terminator 2. This is The Third Man – it’s written by Graham Greene for God’s sake!”

Obviously devastated by his inability to recognise one of cinema’s most brilliant works of art, he bowed his head in shame and succumbed quietly to my opinionated, but persuasively subtle argument.

The first time I saw The Third Man was on television and it knocked me sideways with its imaginative camera angles, its lighting that was reminiscent of the German expressionist films of the twenties and thirties, its use of the zither as the sole instrument on the soundtrack, and its flawed but sympathetic main characters, and its unexpected downbeat ending. Anyone who had ever read the novels of the great Graham Greene could tell immediately that they were in Greeneland. The main character, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton), is a down-at-heel hack writer of western dime novels, visiting a war-ravaged Vienna to look for his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles). When he gets there he discovers that Harry Lime is dead, run over by his own car, and buried. But, as in all of Greene’s work, not everything is as it seems.

The original film poster for The Third Man

 

Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles had worked in partnership before on Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) – and it shows in every frame when they share screen time together. Welles’ spectacular but controversial debut film, Citizen Kane, caused a sensation on its initial release and has continued to fascinate and astound movie buffs ever since. His brilliant second feature, The Magnificent Ambersons, charts the decline of a once wealthy family destroyed by industrialisation – it’s a film that would have been even better if RKO executives hadn’t decided to cut out forty minutes (and burn the only negatives) while Welles was out of the country filming Journey into Fear (1942) because they thought it was too depressing. By the time he came to The Third Man in 1949 he was short of money for his next project and instead of taking a share in the profits he accepted a straight one-off fee, a decision he later regretted as it turned out to be the highest grossing British film of that year. He would have a chequered career after that, but one where he directed and starred in two more genuine classics, playing the bloated, corrupt cop Hank Quinlan in the superb Touch of Evil (1958) and Shakespeare’s rambunctious Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight (1966).

Although never becoming the A-list star he should have become, Joseph Cotton nevertheless carved out a successful career for himself playing a host of differing and sometimes difficult roles – the suave serial killer in Hitchcock’s excellent Shadow of a Doubt (1942), the surgeon Dr Vasalius in Robert Fuest’s delicious black comedy The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971), the Secretary of State in Robert Aldrich’s brilliant thriller Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977), and the Reverend Doctor in Michael Cimino’s disastrous but highly underrated western Heaven’s Gate (1980).

But it’s as Holly Martins that I will always remember him. His character is not the traditional hero and he’s out of his depth in almost everything he gets himself involved in – from his naïve and bumbling attempts to investigate Harry Lime’s death in a bombed out Vienna that’s divided by four major powers to his attempt to talk about writing cheap westerns to an audience of intellectuals – and he breathes life into his character in every situation, particularly in the three short scenes he shares with his friend Orson Welles.

It’s over an hour into the film before Welles makes what surely must be the greatest and most dramatic entrance of any actor in any film ever, and it’s one that never fails to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end whenever I see it. There’s also the brilliant final section in Vienna’s cavernous sewers and in between there’s the now-famous Ferris Wheel scene, where Harry Lime, in trying to justify selling his stolen, diluted and now poisonous penicillin on the black market, tells Martins, “In Italy under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo DaVinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Welles totally dominates the remaining forty minutes of the film – from the moment we first see him in a dark doorway, his face briefly illuminated by the light from an apartment window above, giving his old friend Holly Martins the kind of smile that only he could give, to his final flight from justice under the streets of Vienna. His brief but perfect performance of a man with no scruples and even less remorse for the lives of the children his evil trade has destroyed is nothing short of astonishing.

The supporting cast are uniformly superb – Italian actress Alida Valli, is Harry Lime’s loyal girlfriend, desperately trying to keep herself from being claimed by the Russians; the great Trevor Howard is the efficient by-the-book British intelligence officer Major Calloway; Bernard Lee (thirteen years away from being James Bond’s M in Dr No) is his western loving sergeant; and Wilfred Hyde-White (giving another great performance as Wilfred Hyde-White) is the dithering cultural attaché who mistakenly thinks that Martins is a ‘proper’ author.

Although Orson Welles received top billing, the real stars of this film are the director Carol Reed (Oliver Reed’s uncle) and photographer Robert Krasker. Between them they produced a masterpiece of noir cinema – odd camera angles were used to give the audience a sense of disorientation, back lighting was used to produce lengthened shadows and dark, forbidding passageways, giving the whole thing a sense of unrelenting menace. It was shot in Vienna – this was the real bombed-out Vienna and not just a set built on a studio lot, and close-ups of the faces of actual inhabitants were used to reflect the desperation of the people living there. And Carol Reed’s choice of using Anton Karas and his zither for the score was inspired.

Then there was the great novelist Graham Greene and his excellent screenplay. Greene was one of the 20^th century’s most highly regarded novelists – he called his books ‘entertainments’ and no two were the same. Fans of his novels were never entirely sure what they were going to get next from him, but they knew one thing – whatever it was it going to be it would be original and surprising. His body of work – Brighton Rock (1938), The Ministry of Fear (1943), Our Man in Havana (1958), The Comedians (1966) and Doctor Fischer of Geneva (1980), to name just five – testifies to that.

The final scene of the film is different to that of Greene’s original novella. Carol Reed disliked what he felt was an artificially happy ending and changed it to something more downbeat and believable. Greene argued his corner but lost out to the pressure put on him by Reed and his producer, David O. Selznick. But upon seeing the final result Greene said, “One of the few major disputes between Carol Reed and myself concerned the ending, and he has been proved triumphantly right.”

He was absolutely correct, not just about the ending but of the film as a whole. Time magazine described it as “being crammed with . . . ingenious twists and turns of plot, subtle detail, full-bodied bit characters, atmospheric backgrounds that become an intrinsic part of the story, a deft comingling of the sinister with the ludicrous, the casual with the bizarre.”

I couldn’t agree more. It’s why this is my favourite British movie of all time.

Now, Andy, I know you are an artistic soul and so I therefore urge you to stop watching White House Down immediately and re-watch The Third Man instead – hopefully you will at last be able to recognise it for the classic that it is, thus making your life both intellectually and artistically fulfilled.

You know I’m right.

BULLITT (1968)

In 1971 Clint Eastwood as Lt Dirty Harry Callaghan walked the mean streets of San Francisco, asking perps whether he had fired six shots or only five from his Magnum .45 (the most powerful handgun in the world) because he had clean forgot. Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy had made Eastwood a star but it was Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry that blasted him off into the stratosphere and made him the superstar that he is today. It’s now almost unthinkable that the original choice for that role was Frank Sinatra, but Eastwood was lucky because Sinatra had sustained an injury and was unable accept the role. The studio wasn’t sure about Clint Eastwood – they thought he wasn’t a big enough star to attract audiences into cinemas, even with his spaghetti westerns behind him. How wrong they were because as it turned out Clint will be forever remembered as Dirty Harry, the maverick cop who cleaned up the streets of San Francisco.

But three years earlier a film featuring a much grittier and more believable cop provided the blueprint for Dirty Harry, and that film was Bullitt. More than anything though, Bullitt demonstrated how a good thriller should be made and its authenticity and naturalistic dialogue was the catalyst for many of the cop films that were to follow, particularly William Friedkin’s superb The French Connection (1971).

What neither Dirty Harry nor The French Connection had though (and this is what sets Bullitt apart from them and from every other cop thriller that followed) was that it had Steve McQueen, the coolest man on the planet, in the leading role.

Bullitt contains Steve McQueen’s finest ever performance – yes, even better than that of Hilts, the Cooler King, in John Sturges’ fantastic ensemble piece The Great Escape (1963), for which he is best remembered. Bullitt, however, is McQueen’s film all the way – his character totally dominates it, even in the brief moments when he’s not on screen. It’s a wonder though that he ever became a star after his B-movie debut in the The Blob (1958), after which he had to content himself with small roles in minor films until 1960 when he hit the big time after being cast as Vin Tanner, in the remake of Akira Kurasawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) – The Magnificent Seven, also directed by Sturges. The cast was great – alongside Brynner and McQueen were Eli Wallach, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter and the young German actor Horst Buchholtz. During the filming Yul Brynner complained that McQueen was always doing something – with his hands, his eyes and with whatever he happened to be holding. What McQueen effectively did was completely upstage the veteran actor and steal the entire ensemble piece from every other actor on screen (with the possible exception of the great Eli Wallach) – and it was that performance that made him a star. When I saw the film in 1966 with my granddad at the Tivoli in Blackpool (it was on a double bill with its inferior first sequel Return of the Seven) all I could talk about on the way home was Steve McQueen.

The original film poster of Bullitt

 

By the time he made Bullitt in 1968 he was the coolest man on earth – women wanted him and men wanted to be him. Since The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven he had played opposite the formidable Edward G. Robinson in The Cincinatti Kid (1965) and the sexy cool of Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).

But Bullitt was different. Adapted from Robert L. Pike’s novel Mute Witness, the screenplay was by Alan Trustmore and Harry Kleiner, who turned in a tightly written and realistic script that used dialogue sparingly and didn’t treat audiences like idiots. There was no spoon-feeding here – audiences had to sit down and think about it and work it out for themselves. There are still people today who are confused by it but they are in the minority of morons who shouldn’t really be watching intelligent movies like this and should instead restrict themselves to brainless fodder like the pitiful Olympus Has Fallen and the woeful White House Down (both from 2013), where no brain activity is required for the entire length of either film.

Bullitt has a great opening title sequence and a score by Lalo Schifrin that –unlike most action films today – never intrudes or overwhelms what’s happening. The supporting cast is superb, with the marvellous Robert Vaughn playing an oily, self-serving politician (aren’t they all) and a radiant Jacqueline Bisset as Bullitt’s girlfriend, who’s unaware of the horrors he has to deal with on a daily basis. But it’s Don Gordon as Delgetti, Bullitt’s loyal detective sergeant who shines through the supporting cast, giving a performance of real depth and understanding of his character. And just to put the icing on the cake there’s Robert Duvall in the small role of a cab driver, just a few years away from his terrific performance as the Corleone family’s lawyer in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) and his show-stopping, Oscar winning role as Colonel Kilgore – loving the smell of napalm in morning – in the brilliant Apocalypse Now (1979), also directed by Coppola.

There’s a European rather than Hollywood feel about Bullitt, which is not surprising as it was directed by Brit Peter Yates – his excellent 1972 movie The Friends of Eddie Coyle starring Robert Mitchum had a similar feel – and he was not afraid to have whole stretches with little or no dialogue. The final airport scene (which Michael Mann borrowed for the final scene of his 1985 crime movie Heat) is a good example – hardly a word is spoken and it works brilliantly.

But you can’t talk about Bullitt without mentioning the car chase. Steve McQueen had a lifelong love of motor racing, declaring once that, “Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting.” And it shows. McQueen drove the car himself for the entire scene and it’s a masterful, beefy, thunderous chase. Watch a car chase in today’s movies and you’ll notice that it’s comprised of cuts, most of them no longer than five seconds, to make it more exciting than what it is. In Bullitt there is none of that. There are no studio cuts – the entire scene was filmed on location – and it allows you to be in the driver’s seat with Bullitt as he races up and down the hills of San Francisco. You can actually feel your stomach hitting the floor as the car goes over the hills at speed, especially if you’re lucky enough to see it in a cinema or on the biggest television money can buy. 

As I said earlier though, this is Steve McQueen’s film all the way. He gives a deadpan, moody performance that is full of understatement and realism. He was never better before and would never be better again and it cemented his reputation as the top screen icon of his generation. His life, however, was cut tragically short – he died of cancer on 7 November 1980 after completing his final two films, The Hunter and Tom Horn.

I’ve watched all of his films, from his shaky start in stardom in The Blob through to his final two movies, rushed out because he knew that he was dying, and he was always interesting to watch. His untimely death robbed us of what he may have achieved had he been able live into old age, but for me at least, it will always be Bullitt that reminds me of what a great actor he was.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

Back in 1981 I was stationed at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus and most of my evenings were spent working as an usher at the Station Cinema. It was a good way to while away the time for someone like me – I love the cinema and always have (I wouldn’t be writing this blog if I didn’t) and this job gave me the opportunity to see every film that was shown there for free. As an usher, one of my tasks was to maintain order, and this took the form of keeping the hordes of kids quiet while the film was in progress and to throw out any who were persistently disruptive. It was a thankless task – the adults complained to me about the noise the kids were making and the kids hated me for throwing them out. After a few weeks of this I came up with a brilliant plan – if the kids were making too much noise I would walk down the central aisle and as I did I would give a signal to the projectionist, who would halt the film. I would then stand at the front and in my most provocative voice I would shout, “Right, if there’s any more noise I’m going to throw two of you out – I don’t care which two, I’ll chose two of you at random. You have been warned!” The projectionist would then restart the film and the kids would remain silent, not quite sure whether I meant it or if I had just issued an empty threat. It usually did the trick, though. It’s true what they say – give someone a little power and they turn into Adolf Hitler.

The early Friday evening showing was reserved for the kids and the films that were screened were generally of the science-fiction adventure variety. These included Star Wars (1977), Superman (1978), Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century (1979), The Empire Strikes Back, Flash Gordon and Superman II (1980). I didn’t mind the kids making a noise during these films because there were no adults in attendance. The adults usually kicked their kids out of their houses and sent them along to the cinema with some money to buy a ticket and enough sweets and sugary drinks to keep dentists in employment for years after. The adults would then be free to do whatever they did when the house was to themselves and the kids got to hoot and roar for ninety minutes or so without fear of me threatening to throw them out. It all went swimmingly until it was announced that Stanley Kubrick’s two-and-a-half hour seminal science-fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey was going to be shown – in the early Friday evening slot.

I knew there were lots of adults on RAF Akrotiri who wanted see this film, mainly those who had been baffled by it when it was first released in 1968 and so I thought a warning would be appropriate, explaining that it was probably not the best film for children to see when they were pumped up with sweets and sugary drinks and expecting some daft action-packed science-fiction extravaganza. In light of this I produced an A3 notice that I stuck onto the film’s poster that was displayed outside the cinema. The notice read:

NOTICE TO PARENTS! THIS IS NOT A CHILDREN’S FILM! YOUR KIDS WILL BECOME BORED AND RESTLESS WITHIN THE FIRST FIFTEEN MINUTES AND WILL THEN BEGIN TO DISRUPT THE CONCENTRATION OF THE ADULTS IN THE CINEMA WHO HAVE COME TO ENJOY A TRULY TRANSCENDENTAL EXPERIENCE. IT WILL BE AT THIS POINT THAT I SHALL BE FORCED TO EJECT YOUR OFFSPRING FROM THE PREMISES. YOU SHOULD EXPECT YOUR CHILDREN TO BE HOME EARLY, THUS DISRUPTING YOUR PLANS FOR THIS EVENING. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

I threw thirteen kids out within fifteen minutes of the film starting and the rest left of their own accord soon after.

Original poster for 2001: A Space Odyssey

I was fourteen years old when I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey on its initial release in 1968 and I clearly remember walking out of the cinema feeling simultaneously amazed and baffled. There’s no dialogue for the first 24 minutes and again for the final 21 minutes. But I wasn’t the only one who stepped out of a cinema with a look of puzzlement after seeing this film. 241 people walked out during its premier, including film star Rock Hudson, who was reported saying as he left, “Can someone tell me what the hell this is all about?”

Well, what the hell is it all about? Cinema-goers who went to see 2001: A Space Odyssey expected a film about space travel and it is, to a certain extent, about exactly that. But this was a Stanley Kubrick film and anyone who has watched his films will know that on the surface you get what you pay for, but it’s underneath that surface that really counts, and underneath the surface of 2001 is a story about human evolution. And you’re really not supposed to understand it – you’re expected to make your own conclusions about what it’s all about. Arthur C. Clarke (who co-wrote the screenplay with Kubrick) adapted from his original short story The Sentinel, stated: “If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise more questions than we answered.”

Its total length of 135 minutes is divided into four segments. The first segment is The Dawn of Man, and it follows a tribe of ape-men that are driven away from their watering hole by another, fiercer tribe. A black monolith appears when the tribe that have been evicted are sleeping and this triggers a leap in evolution and you see an ape-man putting two-and-two together as he discovers how to use a bone as the first tool. This tool, however, is used a weapon and the ape-men reclaim their watering hole, using the bone to kill the other tribe’s leader. At the end of the sequence the ape-man throws the bone up into the air at which point (using what’s known as a match-cut) the film jumps forward four million years, with the first weapon becoming the ultimate weapon – a nuclear device orbiting the earth.

The Dawn of Man is an incredibly realistic sequence and it seems astonishing now that it was totally disregarded by the judging panel for that year’s Oscars – the award for best make-up effects was given instead to John Chambers for his work on Planet of the Apes, which, despite being a brilliant film itself, still looked like it was populated by men (and women) wearing masks. Arthur C. Clarke often wondered afterwards whether 2001 had been ignored by the judges because they thought the ape-men were real.

The second part, TMA-1, starts with a fifteen minute dialogue-free sequence involving a shuttle docking with a half-completed space station, set to The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss. This has no relevance to the plot or character development and is there, it seems, just for the sake of creating a visually beautiful set piece – and mesmerisingly beautiful it surely is. 2001 is a unique film in that it forced audiences to watch it in a different way in which they watched other films – they had to sit back and relax and not care whether a scene had any relevance to the plot. They had, in effect, to watch it for the sake of watching it.

We then move to the Moon, where Dr Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) and his team of scientists are inspecting a black monolith that has been buried under the surface for four million years. They have no idea of its origin or purpose and it’s known only as TMA-1 (Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One). During their inspection the monolith emits a high pitched radio signal and the film jumps forward 18 months.

Jupiter Mission, the third segment, follows the crew of the first manned mission to Jupiter – Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea), Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) and three other scientists who have been in cryogenic sleep since before the mission commenced. There’s also a sentient computer system called HAL that controls the functionality of the ship. All is going well until HAL has a breakdown and kills four of the crew, leaving Bowman alone and isolated in deep space. HAL, a highly advanced artificial intelligence whose conflicting orders lead to his malfunction, is one of cinemas great tragic villains, and his resulting paranoia and insanity have devastating and far-reaching consequences for Dave Bowman.

The final part, Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite, is another dialogue-free segment. I’m not going to say anything about this in case whoever’s reading this hasn’t seen this film. I will say one thing though – when you watch it, it will blow your mind.

2001: A Space Odyssey is a magnificent film and to say that it was ahead of its time is an understatement and does no justice to its influence on the development of cinematic techniques and storytelling to come. Remember, this was made before CGI and even blue and green screens even existed. Its special effects would not come anywhere close to being matched for another nine years, until Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) came along, and even that didn’t have the totally immersive effect of 2001. Its influence has not been restricted to the science fiction genre either, and it’s leisurely pace and sparse dialogue can be seen in the films of Clint Eastwood, especially Hereafter (2010), and any film directed by the great Terrence Malick.

In this age of shoot ‘em up, slam-bang, fast-cutting, brainless action movies, it’s a pleasure to watch something that appeals to the intellect and takes its time to tell its story. And if I were to give advice to someone who was about to watch 2001 for the first time, it would be this: Be patient, because the rewards are manifold.

CASABLANCA (1942)

Before you begin reading this I must make one thing clear – I am a hopeless romantic and in order to put some kind of context to this piece I must first tell you the circumstances regarding the time when I met my gorgeous wife, Jackie.

When I first saw her, in December of 1995 she had just finished babysitting for my best friend Rebecca (or Becka as she liked to be called) in Winchester. I had never ever believed in love at first sight but here I was talking like a babbling idiot to this vision of beauty in front of me. Our conversation went something like this:

Jackie: I’m really into art.

Me: Duh-hur I really like art too.

Jackie: I like going to the cinema.

Me: Duh-hur I love films, me.

The conversation went like that for a good ten minutes and I must have sounded like a total moron to her. I knew what I wanted to say to her but I just couldn’t get the words out. On top of that I had just finished playing the villain in a local am-dram production of Aladdin and (in order to look the part) I’d grown a goatee beard and had my head shaved which made me look like a serial killer. Our first meeting reminded me of the time I went to see The Strawbs on their 25^th Anniversary Tour a couple of years earlier at the Tower Arts Centre in Winchester. I’d always been a big fan of them and because the venue had a limited amount of seating I, along with the rest of the audience, had the opportunity to meet the band in the bar after the gig. Dave Cousins, the lead singer and guitarist and driving force behind them was a musician I particularly admired and I had rehearsed in my head the conversation I would have with him. It would be witty and intelligent, erudite and sophisticated. But when he actually shook my hand all I could get out of my stupid mouth was, “Duh-hur, I think you’re brilliant, me, I do. C-c-can I have your autograph?”

When I met up with Becka in the pub a week after my first encounter with the woman of my dreams I said to her that I really liked Jackie. Being the consummate matchmaker that she was, Becka informed me that Jackie had also liked me. I told her that I had just bought two tickets to see Casablanca, which was having a special showing at the multiplex in Basingstoke in January and wondered if Jackie might like come along with me. I knew that it was a long shot – I was thirteen years older than Jackie, but at least I’d shaved my goatee off and my hair was starting to grow back. Becka (and I am eternally grateful to her for this) had lied to Jackie, telling her that I was the most interesting person she knew and that I was really nice. She also lied to me when she informed me that Jackie was really interested in me and then she gave me her phone number. I only found out later that they hadn’t even communicated with each other because Jackie had been spending Christmas and New Year with her dad in the Lake District.

Being hopelessly in love with someone and not being able to contact them is torturous, but on 20 January 1996 she answered my call. Becka had already primed her to expect a call from me and I went round to see Jackie in her flat the following night. I’d already had several offers to accompany me to see Casablanca if Jackie turned me down, but as they were all from men, going to see probably the most romantic film of all time with another man seemed a little inappropriate. Fortunately Jackie agreed to come and see it with me and the rest – as they say – is history.

I’d already seen Casablanca about a hundred times and could quote most of the dialogue it contained.



The original poster for Casablanca 



So, what is it about this film (aside from the fact that I associate it with the first date with my wife) that I love so much?

Well, for a start, there’s the magnificent international cast. Humphrey Bogart, who was named the best actor of the 20^th century, is Rick Blaine, an embittered, world weary cynic who ‘sticks his neck out for nobody’, but underneath that veneer of cynicism beats the heart of an idealist. It’s a role that fits him like a glove and when you watch the film it’s impossible to imagine anyone other than him playing that part. But he wasn’t the studio’s first choice – so try to imagine (if you can) how Casablanca would have turned out if the studio had got their way and cast Ronald Reagan instead of Bogart as Rick.

Then there’s the ravishing Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman, who I happen to think was the most stunningly beautiful woman that has ever graced the silver screen. She just radiates sex appeal without ever having to remove a single item of clothing – with the obvious exception of her coat. And she could act!

And then there’s the marvellous British actor Claude Rains as the Prefect of Police, Louis Renault – whose velvety voice and perfect diction disguised the fact that at home he spoke in a broad Cockney accent. He delivers a brilliant comic turn as the corrupt official with hidden depths. When Rick pulls a gun on him and says, “Remember, this gun is pointed right at your heart,” Louis replies, “That is my least vulnerable spot.”

There’s also the Austrian actor Paul Henried as Victor Lazlo, on the run from the Gestapo and desperately trying to get hold of Letters of Transit so he can escape unoccupied Casablanca with his wife and carry on the fight in America. The villain of the film, Major Heinrich Strasser of the SS, is played with charming menace by German actor Conrad Veidt, who had fled Nazi Germany in 1933 with his Jewish wife, where they would have certainly been murdered. In another of Claude Rains’ throw-away one liners Strasser says to Louis, “You give him (Rick) credit for too much cleverness. My impression was that he’s just another blundering American,” to which Louis replies, “We mustn’t underestimate blundering Americans. I was with them when they blundered into Berlin in 1918.”  

Add to this mix great supporting roles from Hungarian Peter Lorre (famous for playing the first on-screen serial killer in Fritz Lang’s M in 1931) as the weasly Ugarte and British actor Sidney Greenstreet as local black marketer Ferrari, both of whom had also played alongside Bogart in John Huston’s tremendous 1941 adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon.

And let’s not forget Dooley Wilson as Rick’s loyal piano player, Sam, and his rendition of As Time Goes By and that great Hungarian character actor SK Sakall as the loveable waiter Carl who says he has given Strasser the best table because “being German, he would have taken it anyway.”

Casablanca is a war film without any war in it, but it stills tells a story of courage, occupation and oppression. It’s peopled with disenchanted lovers and opportunists, patriots and isolationists. It’s imaginatively directed by Michael Curtiz and it is most definitely not the kind of standard, average, predictable love story that Hollywood had been churning out for years. But it’s the dialogue – delivered so skilfully and with such conviction – that makes it a glorious unexpected delight.

When Louis asks what in heaven’s name brought Rick to Casablanca, Rick replies “My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.”

Louis: The waters? What waters? We’re in the middle of the desert.

Rick: I was misinformed.

Not only is Casablanca the most romantic film you’ll ever see, it is also one of the funniest. The script by Julius and Philip Epstein is shot through with sparkling wit and tremendous throw-away one-liners, all delivered by a cast at the very peak of their powers. It’s one of my top five films of all time and the only film that has ever come close to its delirious doomed romanticism is John Madden’s exquisite Shakespeare in Love (1998).

But it’s those one-liners that get me every time:

“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.”

“Here’s looking at you, kid.”

“We’ll always have Paris.”

Unlike me, my wife is not a hopeless romantic - she’s a practical, level-headed artistic woman who knows what she wants. But for me (and I know she feels the same way too – even though she’ll probably never admit it) we’ll always have Casablanca.

 

THE ITALIAN JOB (1969)

What can you say about The Italian Job that hasn’t already been said? There are so many good things about this marvellous British film that it’s hard to know where to begin. There’s Michael Caine in another of his iconic roles as Charlie Croker, Noel Coward as the behind bars sophisticated career criminal Mr Bridger, Tony Beckley as Camp Freddy and the wonderful Benny Hill as Professor Peach who likes big women. There’s great comic cameos from Irene Handl, John Le Mesurier and Bill Fraser. There’s the preparation for the robbery and the robbery itself, the fantastic car chase through the streets of Turin that follows and the sublimely brilliant ending. And then there’s the endlessly quotable dialogue.

The original poster for The Italian Job

 

When one of Mr Bridger’s lackeys tells him that Charlie is going to do a job in Italy, Bridger replies, “Well I hope he likes spaghetti. They serve it four times a day in the Italian prisons.” When Charlie picks up his car from storage he tells the manager that he’s just back from India shooting tigers. “There’s a bounty for shooting tigers, you know,” he tells him – then when the manager notices the large amount of money in his wallet and says, “You must have shot an awful lot of tigers, sir,” Charlie responds: “Yes, I used a machine gun.”

It seems that everyone in Britain, no matter what age they are, love this film. Kids who weren’t even born when the film was released can do an impression of Michael Caine saying the line for which he will always be remembered, “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” And my son, William, has got a new pair of glasses of which he is particularly fond because – he says – they make him look like a young Michael Caine.

My son William as Michael Caine

 

I remember going to see the film on its original release and walking out of the cinema, like everyone else who saw it that day, with a huge smile on my face. All I wanted to do after I’d seen it was see it again and I’ve lost count of the times I’ve watched it since then.

The fast moving and funny screenplay was by Troy Kennedy Martin, who had written several episodes of the TV series Z-Cars and would later go on to script Kelly’s Heroes (1970) and the terrific six-part conspiracy thriller Edge of Darkness (1985) for the BBC. The Italian Job was directed with great flair by Peter Collinson, who had directed two successful British films – The Long Day’s Dying and Up The Junction – the previous year. And to cap it all the music was by Quincy Jones.

It’s a film that gets better and better with subsequent viewings and you go along with it even though you know the outcome and can quote most of the dialogue verbatim, especially that final optimistic line from Charlie, “Hang on a minute, lads – I’ve got a great idea.”

The Italian Job is a film that is so embedded in our national psyche, that when it was discovered that it was being remade – by Hollywood – it was greeted by the British public with derision and horror. It was as if an American at a party at Buckingham Palace had announced that he was going to assassinate the Queen. How dare they even consider remaking a national treasure like The Italian Job that was so quintessentially British? But Hollywood has never had any qualms about plundering great European films and remaking inferior dumbed down versions of the originals. Whilst I’ll admit there’s been some good remakes – True Lies (French original: La Totale!), The Departed (Hong Kong original: Infernal Affairs) and Let Me In (Swedish original: Let the Right One In) there have also been even more truly terrible ones – three that spring immediately to mind are Luc Besson’s kinetic French thriller La Femme Nikita (1990) which was remade into the thoroughly forgettable The Assassin (1993); George Sluizer’s atmospheric Dutch psychological drama Spoorloos (1988) became the limp The Vanishing (1993) and Francois Veber’s wonderfully funny French comedy Le Dîner de Cons (1998) was made into the awful Dinner for Schmucks (2010), which was twenty-four minutes longer than the original and about a million times less funny.

When the remake of The Italian Job was eventually released in 2003 it – not surprisingly – didn’t do good business in Britain. I was one of many thousands of cinema goers who steered clear of the film because I thought it was a disgrace that America should take such a revered British classic and Hollywoodize it. I didn’t go and see it because I knew that I would hate it, which, with the benefit of hindsight, is a shame because it’s actually a pretty good film.

It’s got a great cast – Mark Wahlberg, Donald Sutherland, Charlize Theron, Jason Statham, Seth Green, Mos Def and the excellent Edward Norton. It’s well directed by F. Gary Gray and it has a great script by Donna and Wayne Powers. But the thing is, and this is what I like about it most – it’s not a remake. It’s an homage or – to use the current epithet – a reimagining. When Charlie (Mark Wahlberg) and his team decide to get their ill-gotten earnings back after being double-crossed by Steve (Edward Norton), Charlie quite clearly states, “Let’s do it like The Italian Job.” Mind you, the film would have quite obviously been better received in Britain if it hadn’t been called The Italian Job, but the powers-that-be in Hollywood must have thought differently. And for those who have put aside their prejudices and seen the film watch it again and try and spot Spider-man running through the crowd – it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, so you have to pay attention.

Although it has its humorous moments it has a more serious air about it than the original. There’s no gunplay in the original, and no-one gets killed. There’s no villain apart from the villains who carry out the job and its laddish cockney characters are almost blueprints for the likes of Soap, Eddy, Bacon and Winston in Guy Ritchie’s stylised comedy noir Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in 1998. It doesn’t have the memorable dialogue and quotable lines that original had in abundance. And it didn’t have Michael Caine.

Despite struggling for a few years with minor parts Michael Caine hasn’t stopped working since his debut as a leading man in the three films that made his name – Zulu (1964), The Ipcress File (1965) and Alfie (1966). He’s also not averse to doing the odd popcorn movie and he’s honest enough to say that he did such-and-such a film in order to buy his mum a house. I read an interview that Richard Harris gave in the Sunday Times Magazine many years ago where he was highly critical of Michael Caine’s success and was virtually accusing him of prostituting his art for financial gain. Now, I happen to think Richard Harris was an exemplary actor who took on difficult roles in such films as Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life (1963), Ken Hughes’ Cromwell (1970), Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) and Randa Haines’ Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993). But let’s not forget he also did The Return of a Man Called Horse (1976), Triumphs of a Man Called Horse (1983) and Strike Commando 2 (1988) as well as playing Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films before his untimely death in 2002.

As Michael Caine has grown older he has taken on a whole raft of diverse characters – as the vicious Mortwell in Mona Lisa (1986), the clapped out show-biz agent Ray Say in Little Voice (1998), the ether addicted Dr Wilbur Larch in The Cider House Rules (1999), the protective butler Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy (2005-2012) and the loyal magician’s assistant Cutter in the outstanding The Prestige (2006), also directed by Christopher Nolan.

But I think that it’s his eternally optimistic Charlie Croker that he’ll be forever remembered. It’s a classic performance in a classic British film.

But is The Italian Job the best British film ever made? I don’t think so – that honour belongs to Carol Reed’s superb version of Graham Greene’s The Third Man (1949).

But I have to say that The Italian Job is definitely the most entertaining.

And what is there left to say after that except, “Hang on a minute, lads – I’ve got a great idea.”

BLADE RUNNER (1982)

When word got around that Ridley Scott was releasing a director’s cut of his seminal noir science-fiction film Blade Runner I was thrown into a frenzy of excitement. I saw the film on its original release in 1982 and it has remained my favourite film of all time since then. In 1996 I was living in Winchester and I discovered that it was being shown at the Arts Cinema in Southampton. I’d already seen the director’s cut on its release in 1992, but this was an opportunity to see it again.

I was part of a group of people from all walks of life who met in the Hyde Tavern and each evening we would drink beer and talk bollocks to each other until we either left or were asked to leave. When I suggested that we all go to Southampton and see the director’s cut of Blade Runner everyone was in agreement – well everyone except Graham.

“I’ve already seen it,” he said.

“Well come and see it again.”

“I don’t watch films twice.”

“But this is Blade Runner!”

As with all groups of youngish to middle aged single blokes we had perfected the art of talking shite for long periods at a time. We talked about all kinds of things – from religion to politics, by way of history, geography, books, television and movies.  I found that the subjects we spoke about often took a cyclical nature - conversations that we had on a Monday would often be repeated the following Monday, although it would of course be slightly different owing to the behavior known as deterministic chaos, which was summarized by Edward Lorenz as: ‘when the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.’

Years before the Chaos Theory was given a name the great philosopher of science fiction, Philip K. Dick, was writing about it. He also predicted the development of androids, virtual reality, high-tech surveillance, ecological collapse, pre-crime technology and the existence of parallel universes.

So, before I get around to talking about the most influential science-fiction film of all time I just want to say a few words about the most influential science-fiction writer of all time – Philip K. Dick. (From here on – to save time – I will refer to him as PKD).

PKD was no ordinary man. He liked drugs. He had visions. He was paranoid about government interference into his life. Where most people would almost inevitably end up dribbling down their strait jackets in some loony bin, PKD channelled these things into his writing and created some of the most visionary and original novels of the 20^th century.

In his 1963 Hugo Award winning novel The Man in the High Castle, PKD writes about daily life in 1962 under totalitarian fascist imperialist rule. It takes place fifteen years after the end of the Second World War and the victorious Axis powers are conducting intrigues against each other in the former United States. His 1969 novel Ubik flicks between a number of plausible realities in which the ‘real’ reality is a state of half-life and manipulated realities – a concept that was later used in the films The Matrix (1999) and Surrogates (2009).  His most famous novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968), which formed the basis for Blade Runner asked the questions: what is real and what is fake and what factors define humanity as definitely alive as opposed to being alive in outward appearance only?

Original poster for Blade Runner

 

Blade Runner was the film that coined the term director’s cut and it is decidedly different to the plethora of director’s cuts that have been released since – rather than being longer than its original theatrical version it actually came in a few minutes shorter.

Just because a director’s cut is longer than the original theatrical version doesn’t mean in any way shape or form that it’s going to be better (or even as good as) the original. David Lean was made to cut 45 minutes from Lawrence of Arabia (1962) in order to get more showings in cinemas. Lean’s film was improved with the restored footage in the 1989 director’s cut because that material should have been there in the first place. But Giuseppe Tornatore’s brilliant Cinema Paradiso (1988) was definitely not improved by a whopping 60 minutes of additional footage in 2002, which only served to slow the film down to a snail’s pace.

The first thing that went in the director’s cut of Blade Runner was Harrison Ford’s pointless voice-over which was only added because test screenings of the film revealed that American audiences couldn’t follow what was going on without being spoon-fed information. The other thing that went was the happy ending, where Rick and Rachael drive off into the sunset in a car not dissimilar to the car Jack Nicholson was driving when he was on his way to the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.  As a matter of fact it was exactly the same car because the final scene in the original theatrical version of Blade Runner was actually an outtake from The Shining and was added without Ridley Scott’s consent because it was thought audiences wouldn’t like the original downbeat ending.

 

The only thing that was added to the director’s cut of Blade Runner was the unicorn scene, which makes it easier to make the connection with the origami unicorn left outside Deckard’s flat, indicating (for those that haven’t yet realised) that Deckard has pre-programmed dreams and is therefore a replicant himself. The amount of photographs in his flat is also a clue as to what he really is and there’s also the fact that some replicants don’t realise that they are replicants. That was the whole point of Philip K. Dick’s original story – who is human and who is not? And if you are an android with implanted memories and pre-programmed dreams what is stop you (and other humans) from fully believing that you are human? It’s that blurred line between reality and un-reality that Philip K. Dick liked to write about so much.

Unfortunately PKD was not around to see the success of Blade Runner because he died just a few months before its completion and release, but his influence and that of Blade Runner can be measured by the films that were in turn influenced by them. The term ‘Dickian’ can be applied to the following: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dark City, The Truman Show, Gattaca, Twelve Monkeys, Oblivion, Open Your Eyes, Donnie Darko, Inception and countless others.

Despite all the acclaim that he received PKD spent almost his entire life on the breadline. Blade Runner was the first of many successful posthumous adaptations of his work that include: Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Next, Impostor, Screamers, Paycheck and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2007 he was the first (and only, as far as I’m aware) science-fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.

Today, his books sell in the millions and he is rightly acclaimed as the most influential science-fiction writer of the 20^th century. Not only that his books appeal to people who don’t read science-fiction because of their philosophical nature. A friend of mine who told me that she never read science-fiction had a complete collection of books by PKD.

“I thought you didn’t like science-fiction,” I said to her.

“I don’t,” she replied.

“Well, what about all these then?” I asked, indicating the shelf full of PKD books.

“Oh, them,” she said, “I don’t regard them as science-fiction – even though they are – because he wrote about what it is to be human. That makes all the difference.”

And do you know what? It does.

Blade Runner was by no means an instant hit. It suffered the same fate that John Carpenter’s The Thing suffered, in that it came out in the same year as Steven Spielberg’s dreadful ET. But like The Thing, Blade Runner became (what’s now known as) a sleeper hit – a film that got a whole new audience that appreciated its intelligence and complexity through video and then DVD sales.

It was Ridley Scott’s third film after the critical successes of The Duellists (1977) and Alien (1979) and it shows a director in full control of his art. He has since gone on to amaze audiences with such films as Thelma and Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000), Black Hawk Down (2001) Prometheus (2012) and is currently planning a film based on Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War. The photography, set designs and special effects on Blade Runner are spectacular and even after more than thirty years and it looks like it could have been made yesterday. The special effects are as good as – if not better – than the majority of science-fiction films released today. But it’s the story that drives the film. The screenplay was written by Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples (who also scripted Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys and Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven), and unlike the brainless sci-fi adventure that was Star Wars, Blade Runner is a thoughtful and thought provoking film about the nature of humanity and how it feels to be not quite human.

It’s the story of Rick Deckard who is forced out of retirement to retire (kill) a group of replicants (advanced forms of androids) that have escaped from an off-world colony and have illegally returned to Earth. There’s great performances from Edward James Olmos, Daryl Hannah, Joanna Cassidy, Brion James, William Sanderson and Joe Turkel. And Harrison Ford is perfect as the weary, cynical and disillusioned eponymous Blade Runner (a sort of cop whose sole job is to retire rogue replicants).

But it’s Rutger Hauer who steals the show. In probably his finest performance, Hauer plays the replicant leader Roy Batty who resorts to extreme violence to achieve his ultimately unachievable goal. In his final scene, however, he elects to save Deckard’s life rather than let him die and in those final emotional moments his humanity surfaces as his four-year life span comes to an end. In his dying soliloquy (which Hauer wrote himself) Batty (according to Sidney Perkowitz in Hollywood Science) ‘underlines the replicant’s humanlike characteristics mixed with its artificial capabilities’. In his book Future Imperfect: Philip K. Dick at the Movies Jason Vent states that ‘Hauer’s deft performance is heartbreaking in its gentle evocation of the memories, experiences and passions that have driven Batty’s short life’. True fans of the film can quote his soliloquy verbatim. For those of you who can’t here it is:

‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”

It doesn’t get much better than that so I think I’ll just stop here.

WHERE EAGLES DARE (1968)

“Broadsword calling Danny Boy. Broadsword calling Danny Boy. Over.”

We quoted this as kids in the playground of Highfield School in Blackpool in 1968, after we had seen Where Eagles Dare. Our kids can quote it because we made them watch Where Eagles Dare when they were kids and when our kids are adults they will make their kids watch it and they will be able to quote it, and it will go on in perpetuity because it just sounds so great when it trips off the tongue. Even people who have never seen Where Eagles Dare can quote it because they have it as a ringtone on their mobile phones.

 

The poster for Where Eagles Dare

 

Richard Burton with his deep, resonant voice will be forever remembered for this, the most famous call-sign in movie history. He’ll probably be remembered more for this one quote than for his masterly reading of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood or his narrator in Jeff Wayne’s musical adaptation of War of the Worlds.

When I walked out of the cinema in 1968 after seeing what had probably been the longest and most exciting film in the history of long and exciting films it felt like I was walking on air. All my friends – the boys, anyway – felt exactly the same, and when we were off school we would attach two empty cans to a length of string, stretch it tight and say, “Broadsword calling Danny Boy. Broadsword calling Danny Boy,” to each other over and over and over again. We never got tired of saying it – it was like a magic charm.

Where Eagles Dare isn’t perfect though, and over the years and the countless times I’ve watched it I have noticed that it is littered with mistakes. Here are just five of them:

·       The helicopter in the Schlöss Adler couldn’t have been there because the Germans didn’t own any helicopters.

·        A vehicle explodes for no apparent reason after being pushed over a cliff.

·        The black Gestapo uniform that Derren Nesbit wears was no longer in service.

·        The Alpen Corps that guarded the Schlöss Adler had been disbanded in 1918.

·       The truth drug that was going to be used on the captured General wasn’t invented until the 1950s.

So, how did this 148 minute film with hundreds of factual errors, historical inaccuracies, anachronisms, continuity mistakes and enough holes in the plot to fill a gruyere factory ten times over become a classic that has been lapped up by three successive generations?

The answer is so simple that you’ll kick yourself for not thinking of it first.

Nobody cares.

Nobody cares because the pace of the film is so fast that you hardly notice any of them. It’s a Boy’s Own fantasy of epic proportions, where the heroes never run out of bullets and the villains couldn’t hit a barn door at ten paces. It’s the original Men on a Mission Action Blockbuster and it has never been bettered. Oh, and one more thing, it’s great fun to watch.

It’s a war film, a thriller and a spy story all rolled into one. Alistair MacLean, the most popular thriller writer in the world at the time delivered the story and screenplay in a mere six weeks after being approached by Richard Burton because his son had wanted him to be in an action film where he was the hero.

And wow! What an action film he delivered! It’s a tale of double agents and triple agents, double crosses and triple crosses, explosions and gunfire. More bullets were fired and more people were killed in Where Eagles Dare than in any other film up to that point. As I sat, aged fourteen, wide-eyed and glued to my seat, watching this film in the Odeon cinema in Blackpool, I was in a state of delirium. It was the most violent film I had ever seen – and it was great! If this had been a true story then the Second World War would have been over in a matter of weeks because in just over two hours Clint Eastwood had single-handedly killed off three quarters of the German Army. There must have been more dead Germans left in the Schlöss Adler and its immediate surroundings than there were Imperial Stormtroopers vaporised when the Death Star exploded at the end of Star Wars.

One brief, five minute flashback is all that’s given to explain the mission and introduce the characters, but that was all that was needed in a film that was first and foremost about killing as many of the enemy in as many ways as humanly possible – they were stabbed, shot, strangled, bludgeoned, run over, blown up and one was dropped from a great height (actually, two others dropped from a great height, but one committed suicide by jumping out of an aeroplane without a parachute and the other was shot first so technically (as they fell rather than were dropped) they don’t fall into the ‘dropped from a great height’ category).

Granted, the story moves along so swiftly that there’s little time for character development. Clint Eastwood plays The Man With No Name, except this time he’s in a uniform and he has a name. Derren Nesbit, who had up until then made a career out of playing unpleasant, devious and untrustworthy villains plays an unpleasant, devious and untrustworthy Gestapo officer. Ingrid Pitt, famous for playing Hammer vampires with large breasts in low-cut dresses, plays a British agent with large breasts in a low-cut dress. And then there was Anton Diffring (who was usually typecast as a Nazi officer) playing a Nazi officer.

The film, though, belongs to Richard Burton – it was written for him and it shows. He has the most dialogue and it’s his actions that move the story along – and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. In fact, I can’t think of many things that would be better than spending two and a half hours in his company – listening to that wonderful voice of his – and I have no doubt that if he had ever been recorded reading aloud the names and addresses in a telephone directory it would have been a cause for celebration.

There are so many other things that set this film apart – there’s the breath-taking scenery, Ron Goodwin’s excellent score, the final forty-five minutes of breakneck real-time action and, of course, there’s the brilliantly choreographed fight on top of the cable car.

But it’s that call sign that everyone remembers so well.

“Broadsword calling Danny Boy. Broadsword calling Danny Boy. Over.”

“Danny Boy to Broadsword. What’s your message? Over.”

“If you haven’t seen it, watch Where Eagles Dare now. If you have seen it – watch it again. Broadsword out.”