The League of Gentlemen (1960)

☆ ☆ ☆

The League of Gentlemen (1960) – B. Dearden

Droll, very British heist film that adopts a similar plot to Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956).  A varied group of ex-military men with different skills (communications, explosives, quartermaster) are recruited by Jack Hawkins to participate in a bank robbery planned according to an American pulp novel (“The Golden Fleece”).  Director Basil Dearden builds things slowly as we are introduced to each character (and a very light amount of social commentary about their status/situations post-war).  But mostly this is a well-executed adventure film that doesn’t really rise to the peaks of the genre (Rififi, The Killing, Big Deal on Madonna Street – all from the years immediately preceding this film) but is enjoyable nevertheless and so very British.  The final scene with the drunk interloper is excruciating.  Of course, the Brits need their heist films too, of course, but, for my money, The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) wins out over this one too. Still, it was a big hit at the time.

  

Cluny Brown (1946)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Cluny Brown (1946) – E. Lubitsch

The final film that Lubitsch completed before his death by heart attack, Cluny Brown is a gently amusing comedy buoyed by a delightful performance by Charles Boyer (playing a Czech refugee from the Nazis despite his unmistakably French accent).  Jennifer Jones (borrowed from Selznick) plays the title character, an irrepressible maid cum plumber who has a sense of wonder and joy about everything.  This approach (and the similarly direct responses of Boyer) flies in the face of the restrictive social structure – neither Jones nor Boyer properly fit into either the Upstairs or Downstairs environments.  Even the pretentious middle classes have no room for Cluny who doesn’t seem to “know her place”.  As always with Lubitsch, there are a lot of wry chuckles on offer here, some of them verging on double entendres, and more often than not, it is the script that heightens the humorousness of the situations rather than the context being funny on its own.  Moreover, the excellent array of character actors in bit parts enlivens everything. All that said, this one probably doesn’t reach the heights of Lubitsch’s best work (The Shop Around the Corner, To Be or Not to Be, Trouble in Paradise) but it is a very pleasant diversion.

Mr. Holmes (2015)

☆ ☆ ½

Mr. Holmes (2015) – B. Condon

Rather resolutely middle-brow, made for “seniors cinema”, or at the very least for one of the BBC’s mystery series.  Or perhaps that is a bit too cruel?  Ian McKellen does an admirable job of shaking off his well-known personality and fitting himself into the shop-worn persona of Sherlock Holmes.  However, this is Holmes at age 93 retired to beekeeping with the to-be-expected cognitive decline that all would face at such an age -- so, McKellen is not entirely bound by our expectations about the fabled detective.  The plot takes the form of several flashbacks as our hero tries his best to recall his last case, as well as a subsequent trip to Japan to find some “prickly ash” that might hold the cure for his ensuing dementia.  His housekeeper (Laura Linney in thankless role) and her young son, discourage and encourage, respectively, Holmes’ attempts to retain his dignity.  The mystery is solved but the whole thing was only as stimulating as a hot cocoa from your nanna in front of the fire on an autumn Sunday afternoon.  

The Boy with Green Hair (1948)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Boy with Green Hair (1948) – J. Losey

Strange, sombre, almost morose “fantasy” film starring 12-year-old Dean Stockwell as an orphan who wakes up one morning to find that his hair has turned green.  Immediately, the people of the town (and, of course, the other kids) begin to distance themselves from him, so you get the feeling that this is a film about how terrible we are to those who are different.  But, no, instead the boy is told in a dream that the green hair is meant to attract people’s attention so that then he can deliver them a fervent anti-war message.  Director Joseph Losey was a friend and colleague of Bertolt Brecht – but his famed alienation techniques don’t really seem to be on display here; instead the leftist message would end up getting Losey ensnared by the HUAC hearings a few years later (but he escaped to build a distinguished career abroad including a strong partnership with Harold Pinter).  Aiding the downbeat tone is the choice of jazz standard “nature boy”, full of minor chords, as a riff to fill the soundtrack.  Even Pat O’Brien’s Irish ballads can’t cut the gloom and the actor seems at sea, especially because his role (as foster grandfather) calls for him to betray the poor poor boy with the green hair.  An oddity.

  

Ill Met By Moonlight (1957)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Ill Met By Moonlight (1957) – M. Powell & E. Pressburger

The final joint venture by The Archers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is a straightforward military adventure story that takes place in Occupied Crete in 1944.  Dirk Bogarde is the leader of a small band who plot to kidnap the local German general and smuggle him off-shore to Cairo in order to embarrass the Nazis.  To this suspenseful plot, The Archers add a dose of respect for the local culture, never subtitling the Greek (or German) that is spoken and using the music of Crete liberally on the soundtrack.  Unlike some of their earlier art-directed-to-high-heaven films (The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus), things are scenic but not too style-conscious here – rocky mountain vistas predominate.  Bogarde is charmingly heroic and much less chilly than he would later turn for Losey and Pinter.  Not a bullseye but enjoyable nonetheless.

Dead Ringers (1988)

☆ ☆ ☆

Dead Ringers (1988) – D. Cronenberg

It’s Jeremy Irons vs. Jeremy Irons and the winner is….Jeremy Irons!  The actor is mesmerizing playing identical twin gynaecologists who get involved with Genevieve Bujold, a nutty actress, and sink into drug addiction and despair.  With David Cronenberg at the helm, Irons is encouraged to go over the top and he does, but the gruesomeness is actually kept to a relative minimum (relative to other Cronenberg vehicles of the time -- this came chronologically between The Fly and Naked Lunch).  Yet, for much of the first half of the film, slow and stately as it may be, I felt on the edge of my seat, awaiting a shock moment of gore – or at least a weird prosthesis – that never quite arrived (OK, actually there was one in a brief dream sequence!).  As madness descends on the sensitive of the two twins (the other is more virile), things do get messier…and also somehow more boring and drawn out.  In the end, though strange, this film falls into the lesser half of Cronenberg’s output, saved only by the virtuosic performance(s) of Irons. 

  

Billy Liar (1963)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Billy Liar (1963) – J. Schlesinger

Tom Courtenay gives a brave performance as Billy Fisher given the sometimes embarrassing immaturity that his title character displays in Walter Mitty-like flights of fantasy and escapes from dull reality.  As a late British Kitchen Sink film, this may have been refreshing, since fantasy rarely intruded on the drudgery of working class life (as in Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 1960, a big hit).  However, the fantasies are not really that imaginative and the encroaching drab problems in reality actually hold more interest.  So, the plot actually gets a bit more invigorating when Julie Christie turns up as a free-spirited lass for her 12 minutes of fame late in the film.  How will Billy respond when he’s faced with the opportunity for true escape with Liz/Julie rather than the easier withdrawal into unreality?  Take a guess.  Schlesinger’s use of widescreen B&W is appealing but he went on to better things (e.g., Midnight Cowboy).