The Sundowners (1960)

Gentle episodic family drama, powered by some strong performances and lovely scenery

Director: Fred Zinnemann

Cast: Deborah Kerr (Ida Carmody), Robert Mitchum (Paddy Carmody), Peter Ustinov (Rupert Venneker), Glynis Johns (Mrs Firth), Dina Merrill (Jean Halstead), Chips Rafferty (Quinlan), Michael Anderson Jnr (Sean Carmody), Lola Brooks (Liz Brown), Wylie Watson (Herb Johnson), John Mellion (Bluey Brown), Ronald Fraser (Clint Ocker)

Who wants to settle down when the open road, and all the adventure it promises, lies ahead? Sure not Paddy Carmody (Robert Mitchum), an Irish-Australian sheep drover in the 1920s Australian outback, who loves the freedom of your home being wherever the sun goes down. Problem is, his loving wife Ida (Deborah Kerr) and teenage son Sean (Michael Anderson Jnr) are tired of this itinerant lifestyle. They want to put down some roots, ideally on an available farm they’ve got their eye on. But can they persuade the easy-going Paddy to settle down in the same old four walls?

This makes for some gentle, family friendly drama in this easy-going, episodic film which relies on some lovely location footage and a clutch of very charming performances to carry the day. While you can see links with some of the other film’s on Zinnemann’s CV – in the loose sense that Paddy has to choose whether to take a gentle stand by staying in one place for more than a few weeks – really it’s a leisurely ramble through a clutch of crowd-pleasing vignettes. The Sundowners probably stretches on a little too long, but it’s just about charming enough not to outstay its welcome.

Largely shot in Australia, it also follows Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach in introducing the country to American audiences. The difference being, while On the Beach was largely shot in Melbourne, all of the external footage here is in the dustbowl outback. These panoramas give The Sundowners the feel of a family western, with the Carmodys as decent, honest homesteaders. It’s a very familiar language for the film, spiced up by the film not shirking on chucking plenty of exciting wildlife. The parade of kangaroos, koalas and wombats that we get to see bouncing and crawling around – often looking impossibly sweet and cuddly – must have been catnip to audiences.

The Sundowners also presents an endearing, if terminally cliched, view of Australian life. With the dialogue littered with “g’days” and “fair dinkum” and the like, The Sundowners presents an affectionate portrait of Australian farmhands as honest, boisterous, hard-drinkers, quick to blows and equally quick to laughs straight after. The menfolk, after a hard day’s work driving sheep, like nothing better than to gather in the bar for a few cold ones or the barn for a few cheeky gambles. They’re decent, easy-going, never hold grudges and are a loyal, supportive community – naturally the bonds of friendship are formed in a mass punch-up which quickly turns into a boozy bonding session.

The Carmody’s fit right into this, with the family presented as a warm and supportive unit that, despite occasional disagreements, sticks together through thick and thin. At its heart is the relationship between Ida and Paddy, which is warm, affectionate and has a surprisingly strong sexuality in it (it’s hard not to notice their obvious continued attraction for each other, not least in a bedtime scene with a topless Mitchum). That also comes out of the natural, easy chemistry between Mitchum and Kerr (working together here for the fourth time) who genuinely feel like they’ve been together for years.

While you could take a pop at both actors less than faultless Australian accents, I prefer to think it’s smarter than that: Mitchum’s accent is half-way between Dublin and Brisbane, which feels right as does Kerr’s British-tinged Aussie. What’s more important is both actors give endearingly fine performances. Mitchum brings out a gentle, childlike quality, to Paddy. He’s softly-spoken, prone to moan rather than rage when things don’t go his way (his teenage sulk when roped into a sheep shearing contest is rather funny) and throws himself into things with all his heart – be that thrilled at a betting winning streak or mortified when a later streak goes wrong.

Perhaps even better though is Kerr, who mixes a motherly streak (she’s essentially looking after two kids’ here) with a determined outback assertiveness that sees her mucking in as much with the sheep driving as she does the cooking. But there’s also a soulful longing in Kerr’s performance for something more grounded in her life – a moment where, covered in dust and dirt, she stares at a woman adjusting her make-up on a train, radiates a longing for something more permanent in her life. But, while she may lose her temper with Paddy, she’ll never hold a grudge or leave us in doubt about her love for him. It’s a lovely, sensitive but strong performance.

Perhaps best in show here though is Ustinov, having a whale-of-a-time as grizzled old (pseudo?) posh drifter Rupert who the family effectively adopts and is as in love with the drifting life as Paddy. The role allows Ustinov to be tougher and more manly than ever before, while also using his natural gifts for whimsy and shameless yarn-spinning. Rupert, wearing a sailers cap allegedly from his service in the Chinese navy, claims expertise in everything, to have grown up doing any task you name and loves the refined things in life as much as he has a soft spot for the flirtatious arms of Glynis John’s blousy inn-keeper. It’s a very funny, but also surprisingly layered performance – if Ustinov hadn’t won the Oscar that year for Spartacus he would have stood a good chance of winning for this.

The Sundowners marshals these fine actors into a series of set-piece episodes. From driving sheep across the outback, to settling down at a farm, to the delivery of farmhand’s baby, Sean’s first beer, a sheep-shearing contest (where Paddy is royally hustled by an old timer), an epic coin toss contest, the closing adventures with the family’s newly won race-house Sundowner (with some well shot racing footage), the film constantly throws us into another small drama-within-a-drama, each unspooling with the same warmth and charm.

The Sundowners is, at heart, a slight tale and probably is overextended over its two hour plus. Much of its Australian setting, so eye-opening at the time, looks a bit twee and cliched today. But it’s got strong performances across the board, a good heart and a firm hand holding it together. It’s not a classic for the ages, but is a charming afternoon’s entertainment.

The Odyssey (2026)

Nolan’s epic takes deep, thoughtful bites out of Homer, looks amazing but maybe tries to do too much

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Matt Damon (Odysseus), Tom Holland (Telemachus), Anne Hathaway (Penelope), Robert Pattinson (Antinous), Lupita Nyong’o (Helen of Troy/Clytemnestra), Samantha Morton (Circe), John Leguizamo (Eumaeus), Zendaya (Athena), Charlize Theron (Calypso), John Bernthal (Menelaus), Himesh Patel (Eurylochus), Bill Irwin (Polyphemus), Elliot Page (Sinon), Benny Safdie (Agamemnon), Mia Goth (Melantho), Corey Hawkins (Polybus), Logan Marshall-Green (Melanthius)

I think pretty much everyone knows the story: Odysseus (Matt Damon), after ten years fighting the Trojan War, has the longest, most hellish commute ever. Will he see his Kingdom of Ithaca again, or wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and now-grown son Telemachus (Tom Holland) again? And, even if he does, what will he do about the fact his home is awash with hostile suitors, led by the bullying Antinous (Robert Pattinson) who want to take his throne and wife for themselves?

Nolan’s adaptation of Homer is epic as few other films are. Shot it seems with the whole Mediterranean (and Iceland for good measure) as a soundstage, its visual imagery is almost impossible to beat, shot with immense skill for IMAX without letting the scale flood the story. It’s a surprisingly faithful retelling of the legend, with Homer’s non-linear style catnip for an architect storyteller like Nolan, who promptly opens the film in the final year of the timeline and spools backwards and forwards from there.

The film is set in “a time of apparent magic”, an oblique idea in a world of Cyclopes and trips to Hades (a stunningly, bleakly unsettling vast black landmass, with bodies crawling forward to sip goats blood and share terrible prophecies), but where the presence of the Gods is open to interpretation. Zeus cracks thunder and Poseidon rolls waves, but maybe it’s just superstition. Is Odysseus right to be a sceptic? The only God present is Athena, played with warm distance by Zendaya, who may or may not be a figment of Odysseus guilty conscience.

Despite its length, it frequently zips along, with a marvellously staged sequence from Homer cropping up every few minutes. Sequences like the Fitzcarraldo-like laborious dragging of a wooden horse (half buried in the sand) that looks like a grim bronze statue of a bucking horse, over many miles by the luckless Trojans are brilliantly done. It’s hard to fault almost anything about its production. But it’s not perfect.

Perhaps the major thing missing from Nolan’s film is a sense of personal hubris (as opposed to the imperial hubris of Agamemnon). Nolan has a very interesting interpretative idea of the fall of Troy being effectively the fall of man, the deception and brutality being a Bronze age Hiroshima. But a more interesting film would have seen Odysseus initially proud of his role in this orgy of war-ending killing, only to realise during the disastrous journey home he is in fact the villain. That he broke his own sacred code, of twanging the bow to warn the prey. Instead, Odysseus is plainly aware of his crimes from the start, and his shame perversely gives the character little room to develop, beyond Nolan’s implication his journey is self-inflicted.

Strangely then, it’s hard to get a sense of the journey changing Odysseus. Nolan is far more successful as seeing the whole film as a self-inflicted punishment. Odysseus doesn’t believe he deserves to go home. Instead, as the destroyer of peace and order, part of him embraces his journey (he even leaves Troy on a self-imposed longer route, over his crew’s protests). While his long exile with Calypso is largely pushed into montage, the film implies Odysseus willingly eats the lotus to forget his guilt.

Nolan attempts to fill the gap by having Odysseus strain to save his crew’s lives. But, while Odysseus is weighed down with guilt, his crew emphatically isn’t; this borderline mutinous bunch merrily ransacking and burning a farming village. When Circe denounces this bunch as rapists in waiting, neither the film (or Odysseus) can really argue otherwise. The Odyssey can never quite decide what it feels about these characters, and their resentment at Odysseus for their numbers being whittled down tends to get outweighed by the film’s empathy for Odysseus’ guilt and shame.

There are similarly confused emotional lines in Odysseus relationship with young warrior Sinon. The Odyssey wants to establish Odysseus’ double betrayal of this man – first allowing Antonius to bully him into taking his place in the army, then using him as a pawn to get the Trojans to drag the horse into the city – as a foundational crime. But there isn’t time to establish a surrogate father-son bond between them, meaning Odysseus betrayal of Sinon feels muddily motivated. Again, the film wants to keep Odysseus sympathetic so avoids stating the conclusion he must have made: Sinon’s life is an acceptable sacrifice to end the war. The Odyssey leans heavily on Elliot Page’s sensitive, traumatised performance to make us fill in this blank.

This is a sign of Nolan’s film covering a lot of complex meat, without always finding room to digest it fully. Alongside this, he wants a more conventional, crowd-pleasing tale of a hero coming home to a loving wife. As part of this, many of the female characters of The Odyssey are stripped of some of their richness. Most egregiously, Charlize Theron’s Calypso and Zendaya’s Athena are little more than sounding boards for Odysseus. But even Penelope, despite an emotionally intense performance from Anne Hathaway, is more of a traditional faithful wife. Nolan is trying to show the vulnerability of her position in a masculine world – but you long for more sign of the shrewd resentful figure of either The Return or Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad.

Perhaps because this is because Nolan is grimly realistic in suggesting women are often trapped in victim roles in this male world. Lupita Nyong’o’s Helen of Troy may be critical of the Greeks but is also an abused wife (her face disfigured by Jon Bernthal’s brutish Menelaus), plagued with shame about how her name was used to justify so much death. Even Circe, the most complex and engaging female role, dreads becoming a victim. That doesn’t take away from the barn-storming cameo of resentment and paranoia by Samantha Morton. The creepy Cronenbergesque body-horror of Circe using her hands to craft the sailor’s faces into pigs – including shoving her hand down one man’s throat – is perhaps the film’s most unsettling moment.

What a lot of this comes back to is Nolan’s admittedly fascinating idea that Odysseus has opened a Pandora’s Box that unleashed destruction on the world. His burning of Troy, broke Zeus’s Law of treating guests as you yourself would wish to be treated. In echoes of Oppenheimer, Odysseus believes he has laid the groundwork for the end of the world, by creating one where hospitality can be betrayed and people’s word is no longer their bond (exactly the world the suitors are exploiting in Ithica).

This keys into Nolan’s most interesting concept. Throughout this subtly fracturing world – where the Gods may be falling silent and the world is shorn of rules – there are reports of ‘men of the sea’ roaming the coasts taking anything they want. Is this another cause for the Greeks to fight? Perhaps not: like nuclear weapons, violence become self-perpetuating. The actions of Odysseus crew should clue us in that these men are in fact the Greeks themselves, their humanity gone, continuing a cycle of destruction and death started by Odysseus who has “become death, destroyer of worlds”.

There are many, many good ideas in The Odyssey, which I’ve mulled over for several weeks after seeing the film. Fundamentally, I feel some of it doesn’t always land from the casting of Odysseus. Would Matt Damon have been my choice? Probably not: there is a boyish decency about Damon, not a tortured cunning. He’s probably not helped by recent memories of Ralph Fiennes (almost born to play the role), but Damon can’t bring out the depths of conflict, guilt, regret and misplaced pride in the way (say) Cillian Murphy did in Oppenheimer. Damon is a little too similar to the optimistic, earnest energy Tom Holland very successfully gives Telemachus. The Odyssey tries to follow The Return in making Odysseus keen to ensure Telemachus does follow him into a life of violence – but can’t resist giving Holland one last sword fight to flex his muscles.

I feel conflicted about The Odyssey and I need to see it again. It is so close to everything I wanted. Its practical effects and epic scenes with Polyphemus, the sirens and Sicilia and Charybdis have a wonderful Jason and the Argonauts feel to them that I loved. But it also feels quite damning that the sack of Troy is less shocking here than it was in Troy (especially as the brutality is at the heart of what the film is trying to do) and its final third covers similar ground to The Return, but (for me) with less clear-eyed honesty, awkwardly balancing action set-pieces and its thematically ‘happy’ ending.

But there are so many delights to appreciate, not least Ludwig Göransson’s imposing score, the stunning imagery and costume design (Ellen Mironijck’s imaginative use of a range of inspirations reaches an apotheosis in Agamemnon reimagined as a mix of Darth Vader and Batman). There are wonderful performances in smaller roles, not least Morton, Bernthal, Himesh Patel and most of all John Leguizamo as the loyal Eumaeus and Robert Pattinson as the despicable. But while it tackles an array of brilliant idea, it can’t always balance these all successfully. It’s almost the first Nolan film where his reach overextends his grasp – but when you have a reach like this, does it matter?

On the Beach (1959)

Extremely bleak anti-nuclear drama, that today also serves as a rather neat climate parable

Director: Stanley Kramer

Cast: Gregory Peck (Com. Dwight Towers), Ava Gardner (Moira Davidson), Fred Astaire (Julian Osborn), Anthony Perkins (Lt Peter Holmes), Donna Anderson (Mary Holmes), John Tate (Admiral Bridie), Harp McGuire (Lt Sunderstrom), Lola Brooks (Lt Hosgood)

If there was a prize for the bleakest, most depressing mainstream Hollywood film ever made, surely On the Beach would be in the running. Based on Nevil Shute’s novel, it’s a grim, hope-free recounting of the aftermath of nuclear war. One that has irradiated all life on Earth, bar Australia. Which is, in any case, doomed to death by an approaching fall-out cloud of lethal doses of radiation. Not exactly a laugh a minute.

Among those spending the last few months in Melbourne, before the extermination of the human race are the crew of an American submarine captained by Commander Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck). He’s living in denial about the death of his wife and therefore can’t commit to a final-days romance with hard-drinking (and who wouldn’t be in this situation) socialite Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner). Towers is tasked with investigating two last hopes for mankind: a possible drop in fatal radiation in the Arctic and a strange morse code signal from San Francisco. Joining his crew is Australian liaison officer, Lt Peter Holmes (Anthony Perkins) worried about ensuring he and his family end things before the radiation becomes unbearable, and guilt-ridden nuclear scientist Julian Osborn (Fred Astaire) who blames himself for this mess.

On the Beach is another Kramer message movie. The message this time being that, frankly, all the official gumpf about a nuclear exchange being a sort of rougher version of the Blitz, was a pile of bunkum. On the Beach plainly shows that, no matter who starts a nuclear war (and the film avoids saying who did) we all lose. The idea that cooler heads would prevail, or America’s technological genius would stave off destruction is shown as the nonsense it is. Radiation doesn’t care who are you and when the equivalent of ten thousand suns have detonated across the world, no amount of duck and cover is going to save you.

This is lies behind On the Beach where, as the Eliot poem it takes its title from says, “this is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper”. The last days of mankind aren’t a fiery conflagration. It’s a host of ordinary people and regular joes, sitting around waiting to die. Ordinary life in Melbourne continues as much as possible. People still go to work – although, due to petrol shortages, some do so on horseback. People fuss about running out of real coffee. A few old bores in a gentleman’s club bemoan there are too few days left to get through the stock of port in the cellar.

The film itself is really a long, gentle musing on suicide. How do people decide to go? With the end nigh, the government lays on suicide pills, offering a sleep no one can wake up from. It’s the preferred option for Anthony Perkins’ sensitive naval lieutenant, struggling to get his horrified, shell-shocked wife (Donna Anderson, the only actor in the film allowed to truly submit to stunned terror) to understand the kindest thing they can do for their baby daughter is feed her some drugged milk before they end their own lives. Banners flutter in the breeze in the final days of Melbourne telling people it’s not too late to find the Lord. Others throw caution to the wind, not least the drivers in the world’s last ever F1 race who hurtle around the track with such reckless abandon, several of them meet fiery deaths with surprisingly little reaction from the crowd.

If there is something quite dated about On the Beach it’s how stoically the world faces imminent death. Perhaps not a surprise considering Shute’s background, every character straps on their best stiff-upper-lip and knuckles down to their duty. Personally, I can’t imagine I’d still be giving up most of my remaining time on Earth to the 9-5 grind. But if there is a spot of hope in On the Beach it’s that mankind can face the end of things without people turning on each other and without a hint of societal collapse (it’s hard to imagine an equivalent film today not featuring this – and On the Beach looks tame in its vision of post-apocalyptic life compared to the hell hole Peter Watkins The War Game presented a few years later).

There is a dryness to this side of On the Beach, captured you could argue by that most stoic of classical Hollywood stars, Gregory Peck. But that’s unfair to Peck, who in his best work was always more vulnerable and filled with doubt than you’d think. Dwight Towers is living in comprehensive denial, still buying presents for his wife and talking about his kid’s future (despite the certainty of their deaths) – but still eager for some form of consolation. It comes in the form of Moira, bought to life in a vibrant but subtly damaged performance by Ava Gardner. Their tentative romance is beautifully paced – and little moments, such as Towers absent-mindedly calling Moira by his wife’s name after some beachside horseplay carry real emotional impact. Peck and Gardner – close friends in real life – have superb chemistry, and their tentative, awkward end-of-days romance is both the brightest and, in some ways, saddest spot in On the Beach.

Plenty of the rest of this well assembled and well-shot film however continually reminds you of the bleak despair of the end times. This is not Kramer’s most subtle or dramatically vibrant work, but it certainly carries a bleak impact. Shots of an abandoned San Francisco, or the empty streets of Melbourne that close the film, are haunting. There are striking moments like the crewman who swims ashore to certain radioactive death in San Francisco, because he’d rather die ‘at home’ (you think the film could do with more of those moments). Kramer also gives an excellent showpiece to Fred Astaire, who still has just enough spots of twinkle behind his sad-eyed self-disgust.

But is On the Beach a little too grim, depressing and on-the-nose to work? Well yes and no. It’s easy to write off its insistence, its relentless reminder of stupidity of mankind. But then you remember how it feels we are currently sleep-walking not to nuclear death, but climate change disaster. How different are the heat waves of today, to a deadly cloud of radiation drifting over to kill us all in the future? And, just like Astaire bemoans, we all knew the danger and did nothing. Perhaps, the dangers change but the despairing relevance of On the Beach doesn’t.

Project Hail Mary (2026)

Delightful unusual bromance in space, full of heart and humour – a popcorn treat

Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

Cast: Ryan Gosling (Dr Ryland Grace), Sandra Hüller (Eva Stratt), James Ortiz (Rocky), Lionel Boyce (Carl), Ken Leung (Yao Li-Jie), Milana Vayntrub (Oleysa Ilukhina), Priya Kansara (Mary), Malachi Kirby (Martin Dubois)

We all feel a bit groggy after a long sleep, waking up feeling a little confused about where we are. But I bet none of us have been as freaked out as Dr Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) waking up, millions of light years from Earth, on board a spacecraft called Mary, en route for a mysterious sun, with all the rest of the crew having died in hyper-sleep. Amnesia means he can’t remember why, and he only slowly recalls he was plucked from a teaching career by all-powerful world-saving project leader Stratt (Sandra Hüller). With his unusual scientific expertise, he was tasked with investigating a solar bug (astrophage) slowly killing the stars in the galaxy.

He’s on a ship sent on a ‘Hail Mary’ to investigate the only star in the galaxy that seems unaffected. He’s only slowly remembering all this – and why he is on this mission – when he encounters another ship with a single surviving crewman. He’s Rocky (James Ortiz), a bubbly, friendly, super-skilled mechanic and engineer – who also happens to be a small, rock alien with arms and legs and a hard to translate sing-song voice. Grace and Rocky, with their contrasting skills, team up to solve the astrophage problem and save their worlds from extinction.

Adapted from a novel by Andy Weir, it’s easy to see the overlap with the previous mega-hit based on Weir’s work, The Martian. Very much like that film, a charming, witty genius who doesn’t take himself too seriously has to “science the shit” out of an impossible situation. The differences being that, rather than having to keep himself alive he needs to save the lives of everyone on Earth and rather than being alone, he’s at the heart of an eccentric bromance with a kindred spirit as adorkable as him. It makes for a winning comic pairing but also a very touching, incredibly sweet bromance where you’ll genuinely feel yourself become heavily invested in the safety of this odd couple.

Project Hail Mary made this combination work extremely well on page and it’s translated to screen with just the right level of comedy and tension by Lord and Miller (here redeeming themselves after the catastrophe of their last outing into space, their short-lived direction of Solo). It’s a very faithful adaptation of the novel that not only captures its tone but also preserves some of its darker twists (not least the full story of what happened to Grace back on Earth) and commits to the novel’s off-the-wall ending, that brings its hero both back full circle and gives him a wonderful narrative arc.

Above all though, this is a film about a bromance in space, the film packed with witty interplay between Grace and Rocky as they first slowly understand each other, then learn to work together and then become fast friends, happy to tease each other and (particularly in one heart-rending sequence) willing to take extraordinary risks to keep each other alive. The creation of Rocky – a mix of old-fashioned puppetry and digital augmentation – is brilliant, from seeing him careen around the Mary like an excited hamster in his environmental ball to his endearing linguistic quirks (“Amaze, amaze, amaze!”). Rocky, wonderfully voiced and puppeted (as part of a team) by James Ortiz, is not just undeniably cute, he’s also a determined, brave guy who knows his own mind and brings an unbelievable set of skills to the mission.

We immediately accept him as a ‘real’ character – despite the fact he has no face and is a rock with hands – due to the skilful direction of Lord and Miller and, perhaps above all, the superb work from Ryan Gosling as his human scene partner. Gosling continues to go from strength to strength as he embraces his capacity for mixing adorkable comedy with heartfelt emotion. He makes Grace full of childish enthusiasm, gripped with excitement at the alien wonders and strange planets he encounters, but still nervous, scared and (certainly at first) painfully out of his depth trying to manage the life-and-death struggles of manning a craft alone in space.

The film is intercut with flashbacks as Grace slowly regains his memories – helpfully in chronological order – of his time on Earth leading up to the mission, under the command of the coldly professional Stratt. Sandra Hüller gives this role the same deeply repressed humanity she found in an unlikeable murder suspect in Anatomy of a Fall. Shot in a different aspect ratio – life on Earth looks far more cramped than the glorious vistas of space – the past mixes scenes of peril and world-ending threat, with wonderful character vignettes from Grace and his handler playfully bonding over supplies and sweeties in a hardware story to a sombre Hüller showing her humanity for just a brief second for an impressive rendition of Harry Styles at a celebratory karaoke night. These scenes drip-feed just enough information to keep us guessing, while allowing our understanding of the hero to grow.

And they don’t detract from the real meat of the story, the wonderfully warm relationship between Grace and Rocky and the exciting thrill of watching two experts inventively solve impossible problems. Lord and Miller mix this with just the right mix of comedy, pathos and sentiment, and it will be a hardened soul who won’t feel a bit of grit in the eye at least once in this film. An expert adaptation of a very enjoyable novel, it’s also another wonderful showpiece for the charm and humanity of Ryan Gosling, who makes this character hugely relatable and enormously likeable, fully embracing the surprisingly complex arc the character is given in the film’s final act. A popcorn triumph that I can imagine re-watching time and again.

Libeled Lady (1936)

Conventional screwball that stands out from four star-turns and a few striking scenes

Director: Jack Conway

Cast: Jean Harlow (Gladys Benton), William Powell (Bill Chandler), Myrna Loy (Connie Allenbury), Spencer Tracy (Warren Haggerty), Walter Connolly (James B Allenby), Charley Grapewin (Hollis Bane), Cora Witherspook (Mrs Burns-Norvell), EE Clive (Evans)

“She may be his wife, but she’s my fiancée!” That richly comic line from Spencer Tracy in Libeled Lady sums up this overlooked screwball comedy, a tangled web of romantic complications giving excellent opportunities for its four talented leads to let rip. Libeled Lady may not be the most accomplished screwball, but it packs a great deal of comic punch in the natural chemistry between its leads (comic gold in any combination).

Tracy is Warren Haggerty, editor of the New York Evening Star, in hot water after running a false story accusing Connie Allenbury (Myrna Loy), daughter of a wealthy business magnate (Walter Connolly), of breaking up another woman’s marriage. She sues the paper for $5 million. Haggerty is desperate to discredit the case by tricking her into breaking up a marriage for real. So naturally, he marries off his fiancée (on the day of their wedding no less!) Gladys Benton (Jean Harlow) to suave former reporter Bill Chandler (William Powell) and then instructs Bill to seduce Connie so Gladys can “catch her” in the act. Naturally it all gets chaotic when Connie falls for Bill, Bill falls for Connie and (to her surprise) Gladys falls for Bill. How are they going to sort that out?

Libeled Lady opens with the thundering roll of newspaper printing and ends with our four leads in a confused romantic scrap in a hotel room. Along the way – bar one stand-out sequence down the river (of which more later), it’s a smoothly assembled four-way star vehicle that lets the actors do their thing. And their thing they most surely do. This romantic screwball is be lifted from the pack purely on the back of the charisma of the stars themselves. In lesser hands, its fairly familiar set-up and funny-but-not-inspired wit might have raised only the odd grin: with these four pros firing on all cylinders, it makes for genuine belly laughs.

Jean Harlow originally intended it as a vehicle for her and beau William Powell. The studio had other ideas – after all, they argued, all cinema goers know Powell and Loy go together like booze and The Thin Man – so Harlow was shifted to the role of ‘other lady’ and Tracy bought in as her romantic intended. It may not have been her choice, but Harlow brings a feisty determination and confidence to a woman who, in other hands, might have been a flighty showgirl. From storming into Tracy’s editorial room in full bridal gear, demanding to know why he hasn’t turned up at their wedding, to throwing herself into a series of pretend clinches with Powell followed by wearied complaining about what arrant husband-to-be asks of her, she’s keeps Gladys a woman who knows her own mind won’t tolerate nonsense. The fact she shifts naturally into someone won over by Chandler’s suave charm and likeable self-deprecation speaks wonders for Harlow’s under-exploited comic skills.

Loy’s archly dry delivery however is perfect for the society heiress who starts the film barely deigning to acknowledge Chandler at dinner (she constantly asks him questions, only to turn to talk to her father before he can answer). However, she’s as smart, worldly-wise and quick off the mark as Chandler, certain she can unmask him as the gold-digging scoundrel she assumes he is and deftly spinning Haggerty’s pleas to think of the newspaper staff (who will lose their jobs) by stating that but of course she’ll set up a trust for them, meaning she’s even more determined to win the $5 million. Like Harlow, Loy has the deft touch to shift this very naturally into classic screwball romance, exchanging longing looks and quick witted barbs with Powell.

It helps that Powell is at his absolute best here, his suave wit and debonair charm absolutely perfect in making someone who arguably starts the film as a conscience-free part-grifter-part-reporter into a deeply likeable rogue with a line for everything. Needless to say, his playful ease and comfort with both leading ladies goes some way to making it perfectly natural they fall for him, and he has an effortless grace and humour while bouncing through a series of awkward situations guaranteed to bring a smile to the face.

He’s equally well contrasted with Tracy’s bull-in-a-china-shop (as Chandler calls it) energy as a fiercely determined newspaper editor with flexible morals. Tracy has complete control over the rat-a-tat pace of the dialogue while his skill at reacting is put to superb effect as a series of ever-more out-of-control situations threaten to overwhelm him. From opening the film nearly rushing out of the door without his trousers, to ending it clutching a hankee to his nose, it’s a sublime comic turn.

These four stars bring their best to what is mostly a series of drawing room set-ups, shot with a functional professionalism by Conway. Most of its scenes, excellently played as they are, would fit nicely into half a dozen other screwballs, bar possibly one. Whoever decided that suavity itself William Powell, should be roped into awkward looking fishing gear and made to wade into a river to do pratfall filled battle with a large fish on the end of the line probably deserves some sort of award for comic invention. Powell doing slapstick farce is the film’s one true stand-out sequence, probably worth the price of admission alone. Otherwise it’s a very enjoyable screwball which, while it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, gives its four leads rich material to showcase their talents.

A Thousand Clowns (1965)

Stagey Broadway adaptation, a little too in love with its lead character’s rather tiresome whimsy

Director: Fred Coe

Cast: Jason Robards (Murray Burns), Barbara Harris (Dr Sandra Markowitz), Martin Balsam (Arnold Burns), Barry Gordon (Nick Burns), William Daniels (Albert Amundson), Gene Saks (Leo Herman ‘Chuckles the Chipmunk’)

Everyone has dreamed of leaving the rat race behind, but not many of us actually try it. But that’s the life mission of Murray Burns (Jason Robards), a former script writer for charmless TV entertainer Leo Herman (Gene Saks), who refuses to join the clowns carrying suitcases for a day on the New York treadmill. No, he’ll go where he pleases, when he pleases and live a life that means he’s a man not a chair! That’s under threat when social workers Albert Amundson (William Daniels) and Dr Sandra Markowitz (Barbara Harris) investigate whether this is the right environment for Murray to be the carer of his precocious nephew Nick (Barry Gordon). Will Murray listen to sense – and the entreaties of Sandra, who falls for him, and his brother Martin Arnold (Martin Balsam) – knuckle down and find a job?

Your level of enjoyment of A Thousand Clowns will probably really depend on whether you think Murray sounds like admirably free spirited or smackably smug. Many at the time probably inclined towards the latter. A Thousand Clowns had been a Broadway smash for playwright Herb Gardner, translating to the screen with nearly all the original cast (only Balsam and Harris were newbies) and Fred Coe returning to direct. It was singing the song for many in the 60s who rejected the 9-5 – although since many of its viewers became the Reaganites of the 80s perhaps they got over it.

It probably won’t surprise you to hear I inclined towards the latter view. Murray is the sort of man who can seem whimsically charming on film but would probably infuriate anyone who met him in real life (as anyone who has ever had neighbours who make a point of shouting ‘witty’ things in the street at all hours can attest). Bouncing around New York with his surrogate son in tow, spending the day waving at departing ships, cycling through parks or playing long imaginative games with unwitting passers-by, is the sort of roguish eccentricity that gets tired pretty quickly. Also, despite 426 performances on stage, on screen Robards feels too abrasive and confrontational an actor for a part that really needs lovable charm and innocence to work.

But then perhaps this is a sign of A Thousand Clowns wanting to have its cake and eat it. A big part of this film loves the bohemian free spirit, and apartment full of whimsical clutter and Murray’s refusal to be a cog in the world’s machine. But another part does acknowledge Murray feels like a man in the grip of a mid-life crisis, taking a love for independence and free-living to ridiculous extremes. Because the film wants to simultaneously suggest his way of living is both an admirable dream but also an irresponsible way to carry the burdens of parenthood. But suggest it softly, so that Murray’s (inevitable) return to a more conventional working life doesn’t feel like a downer.

Nick is the sort of precociously articulate and emotionally intelligent child who only exists in the world of fiction. Murray’s lifestyle isn’t particularly shown to have hampered Nick, played with feisty energy by Barry Gordon (whose bond with Robards after a year of working on stage together is clear), who is smart, confident and (in some ways) more grown up than his surrogate dad. The two alternate the roles of parent and child, with Nick at times urging Murray to knuckle down and find a job, and Murray trying to teach Nick (who he even allows to change his name at will, until he finds one he’s happy with – one of the film’s better gags) the value of thinking for yourself.

Against this, the film largely throws up a parade of strawman – none more straw than William Daniels (who makes a lot of some poor material) as the sort of pen-pushing, accountancy-minded social worker who is a fixture in dramas like this, seeing the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Even the more sympathetic Sandra is presented as a mildly negative force.

Starting a relationship with Murray, her first act is to start turning his bohemian apartment into the sort of bourgeois curtain-and-lace suburban nightmare Murray is running away from. There is the faint whiff of sexism, that this woman of course dreams of conventional homely life and is determined to pull down (however nicely) the happy-lads home. A feeling that’s not helped by Barbara Harris playing her as almost permanently on the edge of hysterical tears. Although both characters make valid points, their presentation is designed to make us side with the unconventional.

That continues with Murray’s old boss, a pompous, unpleasant egotist, well played by Gene Saks. Only Martin Balsam – who won an Oscar, largely for a well-delivered set-piece speech – is given any argument of merit around the cold hard reality of finding your place in the regular world. Mind you , it could be argued Murray has never actually had to work in the office grind. When he reluctantly heads out into the job market, literally the first offer he gets is as co-host of his own TV show(!) followed by a gig writing for a ratings-winning comedy show. I get it’s a bit more work than throwing confetti at a cruise ship, but we’re hardly talking soul-crushing drudgery here.

A Thousand Clowns pulls all this together into what feels at times an overlong two hours, nearly all of it set in Murray’s apartment. The film would have felt even more stage-bound without a late decision (which Herb Gardner sacrificed a share of his salary to pay for) to throw in a series of French nouveaux inspired montages of Robards, Gordon and Harris to jauntily crash around New York (soundtracked with a mix of band themes and jazz). But it can’t compensate for the rather mixed messages or the general feeling that it’s hard to sympathise with a judgemental man-child who refuses to do the sort of job most people would give an arm-and-leg for.

Wuthering Heights (1939)

Defining the public image of the novel, a sweeping romance that continues to win admirers

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Laurence Olivier (Heathcliff), Merle Oberon (Catherine Earnshaw), David Niven (Edgar Linton), Geraldine Fitzgerald (Isabella Linton), Flora Robson (Ellen Dean), Hugh Williams (Hindley Earnshaw), Donald Crisp (Dr Kenneth), Leo G Carroll (Joseph), Miles Mander (Mr Lockwood), Cecil Kellaway (Earnshaw), Cecil Humphreys (Judge Linton)

If there is a reason why Emily Brontë’s dark, Gothic revenge novel is now chiefly remembered as a sort of definitive Great Romance, it’s probably because of this movie. Wuthering Heights takes the bitter fury of the original novel and quite brilliantly boils it down into a frustrated, denied romance between two people who cannot be together rather than charting the self-destructive passion of two fundamentally selfish people. That caught on so much, nearly every adaptation that followed essentially copied this film, and many still dream of being swept up by Heathcliff.

Wuthering Heights achieves this by significantly hacking back Brontë’s novel. In fact, it pretty much only adapts half the book, scrapping all together the second volume charting the damaging impact on the characters children from their parents obsession. Instead, the focus is resolutely on the young orphan Heathcliff (Laurence Oliver), growing up in the home of the Earnshaws where is he hated by the jealous Hindley (Hugh Williams) but adored by Hindley’s sister Cathy (Merle Oberon). Humiliated once too often, and heartbroken after he mistakenly overhears Cathy feels he would be a disgrace as a husband compared to the wealthy Edgar Linton (David Niven), Heathcliff disappears. He returns, years later, wealthy and determined on revenge on those who wronged him while also claiming Cathy for his own.

This is the entrée to a romantic obsession Wyler’s film successfully dials up on a convincingly windswept reconstruction of the Yorkshire moors (actually California). It’s a film that works hard to smooth down its lead characters less sympathetic qualities – helped enormously by jettisoning that second half of the novel – and get us rooting for this lovestruck Romeo and Juliet, despite the obstacles put before them. Those obstacles are of course principally class-based, with the posh hats of Yorkshire (defined by David Niven’s suavely polite but relentlessly superior Linton) firmly glancing down their noses at Heathcliff’s tearaway qualities and poor background.

Mind you, Cathy seems rather torn as well. Merle Oberon’s version of Brontë’s heroine swerves between longing for the fiery romance Heathcliff promises and the security and comfort in the Linton’s home. The film’s attempt to make Cathy more sympathetic than her literary roots, is to stress this tearing between her heart and her head. Ironically, this actually tends to make her slightly less sympathetic today. Oberon frequently has to yo-yo between different emotional states, as Cathy juggles her longings and desires. What Oberon most comfortably takes on is the wind-swept passion of Cathy, her wild lack of common-sense that can frequently tip into blistering, jealous bitterness. Clearly, her unhappiness at love denied is what the film wants us to focus on, but Oberon can’t quite capture the inner pain that drives these actions here, making Cathy feel more selfish then intended.

Similarly, Heathcliff’s considerable rough edges (his original ruthless, malevolent force) are sanded down (the jettisoning of the second half of the novel is even better for him) to become a Byronic romantic hero. It’s further helped that Olivier is excellent, able to deliver both the romantic middle-distance starring, but also giving a real emotional weight to the turmoil and vulnerability in Heathcliff. Olivier can stare down the disapproving posh-nobs with calm defiance but also be driven into distraught shame and pain when he feels Cathy’s contempt. Few actors could do haughty coldness and arrogance as well as Olivier, but would have also made Heathcliff seem like a little-boy-lost, out-of-his-depth with the emotions around him.

Much is made to make Heathcliff sympathetic, in contrast with other characters. Linton – and Donald Crisp’s dismissively smug doctor – treat him with haughty contempt and don’t hesitate to label him as a force of evil for his treatment of the drunken Hindley. Something we can’t blame him for, after we’ve seen the casual meanness of Hugh William’s pathetic drunk or his snivelling cowardice when finally challenged by Heathcliff. To be fair, the film presents Linton surprisingly sympathetically – he adores Cathy and treats his servants well, it’s only Heathcliff’s awkward outsider status that riles him, like Niven’s gentlemanliness can’t process a man who doesn’t fit.

Flora Robson’s Nelly Dean – in the novel a far more critical figure of – is here a sympathetic ally. Wuthering Heights re-frames the vital Heathcliff overhearing scene – that motivates his departure and grievance – not as Nelly allowing him to hear the worst, but instead an accident she feels too embarrassed to prevent. At every point, the audience are invited excuse Heathcliff – to the extent we don’t even feel bad when Isabella Linton (a very fine performance by Geraldine Fitzgerald) insists she be allowed to marry him, despite Heathcliff’s clear using of her to provoke jealousy in Cathy. Poor Isabella seems only dimly aware of how much Heathcliff only has eyes for Cathy – and for that matter that Cathy’s protestations of indifference are far from convincing – but so powerfully faithful are our lovers presented, for all their betrayals of each other, it’s hard to berate them.

Wuthering Heights is also helped a great deal in its romantic mission by Wyler’s superbly atmospheric direction and the wonderfully brooding photography by Gregg Toland. Brontëland here is a place of looming shadows, with a real sense of the windswept coldness of the moor contrasted with the blazing passions of the leads. Alfred Newman’s score is full of luscious, rich themes adding to this effect. Wyler’s direction is pacey and draws excellent performances from the cast, while his superb framing and cutting adds tension throughout. The idea of the moor as somewhere outside societies rules, where Cathy and Heathcliff can live out a fantasy of full equality and romance, comes across so powerfully it’s now nearly the defining image of the novel.

Nearly. But for its lasting impact, it’s hard not to disagree with producer Sam Goldwyn’s claim that, while Wyler directed Wuthering Heights, Goldwyn made it. It was Goldwyn who pushed the development of the script towards romance and passion away from obsession and revenge. And it was Goldwyn who insisted on the final shot, a ghostly image of Heathcliff and Cathy walking away into the mist (a pair of extras with their backs to us, as Olivier and Oberon had moved on to other projects) that has had more impact than any other in cementing the idea this novel was about a love so strong it outreached death. It’s a far cry from Brontë’s view of a destructive obsession that ruined lives for generations– but then that would never have sold as many tickets would it?

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

Lusciously shot epic, that feels more like an adventure romance film than the political work the novel was

Director: Sam Wood

Cast: Gary Cooper (Robert Jordan), Ingrid Bergman (Maria), Katina Paxinou (Pilar), Akim Tamiroff (Agustin), Arturo de Cordova (Agustin), Vladimir Sokoloff (Anselmo), Mikhail Rasumny (Rafael), Fortunio Bonanova (Fernando), Eric Feldary (Andres), Joseph Calleia (El Sordo)

“No man is an island entire of itself” is the opening of John Donne’s Meditation XVII in Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. That’s where the phrase “never seek to know for whom the bell tolls” comes from, and it lies at the heart of Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War novel, where he and hundreds of other like-minded individuals came together to (unsuccessfully) fight Fascism with self-sacrifice for the common good a calling card. After the novel became a hit, it’s not a surprise Hollywood came calling, moulding Hemingway into an expensively mounted blockbuster.

There was no question who would play the lead, stoic American Spanish lecturer and explosives expert Robert Jordan. After all, Gary Cooper was basically Hemingway’s model when he created the character. Ingrid Bergman beat off a string of competitors to play Maria, victim of Fascist assault, now living with partisans in the Spanish hills. Jordan joins these partisans, to blow a critical bridge. But the journey not only throws up romance for Robert and Maria but also troubles with guerilla leader Agustin (Akim Tamiroff), worried the mission will imperil what’s left of his people, and his wife Pilar (Katrina Paxinou) convinced the mission must be carried out.

Sam Wood, described as a near Fascist by Groucho Marx, seems an unlikely directorial choice for a film celebrating a group of Communist guerillas. But the Second World War makes for strange bedfellows. And, in any case, For Whom the Bell Tolls is less interested in politics than Hemingway. In fact, it practically bends over backwards to remove as many references about the political stakes as it can, re-crafting the book into much more of a men-on-a-mission romp, a tragedy-tinged Guns of the Navarone.

It’s a big-budget crowd pleaser, with a handsome, exotic setting beautifully shot by Ray Rennahan, who managed to make the Sierra Nevada mountains pass as the hills of Catalonia. Mix that with the tragic romance between Cooper and Bergman, in a series of beautifully-lit lingering shots, his reserved decency contrasted with her vulnerability and nerves. Interestingly, despite being hand-picked for the role, this is one of Cooper’s dullest performances, the neutered script removing many of the character’s doubts and fears. It’s only at the end, that Cooper is given any amount of real emotional depth to play with (even if it is via a rather forced voiceover), but otherwise Wood’s film crafts Cooper into the epitome of Fedora-wearing masculine toughness and stoic strength.

Ingrid Bergman fairs a little better as the Spanish lady who wins his heart. Unlike the rest of the cast playing Spaniards, Bergman isn’t caked in layers of brown make-up (something that looks particularly awful in Rennahan’s stylish filters), but the script plays up her character’s melodramatic elements. Bergman does her best to lend dramatic weight to this, but Wood’s film keeps pushing her towards tearful outbursts of fear at the possible loss of Jordan. For Whom the Bell Tolls makes a valiant effort at exploring Maria’s tragic background but shies away from the sexuality of the novel (it did after all coin the phrase “the earth moved”). It’s ironic Bergman was desperate to land this role, but now is best remembered for her other (Morocco-based) 1943 role.

What becomes clear the longer you watch For Whom the Bell Tolls is, that for all the handsome visuals and rich scoring of Victor Young, Wood can’t find the sort of poetic, narrative depth the source material demands. Put frankly, the literary and political force of the novel feels lost to him. It’s hard not to compare this to the sort of thematic depth Lean found in the far-less-complex story of Bridge on the River Kwai. It’s telling that what Wood delivers makes Hemingway feel more like a high-brow Alistair MacLean novel. This doesn’t mean For Whom the Bell Tolls isn’t frequently enjoyable: but it does feel Wood mistakes length and sweep for complexity and depth.

The film’s complete shelving of politics plays into this. There are half-hearted attempts to understand where the guerillas are coming from, but its telling that when it comes to atrocities, more screen-time is given to the past excesses of the communists – hurling decent representatives of the old regime off cliffs to their death – rather than the ruthlessness of the fascist oppressors (even though Jordan starts the film shooting a wounded comrade rather than let him fall into the hands of the Francoists). But it’s very possible to watch For Whom the Bell Tolls and not be completely sure when exactly it is set, or what the issues are everyone is fighting about. Can that be what Hemingway had in mind when it came to the screen?

Instead, guerilla drama boils down to questions of guts and character. Akim Tamiroff (Oscar-nominated, like Cooper) gives a fine performance of ambiguous bluster as a guerilla leader who may be concerned about the lives of his men, or may just have completely lost his nerve. Tamiroff is magnificently larger-than-life, with a streak of low-cunning mixed with cowardice. Katrina Paxinou won an Oscar as his wife, the fiercely determined Pilar who deals out romantic device with the same hard-boiled grit that she plans military actions. The guerilla leadership sways between these two throughout, with just enough tension between where they will land.

But For Whom the Bell Tolls remains, at heart, a men-on-a-mission film – something that feels quite reductive considering the passion of where it comes from. Everyone seems to still believe they are actually making a literary statement. The strained sense of self-importance behind the film can make it wearing, and its telling it is at its most engaging and emotionally fulfilling when emersed in action, be that a desperate stand by a group of guerillas in the mountains or the final assault on the bridge, with the heavy cost that brings to the group.

There is another world where For Whom the Bell Tolls could have united its epic scale, military action, doomed romance, passionate humanism and boys-own adventure into something that really coherent and deep, the sort of intellectual epic David Lean would win truckloads of Oscars for 15 years later. But it feels instead torn between echoing the melodramatic sweep of Gone with the Wind with the bravo-filled heroism of Sergeant York. It can’t really square that circle, making it, like the Spanish Civil War, a doomed noble effort. An inadvertent political point, more impactful than any in the film.

The Man Who Laughs (1928)

Gothic romance, wrongly remembered as a proto-horror, also has a dark sexual undercurrent

Director: Paul Leni

Cast: Conrad Veidt (Gwynplaine), Mary Philbin (Dea), Olga Baclanova (Duchess Josiana), Josephine Cowell (Queen Anne), George Siegmann (Dr Hardquanonne), Brandon Hurst (Barkilphedro), Sam De Grasse (James II), Stuart Holmes (Lord Dirry-Moir), Cesare Gravina (Ursus)

The Man Who Laughs often gets remembered as a horror film, which seems a bit odd when you actually watch this Victor Hugo adaptation. It’s really a sort of melodrama romance with a touch of conspiracy-tinged action. What possibly cements it as a comedy is the Glasgow-smile of its lead character Gwynplaine, played by that legend of silent cinema monsters Conrad Viedt. (It went on to inspire the look of The Joker, further cementing the film as horror in minds). But, far from a monster, Gwynplaine is a sweet-vulnerable figure who has find himself at the centre of an atmospheric drama with lashes of shadow and Gothic German expressionism from its director Paul Leni.

Gwynplaine has his twisted smile after his face was mutilated as a child, a punishment for his executed father, stripped of his lordship by order of James II (Sam De Grasse). Years later, in the reign of Queen Anne (Josephine Cowell), Gwynplaine is the leading figure of a travelling band of players, famous as the Man Who Smiles. He’s in love with the blind Dea (Mary Philbin) but disgusted and ashamed of his own appearance, which prevents him declaring his love. But his ancestry is discovered, as his (unwanted) claim to the title now held by the nymphomaniac Duchess Josiana (Olga Baclanova), and he becomes the centre of a scheme for power by the sinister Barkilphedro (Brandon Hurst).

The Man Who Laughs main focus is the gentle romance between Gwynplaine and Bea, which becomes absorbed into a tragic story of creeping gothic power. Gwynplaine wants nothing more than to be left alone. He hates being the centre of his attention, only really comfortable when disguised under theatrical make-up or with the blind Dea. Even then, Gwynplaine refuses to let her touch his face so terrified is he that she will reject the twisted facial features that she will find below her hands. This is told with a gentle, sympathetic sweetness by Leni, who dials down the misty misery and darkness that casts its shadow over the rest of the film, to allow this romance to spread hope.

It’s far different from the gloomy, gothic foreboding that covers the rest of the film in its frequently shadow and mist filled frame. From its opening in the bedroom of King James – lined with stony carvings that look like they’ve been peeled off the wall of an ancient Minster – it throws us into a grizzly execution for Gwynplaine’s father, locked into a spike-lined Iron Lady with a stoic look on his face. The banishment of Gwynplaine, along with the bizarre cult who deformed him, on a rickity ship passes through a frozen coast-line, where the young boy is cast aside the moment the going gets tough. From there, we see streets filled with hints of violence under the mists. Brandon Hurst’s darkly twisted Barkilphedro is the sort of man who thinks nothing of dispatching a witness to the torture chamber or dragging a victim in the middle of the night to who-knows-where. Hurst is an unsettling stand-out here, playing a man with no sense of loyalty or honour, happy to lie and manipulate as well as slimly ingratiate himself to anyone in power.

The gloomy sense of danger that this world is filled with is captured superbly in Leni’s film, which is stuffed with atmospheric compositions that only stress the unsettling sense of peril lurking around every corner. It’s also a world filled with perverse sexual longing. It’s hard to imagine The Man Who Laughs having a whisper of existing a few years later under the Hays Code, such is the dark sexual current flowing beneath it. Frequently sexual desire rears its head, from the coded glances Queen Anne gives the missing chair of the Duchess, to the base desires that drag Gwynplaine from his bed one night to explore a beguiling offer from the Duchess.

The Duchess is the heart of the sexual darkness in the film, an allusive seductress we are introduced to lazing practically naked on a bed, attempting to seduce Barkilphedro to follow her whims with him perching at the end of her bed and allowed a peek of her (possibly non-existent) underwear. Not until Basic Instinct would another villainous of such rampant, unabashed sexuality hit the screen. The Duchess is as sexually excited by the thought of men fighting over her on the street (and its implied would be more than happy to satisfy any number of winners) as she is hornily fascinated by Gwynplaine’s unusual features. She is able to puppet along Stuart Holmes’ clueless Lord, who can barely tear his eyes from her even while he knows she is treating him like dirt. Her sensuality even runs the risk of seducing our hero, and her unabashed revelling in her sexuality feels light years ahead of its time.

But the lasting impact of The Man Who Laughs comes from its lead character, wonderfully embodied by Conrad Veidt in one of the legendary silent performances. Labouring under the facial disfigurement make-up – which left his face and mouth sore and exhausted – Veidt belays the restrictive nature of his make-up to offer a parade of expressions, variations on the same smile. Devotion, shame, joy, excitement, fear and hope play across his face so clearly that, even with the lower part of his mouth rigidly fixed, it’s always certain exactly what he is feeling. Presented to the House of Lords at the film’s end, Veidt is given a marvellous set-piece of moral force, berating the crowing bewigged courtiers who turn on him and vigorously asserting his right to choose. It’s a crowning moment of a subtle and moving performance.

And it makes Gwynplaine so sympathetic, it’s even more unusual that it’s been remembered as a horror, for all the film ends in a gothic chase and the brutally bloody intervention of a loyal but fierce wolf hound. Because The Man Who Laughs is, in the end, a hopeful and undeniably romantic testimony to how love can in fact conquer all, which for all its gothic gloom, leaves us sailing into a sunset relieved that the future promises all the best for our heroes.

Blossoms in the Dust (1941)

Sentimental and straight-forward biography that tells a simple, unlifting story

Director: Mervyn Le Roy

Cast: Greer Garson (Edna Kahly Gladney), Walter Pidgeon (Sam Gladney), Felix Bressart (Dr Max Breslar), Marsha Hunt (Charlotte Kahly), Fay Holden (Mrs Kahly), Samuel S Hinds (George Kahly), Kathleen Howard (Sarah Keats), George Lessey (Mr Keats), William Henry (Allan Keats), Henry O’Neill (Judge Hartford)

From the 19s0s, Edna Kahly Gladney (Greer Garson) was a Texas-based campaigner for the rights of orphans, pouring what money and time she and her husband Sam (Walter Pidgeon) had into the Texas Children’s Home and Aid Society, that dedicated itself to find homes for orphans. Even the death of her husband doesn’t stop Gladney from campaigning, lobbying to have the word illegitimate struck off birth certificates, since that was condemning children to a lifetime of frowns from Texas society.

The proceeds of Blossoms in the Dust went back into that Children’s Home so something good came from this sentimental, middlebrow biography. Made after an MGM publicist, who had adopted a child from Gladney, pitched the story to the studio, it became a cosy, box-office hit that helped cement Garson as the star-of-choice for the noble, suffering women’s film (the sort of role Norma Shearer would have grabbed five years earlier). It’s a slight, very safe and reassuring film that presents its march to inevitable triumph with an unchallenging hagiography-istic glow.

Of course, the real story of Edna was not quite tragic or satisfyingly neat enough, so the film invents several biographic details to beef up her motives. Now, the young Edna’s best friend (played with decency by Marsha Hunt) kills herself in shame, once her perspective fiancée’s heartless, posh family discovers her illegitimacy and unceremoniously tells her they don’t want her in their family, thank you very much. Secondly, Edna and Sam are given a fictional young son who exists purely to almost immediately die in a tragic sledge accident as a boy.

Of course, she will now care about illegitimacy and orphans – motivations established! Both events are so dramatically neat, it’s not a surprise they didn’t happen. Inserted, it seems, in case we objected that no one could care about the fate of children unless one happened to have lost one. The death of the boy is also so insistently sign-posted – repeated shots of his cuddly horse on its side leave us in no doubt he’s doomed the second he steps out of the door on a winter’s day – it’s impact for the viewer is almost washed away.

These tragic fictional events feel even more functional because, thanks to the film’s tendency towards sudden massive time jumps, by the time the next scene comes around years have flown by and any grief long-since shelved. No where is this more awkward than practically the next shot after the death of Gladley’s son, being Greer Garson laughingly pouring drinks at a society soiree. It continues thus: even the death of her husband Sam (Pidgeon exiting the film surprisingly at the half-way mark) is followed by a flash forward of Edna stoically but smilingly getting on with it. Blossoms in the Dust introduces tragedy throughout as a cheap motivation tool, but never once allows it to carry real, lasting impact.

Despite all these flaws, Greer Garson carries the film relatively well. Edna is the sort of part that requires middle-distance staring, mixed with can-do stiff-upper-lipness and a resolute determination to put the needs of others in front of her own (no matter how tempted she might be, in the case of orphan Tommy, to keep this child to herself rather than send him to a better home). Garson gets several barn-busting speeches at the injustices of the various systems set against the young and disadvantaged, which she delivers with aplomb. A particular fine moment is her railing – ever so politely of course – against the Texas Senate from the viewing gallery, announcing “there are no illegitimate children – there are only illegitimate parents!”. It’s fine, decent work that never stretches Garson, but is perfectly suited to her persona.

The story itself is fairly episodic. The Gladney’s wealth rises and falls, depending on the (dubious) business talent of her husband. There is a sweet moment, as they face bankruptcy, when thankful town residents buy from the auction of their goods a garish vase both Gladney’s were secretly glad to see the back of (“We’ll have to keep it now” a deeply touched Edna tells her husband). Orphans suffers various crises. A shallow single father falls over himself to hand his unwanted child over, and then takes Edna to court when he sniffs he can wrangle money out of the wealthier home the child has been sent to. No events really threaten the long-term, blissful sentimentality of the film and we are left in no doubt that Edna will ever choose herself over her work.

Blossoms in the Dust does have some rather uncomfortable racial politics. Every Black character in it is a faithful servant, deferring to their masters and happy in service. The Gladney’s servant Zeke is, of course, so thrilled to work with them he insists that he carries on doing so unpaid when they go bankrupt. A Black maid is so dim, she doesn’t realise washing a thermometer in hot water will affect its result. The Black characters are treated with the same paternal charity as the babies Edna cares for, which is of its time but still somehow a bit disappointing.

Aside from that though, this is a gentle, extremely sentimental – you might almost say icky – drama, shot with technicolour beauty by Karl Freund and decently directed by Mervyn LeRoy. However, it is also a purely functional, heart-string tugging crowd pleaser of a film, which desires to do nothing more than make us feel good about the fact the human race can still do decent things for other people without reward. Which is fine now and then, but not exactly challenging stuff.