Category: Directors

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Second-tier Spielberg sequel, one-for-the-money but still entertaining for fans of Dinosaur action

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Jeff Goldblum (Dr Ian Malcolm), Julianne Moore (Dr Sarah Harding), Pete Postlethwaite (Roland Tembo), Arliss Howard (Peter Ludlow), Richard Attenborough (Dr John Hammond), Vince Vaughn (Nick Van Owen), Vanessa Lee Chester (Kelly Curtis), Peter Stormare (Dieter Stark), Harvey Jason (Ajay Sidhu), Richard Schiff (Eddie Carr)

Sometimes I wonder if Spielberg even remembers he directed The Lost World. I guess he wanted something to ease him back in after a few years off, which came with a nice big pile of cash to set up Dreamworks. There isn’t anything particularly wrong with The Lost World. It just feels from top-to-bottom like something rolled off a production line, largely devoid of any of the spark or magic you associate with the director. It’s like a Spielberg-pastiche and, while still better than several films in the franchise that followed, it’s unlikely to last 65 million years in the mind.

After the disaster of Jurassic Park, turns out there was a Site B. John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) plans to let the dinos there live freely, under observation. But InGen, now led by his greedy nephew Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard), plans to exploit the dinos for cash. Hammond recruits Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) as part of an island team to build a case for protecting the dinosaurs – having already recruited his Malcolm’s girlfriend Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore). Malcolm high-tails it to the dangerous island to get her back (accidentally dragging his kid Kelly (Vanessa Lee Chester) along), only to find Ludlow also on the island, guided by big game-hunter Roland Tempo (Pete Postlethwaite) to capture dinosaurs. Soon “oohs” and “aahhs” turn to “arragghhs!”.

It was adapted pretty much in name only from Michael Chrichton’s Jurassic Park sequel – in fact, several of its most memorable scenes (such as Stormare’s character being munched by compeys, or its child-attacked-on-a-beach opening) are in fact unused material from Chrichton’s first book. The film feels like a wall where a collection of fun-sounding ideas have been chucked to see what it sticks, right down to the sudden gear-change final act with a T-Rex causing havoc in the streets of San Diego. To make this work, major characters consistently make sudden, contradictory or flat-out-stupid decisions, or abruptly disappear once their plot function has been served.

In fact, it’s basically a film of set-pieces with a very, very thinly plotted through-line. The main beats are either thuddingly obvious (can Malcolm bond with his kid?) or get completely lost (the very-lightly sketched non-intervention plans that kickstart the film quickly get dropped completely). What’s important instead is that this is a series of chases against dangerous dinos, with the T-Rex and the velociraptors playing narrative tag between them as flesh-eating antagonists with various (mostly unsympathetic) humans filling out their lunchboxes.

Spielberg is still Spielberg though, so when he gets into a set-piece it tends to be a good one. The T-Rex assault on our heroes caravan base (in a particularly great Spielberg touch, Moore finds herself on a slowly cracking glass windscreen with a deadly drop below) is genuinely exciting – and, in the fate of Richard Schiff’s luckless team mate, genuinely a bit sad. The rag-tag remains of both parties desperately trying to escape the island gives us exciting T-Rex attacks, Stormare (as slimily detestable as only he can be) eaten by a hundred compeys is well-executed and, finally, a brilliantly conceived sequence of raptors ploughing like torpedoes through a forest of long grass to pluck off stragglers is really striking, despite being very short.

These sit alongside (admittedly fun) set-pieces that also feel a little silly. The entire final sequence of the T-Rex fits neatly into this, full of cartoonish nonsense (a doghouse hanging by a lead from the T-Rex after a dog is consumed, or a giant pool ball sent rolling down a road in its carnage) as people scream, run about and generally panic as the T-Rex bombards down a busy high street. That’s without even thinking about the silliness that the T-Rex, like Dracula on the Demeter, kills everyone on the ship transporting it (including getting its massive body inside some really tiny rooms, to leave grisly remains like a hand hanging from a wheel) then calmly goes back inside its storage hold and (presumably) locks itself back in again.

But then this is also a film that throws in a chase between three of our leads and a group of velociraptors (which feels narratively its there to kill time while a miscast Vince Vaughan – as an all-action animal rights activist of all things – phones for help) which builds towards the totally absurd sight of a 12-year-old dispatching a velocitator to a spikey death via her gymnastic skills. It really hammers home how wildly the velociraptors’ skills vary: against Postlethwaite’s hunters they are ruthlessly effective; here Moore slows them down with well-aimed roof tiles, a limping Goldblum deters one with a car door and of course, Kelly uses them to show why she should never have been cut from the school sports team.

The Lost World barrels along leaving logic in its wake. Julianne Moore’s Sarah Harding is set-up as an expert on animal-survivalism, but in her first scene is nearly killed by that humble “children’s favourite dinosaur” the Stegosaurus, after startling their baby with her noisy camera (she learns nothing from this about the protectiveness dinosaurs have for their young). She presents a list of strict survival “rules”, all of which she promptly breaks, culminating in walking miles in a shirt soaked in T-Rex blood, after telling us their sense of smell is a superpower. Meanwhile Goldblum’s feelings towards Hammond veer between frustration and deep respect depending on the immediate requirements of the scene.

The film is in fact a parade of characters behaving stupidly and slightly miscast actors. –Moore’s chippy feistiness makes her seem reckless and out-of-her-depth rather than plucky and brave, Goldblum isn’t quite right as action hero (interestingly. I can’t really think of them playing as conventional action adventure roles as this again). As a result, its most compelling character is actually Pete Postlethwaite’s Allan Quartermain-throwback. Postlethwaite is by far the film’s most assured and authoritative performer, makes his character the film’s most professional and logical, and our heroes so frequently look frustratingly smug (and incompetent), that you end up seeing things more from his side. Postlethwaite is greatly missed when he departs the film abruptly before the final act.

That all sounds really harsh doesn’t it? The Lost World may well be very much second tier Spielberg, full of moments that don’t quite work, are very silly or feel half-baked. But despite that, it’s swift, pacey and generally entertaining even when it’s stupid. Because when Spielberg fills a bowl of popcorn, he generally knows just how much butter and salt to add in. It’s never going to be anyone favourite Jurassic Park film, but it’s still going to be good entertainment for a Saturday night.

Darling (1965)

Christie is superb in a film that’s more prudish than its reputation – and feels more sympathetic to its heroine today

Director: John Schlesinger

Cast: Julie Christie (Diana Scott), Laurence Harvey (Miles Brand), Dirk Bogarde (Robert Gold), José Luis de Vilallonga (Prince Cesare della Romita), Roland Curram (Malcolm), Basil Henson (Alec Prosser-Jones), Helen Lindsay (Felicity Prosser-Jones), Carlo Palmucci (Curzio della Romita), Alex Scott (Sean Martin), Trevor Bowen (Tony Bridges)

Perhaps no film screams “Swinging Sixties” more than Darling. Diana Scott (Julie Christie), a beautiful and charming model, decides the best way to move up the social ladder is to use those skills. She throws her first husband aside for high-brow TV journalist Robert Gold (Dirk Bogarde), before starting an affair with heartless, philandering marketing executive Miles Brand (Laurence Harvey) all while moving ever upwards. But will she learn there is nothing worse than getting what you want?

You can get a sense of how seismic it must have seemed. Darling was free and open about sex in a way very few films had been before. Today it can seem a bit coy – this is hardly Performance and most of the juicier stuff is implied – but the film starts with adultery and spirals into sex parties, orgies, couple swopping and menage a trois via bisexuality and a hint of transsexuality. What could be more sixties than that – and many at the time were excited (and tantalised) by the world of opportunity it seemed to present.

But, watching today, it hardly feels like Darling celebrates this stuff. Instead, this is a dark satire that heartily endorses the idea that behind all this hedonism is not very much at all. In fact, the most dated thing about Darling might be its air of 1950s frowning discomfort at all the naughtiness – and most of all, a disapproving frown for the ambitious young women at its heart, determined to get what she wants. It’s hard not to escape the feeling the film judges Diana harshly, while giving a pass to Bogarde’s Robert who (to be honest) is scarcely much better.

So why does the film still work – and much better than I expected? Because Schlesinger’s direction of Raphael’s arch and satirical script is inventive and playful enough to nullify the moral lecture elements. There is enough wit in the presenting of puffed-up, hypocritical powerbrokers (like Brian Wilde’s MP, breaking away from a moral sermon to drool over Diana) as two-faced meanies to sooth the moral pronouncements. In fact, with so many elements of that, its possible (and, arguably, hard for a modern viewer not to) to say ‘good on you’ to Diana for chancing her hand.

It’s also hard not to sense Darling taking pops at Diana’s middle-class sister and her husband – so constrained, they apologise to each other in bed – or the pretentious bores at an art gallery or the tedious self-importance of a Waugh-ish author who Robert idolises (and Diana finds boring as shit). This tone of spreading the mockery makes the film feel far even-handed (if a little scattergun). It even has a go at the conservative British public (actual real people) who, in Bogarde’s vox-pop interviews, blame laziness, immigrants and homosexuality for all the faults of Britain in 1965 (how times change).

Take all that into account and balance it against the strength of the performances, with Julie Christie astonishingly good as Diana. Winning an Oscar, Christie bursts at the seams with charisma and wit, making it almost impossible to dislike her, even when part of the film is appalled by her. Christie makes Diana witty, smart but also vulnerable, her manipulation of people is more instinctive than overt and there’s a great deal of sadness in her. She’s a lonely woman who believes being the centre of the attention will cure that feeling – whereas, in fact, the more she does so, the lonely she feels. And it leads to self-destructive behaviour that destroys relationships she cares about.

That loneliness surprisingly powers a lot of the film, giving Darling a sad after-taste. There is something very tender in Diana breaking down in tears at a photography session. Christie brilliantly plays her anxiety at finding the ‘classy’ Parisian joint Miles has taken her is a borderline sex party, translating itself into a desire to fit in, culminating in a burst of childlike delight when she has a hit in a mean-spirited game of abusive comments. And Darling gifts a fantastic scene to Christie near its conclusion, as Diana undergoes a near breakdown in her gilded Italian mansion prison, ripping furnishings, smashing ornaments as she collapses into self-loathing misery.

It’s this tenderness that underpins – or rather undermines – the film’s satirical ticking off for Diana that keeps it entertaining today. Not to mention it’s harder today to find as much sympathy (as I suspect the film wants) for Bogarde’s Robert. Bogarde is very good as this middle rung on society’s ladder, a guy who loves the idea of a hot young mistress but who slips quickly into cardigan-wearing dullness, becoming the same humiliated cuckold told transparent lies by Diana and her lover as her made her first husband.

But Robert is also a hypocrite, cowardly walking out on his family without a backward glance and seeing no irony at all in his own practised ease at planning affairs (he even knows you need to bring a stuffed suitcase to your hotel assignations). And while the film finds a silent disapproval for Diana’s abortion, it’s hard not to notice that Robert is hardly doing cartwheels when she announces her pregnancy.

Surprisingly it’s actually easier to see the shallow Miles as the most honest person in the film. Played with an ice-cold distance by Laurence Harvey (vocally partly channelling Richard Burton), Miles may be a cad but at least he never pretends to be anything else. While every other man spins Diana a self-aggrandising story, Miles openly treats their relationship as transactional and never lies. It says a lot for Darling’s view of its era that the most honest man is a morality-free advertising executive.

He fits in neatly into a world where anything important is roundly ignored. The film opens with Diana’s latest billboard being pasted over a Third World hunger campaign; Diana later presents prizes at a charity fundraiser for this campaign, where the wealthy hoi polloi are more interested in stuffing their faces and gambling (and the only Black people in attendance are servants – one upper class pervert lasciviously asks if they are ‘available’, like they are items on a menu).

On top of this, Diana keeps up a running voiceover commentary, frequently blatantly contradicting her actions on screen. But her tone is so breezy and blissfully guilt-free that, again, it’s a little hard not to warm to her – even as she claims ignorance for deeds we see her carrying out. Schlesinger frequently demonstrates the irony of this spun version of her life.

In all, there is much to enjoy in Darling – more than I was in fact expecting. It’s extremely handsomely filmed (there is a great shot of Diana striding down Miles’ boardroom table from a low angle and a lovely day-to-night cut at a harbour that really stands out) and has some very sharp lines, blessed by a fantastic performance by Christie and great character turns from Bogarde and Harvey. I suspect part of the interest now is delving down into the deeper implications of the film. What may have once been seen as a dark celebration of freedom, now feels at point judgemental and prudish – but, to counter that, its lead now feels less like an amoral temptress and more of a confused and lost tragic soul with genuine warmth. It’s a test case in how time can both define and change perceptions of a film.

Lady for a Day (1933)

Capra’s charming comedy is really a sort of proto-Ealing film, and certainly a lot of fun

Director: Frank Capra

Cast: Warren William (Dave the Dude), May Robson (Apple Annie), Guy Kibbee (Henry D Blake), Glenda Farrell (Missouri Martin), Ned Sparks (Happy Maguire), Jean Parker (Louise), Barry Norton (Carlos), Walter Connolly (Count Romero), Nat Pendleton (Shakespeare), Halliwell Hobbes (Butler), Hobart Bosworth (Governor)

Based on a short story called Madame La Gimp (probably wise to change that title), Frank Capra’s Lady for a Day (for which he received his first Oscar nomination) fits neatly into his wheelhouse in one sense with its feel-good, comic sentimentality. But it also feels rather like an Ealing film made before the studio even existed. It’s a film where ordinary folks, some of them not exactly saints, with a mix of cunning and luck, run circles around the powers that be in the name of a good cause. It’s also a sharp, witty, fast-paced comedy with a happy ending. It’s a real crowd-pleasing comedy.

Apple Annie (May Robson) is an ageing fruit seller in New York City, who has seen better days but now lives in a rundown flat. But she’s doesn’t want the daughter, who she gave up for adoption decades ago, to know that. Using headed notepaper from a posh hotel, she has spun her a story for years that Annie is a well-to-do society figure in the Big Apple. So, it’s a disaster when daughter Louise (Jean Parker) writes back saying she’s engaged to the son of a Spanish count and is bringing him to New York to meet her mother. Apple Annie’s story seems doomed – but her salvation is that she is the lucky charm of rogueish gambler gangster Dave the Dude (Warren William) who never does a deal without buying one of her apples first. Can Dave ‘s money and his crew – with the help of a borrowed apartment – act out her fantasy for real?

Lady for a Day becomes a charming, fast-paced, semi-farce with Dave’s rough-and-tumble crew constantly trying to keep a step ahead of Louise’s prospective husband and father-in-law finding out the truth. They are helped by a large group of semi-vagrants from Apple Annie’s neighbourhood, all presented with an endearingly, non-patronising sense of supportive community. This leads to a constant parade of hustling their visitors from place-to-place, intercepting phone calls to the Spanish consulate and roping in a parade of New Yoick hustlers to play society grandees at a soiree. All of this while trying to stay one step ahead of the police and press, who are both convinced if the Dude is chucking this much money and people around, he must be planning a big score.

It’s the sort of charm you can’t imagine being allowed to fly even a year later: gangsters who don’t for a single-minute consider renouncing their life of making money from illicit deals (among other things), presented as put-upon, but-decent guys, bending over backwards to make an old woman’s dream come true. Lady for a Day doesn’t for a second suggest there should be a price to pay for their naughty day jobs. ‘Worse’ than that, in true Earling style, it presents the police chasing after them as dumb flat foots, hopelessly clueless and off-the-pace. Hard to believe the Hays Code passing that.

But it really works here, especially since Capra directs with phenomenal zip and wit. You could imagine a version of Lady for a Day weighted down in cheap sentimentality (in fact, you don’t need to – Capra made it in 1961 calling it A Pocketful of Miracles), but instead this is genuinely funny with well-drawn characters. Warren William is very good as the increasingly put-upon Duke, who can’t believe he’s been pulled into funding this good deed, but commits to it with world-weary resignation. He ‘sparks’ brilliantly off Ned Sparks’ rat-a-tat, cynical fixer flummoxed by his boss turning ‘Father Christmas’ but as determined to deliver on the deal as he would be on any other criminal enterprise.

And refreshingly Lady for a Day’s plot still has an air of criminal enterprise about it. They aren’t above threatening Halliwell Hobbes’ excellently dry butler with a bit of physical harm if he doesn’t play his part to perfection (doesn’t stop Hobbes getting in a cuttingly witty line about Sparks’ poor grammar). When a trio of journalists cause problems, they kidnap them (only for a few days they promise!). Difficult people are quietly strong-armed out of the way. Capra – working with a typically excellent Robert Riskin script – gets the tone just right, with just enough whimsical, Wildean farce.

This also plays into several set-pieces. The planning of the elaborate soiree is a particular gem. Packed with a parade of gamblers, tough guys and molls – all lacking even a drop of sophistication – they are carefully given a named role (one of them protests playing the Secretary of Defence – “a secretary is a secretary”) and a single line of high-styled dialogue, which they require hours of careful coaching to not fumble. The entire idea is excellent and superbly executed. Their dialogue is all provided by Guy Kibbee’s (quite excellent here) English gent-turned pool hustler, ‘playing’ Annie’s husband and enjoying a taste of the high life – while, in another memorable scene, discovering his pool hustling skills are more than a little helpful to the cause.

The film also works because it has a lovely, heartfelt performance by May Robson (Oscar nominated) as Annie. There is a wonderful Dickensian quality to Robson, with Apple Annie a Mrs Gamp with a tragic past (there are several references that she was once a lot more affluent than shifting apples on the street). Robson makes her sweet but sparky but never loses track of her vulnerability and fear that the truth may be discovered. She makes the character feel real and grounded, meaning the scenes with her daughter (which could have tipped into sentimentality) are genuinely quite touching.

It’s another successful beat in a fast-paced film that is entertaining, genuinely quite heart-warming and stuffed with excellent performances from a parade of studio players grabbing the sort of roles they wouldn’t normally get by the scruff of the neck. With its compassionate regard for the little guys, while not presenting either vagrants patronisingly or gangsters naively, it constantly entertains. It’s got a pre-Code daring about it (there is a neat joke about a gay hairdresser and a hint that Annie had her child out of wedlock, neither of which would have flown years later) and in its comic wit and fast-paced energy it’s one of Capra’s finest. Sure, it ends before Annie has to return to her previous life (and I’ve no idea what they would do if Louise visited again) but the film is as much about spinning a charming fantasy for us as it is for the characters.

The Thin Red Line (1998)

Malick’s return from self-exposed exile is, for better or worse, a war film unlike any other

Director: Terrence Malick

Cast: Sean Penn (Sgt Edward Walsh), Adrien Brody (Cpl Geoffrey Fife), Jim Caviezel (Pvt Robert Witt), Ben Chaplin (Pvt Jack Bell), George Clooney (Captain Bosche), John Cusack (Capt John Gaff), Woody Harrelson (Sgt Keck), Elias Koteas (Capt James Staros), Jared Leto (Lt Whyte), Dash Mihok (Pfc Don Doll), Tim Blake Nelson (Pvt Tillis), Nick Nolte (Lt Col Gordon Tall), John C Reilly (Sgt Maynard Storm), Larry Romano (Pvt Mazzi), John Savage (Sgt McCron), John Travolta (Brig Gen Quintard)

There are war movies. And then there are Terrence Malick war movies. With The Thin Red Line Malick returned from a self-imposed twenty-year exile, during which his mystique had grown to mythical status. His return screened the same year Spielberg was widely credited as re-inventing the entire genre with Saving Private Ryan. But, while that was a visceral gut punch, The Thin Red Line makes its men-on-a-mission approach seem conventional. Malick’s film is a poem, musing on man’s place in nature, humanity, spirituality, good and evil – in fact anything except Dirty Dozen style shenanigans.

Set on the US invasion of Guadalcanal, it follows the men of a single company as they march and fight their way across the island, principally focusing its ‘plot’ on a two-day mission to capture a non-descript hill from a largely unseen enemy. In the smorgasbord of characters, Malick’s roving eye lights on a few key figures: the spiritually-minded, independent Witt (Jim Caviezel); Bell (Ben Chaplin) who day-dreams about the wife he left at home; Doll (Dash Mihok) a terrified blow-hard; stoic professional Sgt Welsh (Sean Penn) who holds the company together; feuding commanders, humanitarian Captain Staros (Elias Koteas) and ambitious Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte).

But these characters are merely a jumping off point for a film that ruminates with sometime self-indulgent luxury, and bravely dares to suggest the ‘good war’ of World War II was a pointless, inhuman brawl that served little real purpose. Few war films start with peaceful shots of nature at work, featuring a crocodile drifting lazily through the waters (the same croc is later captured by the soldiers – no escape for nature from the war), lingering shots of birds and wildlife and one of its principal characters (Caviezel’s Witt), AWOL and paddling gently across a river, among an indigenous tribe.

The Thin Red Line draws a tender portrait of these indigenous people – whose calmly life is corrupted by conflict, not in terms of destruction but how the violence of war seeps into their culture. When Witt returns later, on leave after sterling front-line service, he finds these people clashing as never before, mirroring the brutal anger of the war he has left. In the film’s frequent, mumbling, ruminative voiceover, characters ask again and again where violence comes from – does it come from the same place as goodness? If you plug into this sort of thing – and some won’t – it can have a hypnotic power.

What makes The Thin Red Line unique among war films is that its real heart is in the poetry, full of deep, open-ended questions which are either unanswerable or mystifyingly oblique. It stretches as few others do for deeper spiritual answers. Malick adapted the film from a conventional war novel, by James Jones – but during the editing he jettisoned much of its plot (much to the shock of Adrien Brody, playing the novel’s lead character but reduced to a few lines) and leaned into the mystical, spiritual questions he was asking. Malick spotted earlier than any others the messianic, martyr qualities in Jim Caviezel, who is excellent as a rebelliously minded but deeply sensitive and spiritual man who senses instinctively his bond with the world around him.

The Thin Red Line touches throughout on the possibility of some benign – or otherwise – force that runs throughout existence and ties us all together. Malick frequently finds small moments where the soldiers become fascinated and irresistibly drawn towards nature, running their hands over leaves, admiring the waves, watching a bird dance from branch to branch… What, The Thin Red Line wonders, makes us turn from being part of a symbiotic whole, to shooting lumps out of each other? And for what? All for ‘fuckin’ property’ as Welch grouches?

As such it’s fitting the combat almost exclusively revolves a scuffle for Hill 210, a grassy pile that Malick never considers important enough to place in context or give us a clear view of. We are frequently mystified about how far up this lump of earth the soldiers have made, what is on the other side, or how it’s conquest will affect the war effort. Instead, this beautiful countryside surrounding – and Malick doesn’t stint on showing how gorgeous Guadalcanal is – serves to flag up even more the violence happening in it. The stunningly luscious photography by John Toll, becomes almost part of the point, hammering home the vicious inhumanity war brings into the natural world.

Instead, war focuses on brutal and trivial ends, that so often betray us into death. The hill’s main importance for Colonel Toll – a charismatically fierce performance of frustrated bitterness by Nick Nolte – is as a pathway to career advancement in a war he has waited his whole life for. Just as its essential pointlessness – it can be bypassed and taken in a slower flanking approach – means Koteas’ (a wonderfully measured performance) captain is unwilling to order his men into a suicidal attack. The phone clash between these two – a furious Nolte and a pressured Koteas trying to remain calm – is Malick’s most accessible narrative beat, expertly delivered.

In fact, the action and the epic sweep of the combat is a reminder that Malick may long to be a poet but he is also an astute and gifted narrative storyteller (when he chooses to be). For all the excitement of John Cusack’s Captain Gaff leading a charge up the hill, the film’s heart is the strange balance every character walks between the martial and mystical, between the call of nature and the grinding duty of killing. Qualities that can be seen fighting in Sean Penn’s fiercely professional sergeant who can weep at the tragedies around him, and fiercely attack the shallowness of the war they are wrapped up in. In fact, much of Thin Red Line feels like a Malick Art Project, a sort of rarefied air that you need to prep to make an expedition towards.

Of course, with all this to admire, it’s also hard not to deny that The Thin Red Line can also be long (and feel very long) and that it’s air of self-importance does, at times, wear the viewer down. It’s deliberately obscure and oblique narrative – not to mention that its voiceover is frequently rather hard to match to particular characters – can whiff somewhat of overindulgence. You could argue the essential message of the film – we’d all be better off if mankind could accept its place as part of a larger Gaia-like whole – is hardly re-inventing philosophy.

But it’s the undefinable, mystical whimsy of the film that makes it stand out – for good or ill. Since many – and, I’ll be honest, me as well sometimes – will find the films muttered whimsy carrying more than an air of self-important pontificating. Despite this, you can see why so many Hollywood stars were desperate to work on it – Travolta and Clooney have tiny cameos, several others hit the cutting room floor. It’s hard to imagine anyone else in Hollywood making a war film anything like this, to have the artistry to mix gunshots and birdsong and give equal weight to both. There are few films quite like it. So thank God for Malick, an artist who has a distinctive voice, the courage to commit to it and the skill to pull it off. The Thin Red Line has moments that few other Hollywood film makers have matched in their whole career – and that alone makes it a film to hold tight and cherish.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Brilliant epic, one of the greatest films ever made – not to mention possibly my all time favourite

Director: David Lean

Cast: Peter O’Toole (T. E. Lawrence), Omar Sharif (Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish), Alec Guinness (Prince Feisal), Anthony Quinn (Auda Abu Tayi), Jack Hawkins (General Edmund Allenby), José Ferrer (The Turkish Bey), Anthony Quayle (Colonel Harry Brighton), Claude Rains (Mr Dryden), Arthur Kennedy (Jackson Bentley), Donald Wolfit (General Archibald Murray), I. S. Johar (Gasim), Gamil Ratib (Majid), Michel Ray (Farraj), John Dimech (Daud), Zia Mohyeddin (Tafas), Howard Marion-Crawford (Medical officer), Jack Gwillim Club secretary)

There is no beating around the sand dune. Lawrence of Arabia is probably my favourite film of all time. It’s also the apogee of David Lean’s career and, arguably, the entire genre of epic film-making. No other epic is as massively, awe-inspiringly grand as this and perhaps no other combines the stunning scale with such intense, fascinating and astute character insight. It’s a film that succeeds on every front and leaves any viewer with such a searing visual impression that, once seen, it’s almost impossible to forget. And, of course, everyone should see it.

It was decades in the making before Sam Speigel and David Lean marshalled it to the screen. Based on TE Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, it’s strikingly modern in that it’s a biography of Lawrence without attempting the full cradle to grave. Instead, told in what it’s easy to forget is interrogative flashback after Lawrence’s death in a motorcycle accident, it focuses exclusively on Lawrence’s (Peter O’Toole) campaigns with the Great Arab Revolt during World War One – but in a style heavily influenced by Shakespeare’s fast-and-loose approach to history, where events drill down into that elusive question: what sort of man exactly was Lawrence? In other words: “Who are you?”

And fascinatingly for a film increasingly misremembered today as some sort of imperialist fan-fare blower or white saviour narrative, the answer is frequently not particularly flattering. In line with his historical self, this Lawrence is a deeply conflicted figure, perfectly captured in Peter O’Toole’s breath-takingly superb performance as a quirky, thoughtful introvert who frequently role-plays as an extrovert barrelling into the limelight. He’s a man capable of staggering insight, devoid of the knee-jerk racism of his fellow Brits. But he’s also a bombastic egotist with a major messianic complex who compares himself to Moses. That’s not even touching on his repressed sexuality, sadism or his deep discomfort at his in-built relish for violence and bloodshed.

Throughout O’Toole treats triumph with a giggling schoolboy relish, then collapse into dead-eyed, silent gloom when grimmer repercussions emerge. It’s a stunning performance, and fascinating figure to set at the centre of a war epic. O’Toole’s Lawrence is handsome, charismatic and a genius – but also fey, camp even, nervous, confident only when he is in control, likely to collapse into nervous giggles when things go wrong. O’Toole also brilliantly conveys the growing darkness and cruelty in Lawrence, shocked and appalled by his excited relish in killing Gasim or his excited anticipation at the slaughter of a group of Turks. It feeds an ego that believes he is above normal men, stunned at the moments when he discovers he is not, that leads him to ever darker determination to prove he can change the world through will alone.

Lean’s film is remarkable in how it presents Lawrence’s achievements with the jaw-dropping marvel they deserve – but also in showing his failures, cruelties, delusions. It’s remarkable how often Lawrence is punctured or bought-down after moments of success – especially as any moment of success has him even further convinced of his own genius. His saving of Gasim in the Nefud desert is followed shortly after by his executing the same man to preserve the fragile peace in his Arab coalition. His conquest of Aqaba is followed by guiding his teenage servant Daud into quicksand. A successful attack on a Turkish train is followed by getting his other teenage servant, Farraj, killed. His almost suicidal pride in entering Derra alone dressed as an Arab, leads to his capture, beating and rape by a perverted Bey (a lip-smackingly sinister cameo from Jose Ferrer, who considered this his finest performance).

Is there an epic film more cynical and critical about British Empire building than Lawrence of Arabia? Away from Lawrence, the Brits are represented by the Blimp-ish Murray (Donald Wolfit in fine form), Allenby (a marvellous Jack Hawkins) who doesn’t let principle get in the way of duty and a duplicitous Dryden (a magnificently austere Claude Rains). Both Allenby and Dryden well understand the game they are playing (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) – help the Arabs, but not too much, bring them together, but not too much, get rid of the Turks put the Brits in their place. Lawrence of Arabia is far from a flag-waver, presenting a cynical, two-faced view of rapacious Empire building. Its even uncomfortably rejected by Anthony Quayle’s endearingly straight-forward Colonel Brighton (who stands out as the film’s most honourable character).

In comparison, the Arabs are seen as perhaps naïve and chaotic, but largely honourable and honest and their campaign for independence and self-government is presented sympathetically (only their most Westernised representative, Alec Guinness’ reserved Prince Feisel, can match Dryden and Allenby in ruthless politics). There is a vibrant genuineness in Arab culture, even if it’s also shown to be as full of bitter hierarchical rivalries between tribes as the British are in their club memberships. Much of this is captured in Omar Sharif’s extraordinary performance as Sherif Ali (a sort of Arab version of Lawrence, both introverted and extroverted), a man of deep principles whose discomfort grows with Lawrence’s increasing wildness.

Lawrence’s unpredictability is what the film circles round to again and again. It’s fascinating both how flawed and unknowable he becomes. You only need to look at his costume: in ill-fitting military outfit, the trousers too short, O’Toole feels utterly out-of-place compared to his comfort in flowing white robes. But those robes become progressively more filthy, transparent and ghost-like the longer the film goes on. Does any other epic lay so bare the complex sexuality of its hero, his sado-masochistic desires (“the trick is not minding it hurts” indeed!), his part-shame, part-excitement about his assault by the Bey, his unmistakeable relish for death?

It’s striking how Lean so frequently frames Lawrence as unseeable: watch the Act 2 train attack, where we see Lawrence from behind, his feet striding along a train and then his body framed with the sun behind him. Or the film’s conclusion that turns him into even more of a ghost, a spectral figure behind a curtain and a jeep passenger almost invisible behind a mud-smeared windscreen. It’s extraordinary visual work to communicate a depth of theme. Constantly, he’s framed as a figure shrinking into the chaos, slipping through our fingers when we think we understand him.

That’s in a film crammed with extraordinary images. “No Arab loves the desert” are true words, but Englishmen do and Lean certainly did. His shooting of this vast panorama of dunes and sand is second to none. Is there a greater shot in history than the slow arrival of Sharif from the wavy mirage mists of the desert? That stands out in a film of extraordinary images: Lawrence’s progress through the mountains; the tracking shot of the attack on Aqaba, that ends on the powerless guns; a train puffing through the desert; even the small moments – Lawrence’s goggles dangling on a branch after his accident is a gorgeously simply, brilliantly evocative image. Everything in Lawrence is perfect technically: John Box’s superb sets, Maurice Jarre’s breathtakingly evocative music; Anne V Coates flawless editing (witness one of the greatest cuts of all time).

But it’s always bought back to the sharp critical eye on its lead, powered by Robert Bolt’s superbly iconoclastic script and Lean’s directorial discipline. This is a film that mirrors Lawrence’s playful dance in his new robes, stopping to admire himself in the reflection of his dagger with Lawrence, 90 minutes of screentime later, echoing the gesture to stare in horror at his blood-soaked clothing. That makes its last military action not the capture of Damascus, but Lawrence’s brutal massacre of retreating Turks at Tafas. Which ends with its hero covered in failure and sent packing as an awkward figure in the new age by both sides.

It’s a huge thematic complexity that gives Lawrence the chance to cement itself as one of the greatest films ever made. With its matchless technical brilliance, it brings a sharply insightful, critical eye to its lead and resolutely refuses to indulge in any hero-worship at all. It brings great depth and passion to its portrayal of the Arab people (I will grant Guinness’ casting today is unfortunate – less so with Quinn who was always ethnically ambiguous and is knock-out, charismatically brilliant), showing them as warts and all but rejecting the temptation to present them as a noble but simple people, but instead of a rich, non-Westernised culture forced to play by someone else’s rules. Lawrence marshals this while constantly leaving us questioning and changing our mind about the lead character, so superbly bought to life by O’Toole you could make a case for it as one of the greatest performances of all time. You can certainly make the case for the film as one of the greatest, a stunningly assembled, wonderfully directed, breathtaking mix of spectacle and character study that rewards the viewer every single time they see it.

The Last Laugh (1924)

A hotel doorman faces despair, in this fluid piece of film-making brilliance from Murnau

Director: FW Murnau

Cast: Emil Jannings (The doorman), Maly Delschaft (His niece), Hans Unterkircher (The manager), Georg John (The night watchman), Max Hillier (The bridegroom), Olaf Storm (Young guest), Herman Vallentin (Guest with pot belly)

Released in Germany as the Der Letzte Mann, it became The Last Laugh in English-speaking cinema to avoid confusion with a long-forgotten silent comedy The Last Man. Having its title stolen seems very appropriate for Murnau’s masterpiece, a masterfully simple morality tale by Carl Mayer. The Atlantic Hotel’s doorman (Emil Jannings) is the highly respected master of his neighbourhood. All that changes when, due to his advancing age, he is stripped of his position and demoted to cleaning the basement toilets. Humiliation piles on humiliation as word of his new position spreads.

It’s a simple story, in many ways little more than anecdote or an Aesop’s fable of pride before a fall. But you can see it as having universal force, and a particular relevance to its time and place. The doorman, with his ramrod back, carefully manicured moustaches and, above all, his grand uniform emblazoned with epaulettes and tassels, looks like some sort of Field Marshal. He certainly behaves like one, walking through his neighbourhood like it’s a parade ground, dishing out salutes and accepting deference from all and sundry. He’s the puffed-up symbol of pre-War Germany, overwhelmingly certain of his position and obsessed with the ephemera of his office.

All that gets stripped from him in seconds, as he is bluntly called into an office, passed a note by a distracted manager informing him his glory days of greeting guests are over. His uniform is practically torn from him – a button falling from his coat and landing on the floor, a beautiful little moment of visual degradation – and he becomes a stooped, scruffy, shambling old man dressed in a non-descript white jacket. From Kaiser, he’s now the downtrodden and humiliated Versailles Germany, stripped of empire and reduced to passing a towel to guests for coins.

It’s a beautiful little metaphor for a whole country, captured in the collapse of status of a single man, told with a suggestive lightness that makes it universal. It becomes a domestic tragedy could be about anyone, anywhere – and the fact it is a perfect fit for post-war Germany is a happy marriage. Another happy marriage is the casting of Jannings. No actor in history embraced humiliation and masochism as much as Jannings. He eases into his old age make-up like a seasoned ham, his body shrinking and collapsing into a timid stoop. Jannings is left in near catatonic shock at his demotion, then desperately clings to a fantasy of preserving his status outside the workplace, all while he becomes increasingly dishevelled.

The Last Laugh presents this within a gloriously inventive, technically superb version by FW Murnau, working closely with cinematographer Karl Freund. Murnau’s desire to let the visuals do the storytelling sees The Last Laugh almost completely shed any on-screen captions (bar a few close ups on a letter, a newspaper and a final ‘note from the author’). Instead, the story unfolds perfectly and gloriously in images alone, the twists and turns expertly unfolding with perfect clarity.

On top of which, The Last Laugh is awash with cinematic verve. From its opening shot, a pacey tracking shot that reaches the hotel lobby via the lift and then pans through the lobby to the doorman, Murnau makes the camera mobile and engaging. The Last Laugh makes use of several crash zooms to accentuate points, be it shock (a zoom in to the face of the doorman’s housekeeper when she discovers the truth), foreboding (a zoom into the exterior of the hotel and its new doorman), to ironic glory (a diving crane shot that pulls into a trumpeter on the street whose music invades the doorman’s drunken fantasies), it’s a film of dynamic movement.

Murnau also uses doors, fittingly, as a neat visual metaphor. Repeated shots framed through the hotel’s revolving doors hint at the circular nature of fortune that its lead character discovers only too harshly. The doorman’s dismissal is shot from outside a pair of glass doors, the divide separating the shell-shocked doorman from his distracted manager. The door down to the basement toilet, swings shut with the finality of some sort of Dante gateway, leading to the gloom below. Doors appear throughout to separate or trap characters, especially the doorman. And in his fantasy, the doorman pictures himself guarding a revolving door so tall it would dwarf the hotel.

The doorman’s fantasies are another moment of influential cinematic invention. Hearing music in the street, after holding court during his niece’s wedding (dressed in a stolen uniform), the hungover doorman day dreams of being restored to his position. As his head bobs and sways, stationary in the frame, the room around him spins and rotates. Bleary, superimposed fantasy shots intrude as the doorman sees himself restored to glory in the foyer, lifting and juggling singlehanded the massive luggage crate he had been unable to pick up earlier.

The same swirling super-imposed images haunt the doorman when the truth of his demotion becomes known. He imagines a whirling collection of laughing faces, delighting in his humiliating fall. His final fate sees him escorted, late at night, to the bathroom by a kindly night watchman (Georg John), ending sitting against the wall framed in a pool of light, like a condemned man facing a never-ending sentence.

Or is he? Really the film should stop at the 80-minute mark, because there is no coming back from this – only a long trudge towards death. But the money men felt, “Mein got! that’s a bit depressing!”, so we get our first proper caption telling us that, unlike in real life, the author will provide a happy ending. So, the doorman inherits a fortune from an eccentric millionaire, becomes a guest at the hotel and is restored to all his former glory and then some. It’s a crazy ending, framed by Murnau in a comedic fashion (tellingly, the guests all continue to laugh at the doorman behind his back), but at least gives the doorman some sense of closing dignity.

Is it needed? Probably not. And, to be honest, it’s probably better to stop at that 80-minute mark, for all the cinematic invention that continues in that coda. But there is no denying that The Last Laugh is a virtuoso piece of film-making, crammed to the rafters with flair and invention, superbly directed and shot and with a towering performance of puffed-up pride turned shambling shame by Jannings (just the right side of hammy). It’s a film that stands as a milestone of cinema as a visual language.

Five Star Final (1931)

Overlooked gutter press drama, a bit melodramatic, but with strong performances

Director: Mervyn LeRoy

Cast: Edward G. Robinson (Joseph W Randall), Marian Marsh (Jenny Townsend), HB Warner (Michael Townsend), Anthony Bushell (Philip Weeks), George E. Stone (Ziggie Feinstein), Frances Starr (Nancy (Voorhees) Townsend), Ona Munson (Kitty Carmody), Boris Karloff (T Vernon Isopod), Aline MacMahon (Miss Taylor), Oscar Apfel (Bernard Hinchecliffe), Purnell Pratt (French), Robert Elliott (Brannegan)

The cynical newspaperman was a popular genre of the 1930s, most famously The Front Page (largely due to its wildly popular offspring His Girl Friday). Five Star Final (the title refers to a famous gutter press font), adapted from Louis Weitzenkorn’s hit Broadway play. Weitzenkorn was a former editor of New York Evening Graphic, a paper so prurient it was known as the “porno-Graphic”. Proving no one is more keen on their work than a poacher turned gamekeeper, Weitzenkorn’s play is a vicious attack on a newspaper industry that couldn’t give a hoot about the impact of its actions so long as its selling hundreds of thousands of copies daily into the hands of a muck-raking public.

Five Star Final’s hero feels like an idealised self-portrait of Weitzenkorn. Joseph W Randall (Edward G. Robinson) is editor of the New York Evening Gazette, a gutter-press rag which, with weary baby-steps, he has tried to drag up market for years much to the objection of publisher Bernard Hinchecliffe (Oscar Apfel), who firmly believes that salacious stories (with dubious, hypocritical moral angles) about sex and violence is what the people really want. Randall agrees to go muck-raking, dragging back into the limelight Nancy Voorhees (Frances Starr), a stenographer acquitted twenty years ago of killing the no-good boss who impregnated her. Nancy is now married to Townsend (HB Warner), who has raised her daughter Jenny (Marian Marsh) as his own. Jenny is about to marry scion of wealth Philip (Anthony Bushell) and is utterly unaware of the time bomb Randall is about to explode in their lives – with tragic consequences.

Five Star Final is, in many ways, more interesting and engaging than The Front Page, even if it takes its story of journalistic ethics relentlessly seriously. It’s view of the newspaper industry is devoid of any hope for journalistic ethics. The paper reports events with a devil-may-care salaciousness using splashes sensationalist headlines without any care for their impact. Hinchecliffe and his staff are utterly unconcerned about morality, or indeed any higher calling to their trade: their focus is solely on circulation. They’re not alone in this – their rival papers have taken to literally launching oil-chucking assaults on newsstands selling the Gazette and countless other outlets climb on board the Voorhees story the second the paper drags it back to life.

The staff are, almost to a man, utterly devoid of any sense of shame. Recent recruit, femme fatale turned journalist Kitty Carmody (Ona Munson, on fine morally ambivalent form) is happy to use any wiles to pursue a story, her first instinct when confronting tragedy to demand a photo. She’s but a beginner compared to Boris Karloff’s reprehensible Isopod, his genteel manner the only thing left of his past as a defrocked priest (for seducing various women), now a tipsy sewer-rat who thinks nothing of dressing as a priest to wean embarrassing facts out of the Townsends and barely shrugs at the impact of his actions. The reporters are without any decency. They don’t even have the crack-a-jack wit of their compatriots in Front Page: you don’t enjoy spending time with them you just want to shower afterwards.

But perhaps even worse, in a way, is Robinson’s Randall – because he knows what he is doing is wrong, wrong, wrong (in case we miss this, we are repeatedly shown Randall washing his hand’s Pilate-like, in sudsy guilt-shedding). In one of his finest performances, Robinson nails the acid-sharp patter, but also his self-destructive embracing of his trade’s worst aspects: his arrogance and ability to beat down his own conscience being his Achilles heels. Robinson’s complex performance implies Randall so disgusted with Hinchecliffe and his ilk, he wants to demonstrate their moral vileness by spinning the paper even deeper. And he does it all from a position of believing he’s better than everyone around him (“put me on a cigar box and I’d be above our readers”), while his actions show him as morally bankrupt as the rest.

The moral cut-and-thrust of the newspaper world dominates the film. LeRoy gives it some real visual interest, from the opening shots of the phone operators taken from ‘inside’ the exchange (their bodies framed through wires) to the skilful split-screen effect used for later phone calls. By comparison, it’s very easy to see the domestic bliss-turned-tragedy in the Townsend home as from a far more theatrical, melodramatic film. Much of this is shot and played with a slightly hokey, home-spun sentimentality – while Frances Starr, in particular, is prone to the sort of middle-distance starring that wouldn’t seem out of place in a matinee.

But you can excuse it for the surprising power of the restraint LeRoy stages a late-act tragedy in the Townsend home, all filmed with use of shadows, implication and shots of agonised hands clutching door frames. HB Warner finds an emotional depth in a man forced to spin personal anguish while Marian Marsh and Anthony Bushell break out of otherwise thankless parts as oblivious lovers to lend real moral force to late outbursts.

But it’s the assault on the gutter press – literally so in the final image of the film, that sees a copy of the Gazette, smeared with mud, washed down a drain – that powers the film. It’s done with a real outrage, that you feel stemmed from Weitzenkorn’s self-loathing. The film relies on the excellence of Robinson’s restrained performance of moral ambiguity (he also has a lovely interplay with his Jiminy Cricket, Aline MacMahon’s secretary) to stop it being a little too shrill and insistent (which it still is at points), but as an impassioned cry for some sort of decency in the media you can see the roots of films like Network in it. Definitely worth uncovering.

Mister Roberts (1955)

Dry and stagey version of a theatre hit, that never quite comes to life cinematically

Director: John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy (Ward Bond, Joshua Logan)

Cast: Henry Fonda (Lt Jnr Gd Doug Roberts), James Cagney (Lt Cmd Morton), William Powell (Doc), Jack Lemmon (Ensign Frank Pulver), Betsy Palmer (Lt Ann Girard), Ward Bond (CPO Dowdy), Ken Curtis (Dolan), Philip Carey (Mannion), Nick Adams (Reber), Perry Lopez (Rodrigues), Patrick Wayne (Bookser), Harry Carey Jnr (Stefanowski)

Henry Fonda hadn’t made a film for almost seven years, spending the intervening years collecting garlands on Broadway: and a lot of those were for his over 1,000 performances of Mister Roberts. When the hit play came to the screen, he was the only choice (even if Fonda looked a bit long-the-tooth for a junior lieutenant). Fonda was less than happy with the film – despite its financial success and Oscar nominations – and it’s easy to see why. This is an uneasy mix of awkwardly opened up filmic sweep and stagy set up, with the original’s saltiness watered down to gain Naval co-operation.

Fonda is Lt Jnr Grade Doug Roberts, second-in-command of naval cargo ship Reluctant (known as the Bucket). It’s 1945 and the ship is under the tyrannical command of Lt Commander Morton (James Cagney), a lazy placeman riding Robert’s organised shirttails to career success. That’s why he’s unwilling to grant Roberts’ wish to be transferred to a combat ship so he can do his bit. Roberts is the buffer between Morton and the crew, Morton taking any opportunity he to impose his Bligh-like authority through punishments. How will the power struggle between the two men play out?

The most interesting thing about Mister Roberts is the immense turmoil of its making, burning through no less than four directors. Ford butted heads with Fonda (never the easiest guy in the world), who felt he knew far the material better than Ford. This eventually led to a punch-up and Ford hitting the bottle big-time before he was sent to a sanatorium. Ward Bond took over before Mervyn LeRoy was shipped in. LeRoy claimed to have directed over 90% of the film (allegedly in Ford’s style), before he too was replaced by Logan, the original Broadway director, who only didn’t get the job in the first place because Fonda had also fallen out with him. Logan felt the recut script ripped the heart out of the play and, like Fonda, that the film was not a patch on the original.

This chaos perhaps explains why this feels like such a bland and stagey affair. There is the odd widescreen shot of Reluctant puffing through the seas, or Fonda surveying the panorama. But these are outweighed by static camera set-ups of a sound-stage recreation of the ship. Scenes play out in angles that seem to basically replicate the way they were set on stage (most strikingly, a scene where the crew stare out at the nurses on the island through binoculars – you can almost picture the sailors peering out into the stalls). It’s the worst type of ‘opened-out’ film adaptations, where the opening-out is restricted solely to the odd widescreen shot of a vista while the rest of the film is shot and staged like it’s still in a theatre.

On top of this, Fonda and Logan was probably right that a lot of the play’s energy was lost when its harsher beats were trimmed. It’s not a surprise the saltier dialogue was thrown overboard. But Morton was changed from a Queeg-like bully into a broader, comic character, a ludicrous martinet whose obsession with his palm-tree pot-plant was dialled up to the max. James Cagney gives a broad performance, either frothing at the mouth or fainting away in fury. He’s such an absurd figure, he can’t be seen as a genuine threat, possibly because the Navy could not abide the idea that a bully who placed his own career before his crew’s wellbeing could ever land a command.

It rather mutes the more satirical points about the unpredictability of rigid command structures. You can still see beats of it in the film’s recurrent, slightly bizarre, ‘now hear this’ announcements over the intercom (a surprisingly M*A*S*H-ish touch) or in some of the more mad-cap destructive elements of Lemmon’s slacker Ensign Pulver. Just as the crew’s poor moral and willingness to find ever more obscure reasons to shirk duty might have played more into criticism of the domineering navy regime on stage. Not here.

With a slightly neutered content and flat direction, what Mister Roberts relies on is the strength of its performances. It certainly got a trio of legends and an up-and-comer destined for great things. A very fine Fonda, with that long experience, gives his trademarked decency mixed with a sensitivity for his men and bitterness at his commander. It plays out with an indulgent fatherly regard for his men and a subtle cheek for his captain. His disgust for Morton is tangible as is his emotion at the crew’s regard.

Equally good is William Powell, in his final role, an archly dry commentator on events, as playful forging whisky as he is quietly amused at the crew’s wild attempts to escape their duty. Jack Lemmon Oscar-winning turn as Pulver was an early display of both the manic comic energy, tinged with an adolescent sexual excitement, that he bought to several later roles. But he also manages to find some genuine moments of emotional depth. Cagney blisters in a 2D role, but few do bombast better.

But Mister Roberts frequently feels a little slow and dry, and it’s never quite funny or zany enough for what it’s trying to do. Not surprising, since Ford and LeRoy are hardly anyone’s idea of satirical, screwball directors. When it does go for zany energy, it ends up making its characters look like dicks – the crew’s shore leave (after a year on ship) is clearly meant to be amusing (Fonda gives them a ‘boys-will-by-boys’ smile). But the actions described (trashing an ambassador’s house, ripping clothes off women, turning a dinner party into a brawl) sounds more like drunken louts than charming rogues (hard not to feel Morton isn’t more than a little bit right to be furious).

It says a lot that the broad comedy lands less well than the serious moments – especially as the film’s sudden tragic ending is its most effective moment. The stagy, dry production feels like it has made only the most awkward transition to screen – I suspect Fonda was right to wish more people had seen it on stage than on celluloid.

A Farewell to Arms (1932)

Hemingway hated this lusciously made high romance version of this novel, very well-filmed

Director: Frank Borzage

Cast: Helen Hayes (Catherine Barkley), Gary Cooper (Lt Frederic Henry), Adolphe Menjou (Captain Rinaldi), Mary Philips (Helen Ferguson), Jack La Rue (Priest), Blanche Friderici (Head Nurse), Mary Forbes (Miss Van Campen)

If there was one thing Ernest Hemingway got out of David O Selznick’s A Farewell to Arms it was a lifelong mate in Gary Cooper. Presumably, they agreed never to discuss the film during their boozing sessions, as Hemingway loathed it. Probably because Selznick’s crowd-pleasing version carefully strips out the political and moral themes of Hemingway in favour of ramping up the romance. Of course, Selznick was right that it’s quite a damn big part of the book. But it’s not how Hemingway liked to see it.

In any case, a romance is what we get – and, of course,it’s tinged with tragedy. Lt Frederic Henry (Gary Cooper) is an American serving during the First World War with the Italian Army ambulance corp. Returning to hospital, he encounters English nurse Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes), herself mourning the death of her fiancée. After an initial bad impression, they start a romance. One that’s hard to sustain across the vast distances of war and the jealous censoring of their mail by Henry’s friend Captain Rinaldi (Adolphe Menjou) who hates his pal losing his head over a woman. When a pregnant Catherine has desperate news, fate conspires to keep them apart.

Hemingway was of course right that this version of his novel was more a tragic romance, rather than the sort of state-of-moral-consciousness story he felt it was. It almost wasn’t even a tragic romance, since Selznick had two endings shot, with the happy ending attacked to many out-of-city screenings. The film still struggled, cut down by ten minutes after its release to meet the stringent requirements of the production code. But I wonder, did Hemingway really prefer the more serious, self-important remake that followed? (Probably not, since he famously told Selznick to shove it up his ass).

At least with this Farewell to Arms he had the rich, imaginative camera work by Frank Borzage. There are several striking tracking shots, as Borzage follows in the wake of characters entering the grand houses converted into hospitals. There is also some gloriously imaginative work where the camera takes the place of Cooper as he is wheeled into hospital on a gurney in a sustained POV shot. Ceilings track past us, faces loom in over the frame and it culminates in an almost completely unclear close-up of Hayes as she looms tightly into shot to inspect him. Combine that with a striking filmic montage that plays out the horrors of combat in one well-edited montage (in addition the very first shot is a corpse on a hill – no doubt war is hell) and you’ve got some striking film-making throughout from a director with an impressive visual eye.

Farewell to Arms also has a perfectly cast lead for Hemingway. Cooper is everything you might want from this novelist’s hero: a man’s man without a shadow of a doubt but, in true Cooper style, also sensitive, innocent and strangely child-like and vulnerable. There is no relish for combat in him, he’s an architect who lingeringly chats about his ideas. He’s got a playful bashfulness with women – few other actors would have made their character seem more innocent when framed playing with a good-time-girl’s foot across a table in a bar. By the end of the film, Cooper genuinely feels like a lost soul, like a big kid waiting for an adult to come along and fix things.

It works particularly well, because it’s important to Farewell to Arms construction that Cooper should never feel like a rogue. It’s only awful circumstances and terrible deeds that keeps him apart from Hayes. Left to his own devices he would have course rushed to her side: the film using this moral fidelity to justify the pre-marital sex the couple engage in. Much of the content more openly addressing this was, of course, snipped in the post-code re-edit – but it’s hard to escape when the entire plot revolves around Catherine being pregnant in the end.

The romance element remains however the primary calling card. Borzage, who often favoured high romance (especially in the face of adversity), clearly felt A Farewell to Arms was made for him. He even manages to work around the vast height difference (nearly a foot!) between Hayes and Cooper (who towers over her in mid-shot). Much of A Farewell to Arms is given over to their courtship and romance: from a muddled first meeting, confusion over a kiss to the warm embraces of Henry’s sick leave under Catherine’s care. Hayes gives a decent performance as Catherine, even if she seems a little more forced and mannered than Cooper’s relaxed naturalness. The increasingly grand tragedy of the film’s closing moments also leads to her leaning in a little too much towards intense stares and breathy line-deliveries.

Perhaps most interestingly though, there is another unspoken romance at the heart of A Farewell to Arms. The adaptation dials up the importance of Adolphe Menjou’s spaghetti-accented Captain Rinaldi. Menjou does fine work as this fun-loving, irreverent surgeon, but by making him the jealous reason for the lovers’ separation, it’s hard not to infer a homoerotic element in his feelings for Cooper’s Henry. Surely, it’s more than friendship that cause Rinaldi to travel across country to treat his friend. It’s hard not to read something into his continued irritated complaints about how ‘unmanly’ Henry is by allowing himself to he wrapped up in a woman, or the casually spiteful way he prevents them writing to each other. There is more than a little of the jilted lover to Rinaldi, a fascinating sub-plot you wish the film could explore more.

Borzage’s film may have been despised by the novelist, but it has some fine moments. Sure it’s romance often seems to fit very naturally into a traditional Romeo and Juliet style-template and its frequently more inspired in its framing than it is in the pace and depth of its storytelling (there is also, as well, a faint lack of chemistry between the stars). But there is a fine performance by Cooper and much to enjoy in its tight, lean frame, even if it never manages to find true inspiration.

The Story of Adele H (1975)

Distanced and measured film that becomes a heartbreaking study of lonely obsession and destruction addiction

Director: François Truffaut

Cast: Isabelle Adjani (Adèle Hugo), Bruce Robinson (Lieutenant Albert Pinson), Sylvia Marriott (Mrs. Saunders), Joseph Blatchley (Mr. Whistler), Ivry Gitlis (The hypnotist), Cecil de Sausmarez (Mr. Lenoir), Ruben Dorey (Mr. Saunders), Clive Gillingham (Keaton), Roger Martin (Dr. Murdock)

In 1863 there was, perhaps, no man more renowned in France than Victor Hugo. Which made it almost impossible to fly under the radar if you were his daughter. But that’s what Adèle Hugo (Isabelle Adjani) wants in Halifax, Nova Scotia, under the name Adèle Lewly. She’s there in pursuit of British army officer Albert Pinson (Bruce Robinson). Adèle loves Pinson truly, madly, deeply – and obsessively, believing he has promised marriage and ignoring his clear lack-of-interest. Adèle is willing to go to almost any lengths, spin any desperate story, burn through any amount of money, debase herself to a desperate degree to marry Pinson, as her own mental health collapses.

Based on Adèle’s own diaries (written in a code deciphered after her death), The Story of Adèle H unpeels the layers of a destructive obsession that has a terrible emotional impact on all involved. Truffaut’s film can seem cold and precise, as chilly at points as its Halifax settings (in fact shot in Guernsey, historically Hugo’s residence at this time after his banishment from France), his camera keeping an unobtrusive distance and slowly, carefully following the increasingly frantic actions of its lead.

But it’s part of Truffaut’s intriguing dance with our sympathies and loyalties. A more high-falutin’ personal drama may well have tipped us more strongly in our feelings about the desperate Adèle or the controlled Pinson. Instead, Truffaut’s film encourages us to see the story from both perspective and unearths a sort of as well as a tragedy in Adèle’s obsessive quest. But it also demonstrates Pinson’s unpleasant coolness and self-obsession, while allowing us to see his life is being destroyed by a stalker.

Of course, part of us is always going to be desperate for Adèle to shed her feelings for Pinson, who feels barely worth the obsessive, possessive desire she feels for him. A lot of that is due to Isabelle Adjani’s extraordinary performance. A young actor (over ten years younger than Adèle), she not only makes clear Adèle’s intelligence (this is a woman who composed music and wrote and red copiously) and her charm, but also her fragility and desperation. Adjani makes Adèle surprisingly assured and certain throughout, independent minded and determined – it’s just that her feelings are focused on a possessive, all-consuming obsession that is undented by reality.

It says a great deal for the magnetic skill Adjani plays this role with, is that we can both be frustrated and even disturbed by her actions but still see her relentless pursuit as (in a strange way) oddly pure. Truffaut twice quotes Adèle writing about the power of a love that will see someone crossing oceans to follow their beloved, and there is a daring bravery to it, a commitment to being herself and following her desires in a world that is still set up to favour of man over woman. It’s also easy to feel sympathy for her at Adjani’s tortured guilt about the drowning of her sister (vivid nightmares of this haunt her) just as the searing pain Adjani is able to bring to the role is deeply emotional.

But that doesn’t change the unsettling awareness we have of the possessive horror of her actions. Adjani’s Adèle is an addict, the shrine in her room she builds to Pinson just part of the self-destructive behaviour of a woman who lies to everyone about her relationship with Pinson and pours every penny of her income into her next hit of trying to win him. Like a stalker she moves from following Pinson around to the streets to ever more extreme actions: spying on Pinson with his new lovers, hiring a prostitute to sleep with him (as both a perverse gift and a bizarre way to control his sexuality), tell his fiancée’s family she’s a jilted pregnant wife, haunt Pinson on a hunt clutching a waft of notes as a bribe while carrying a cushion stuffed up her dress… Her actions become increasingly more and more unhinged – so much so her attempt to recruit a fraudulent mesmerist to hypnotise Pinson into marriage starts to feel like the most sane and reasonable of her plans.

And slowly we realise that Adèle, for all our first feelings towards her are sympathy, is destroying herself just like an addict jabbing another needle into their arm to try and capture her next hit. Her obsession starts to destroy her health, reducing her to a dead-eyed figure walking the streets in an ever-more crumbling dress, refusing to move on, reducing herself to penury but still following Pinson like a ghost. She alienates herself from people, lies to her family, steals money… it’s a spiral of a junkie.

We can wonder what she sees in Pinson – but, like all addictions, that’s hardly the point. It’s almost the point that Robinson’s Pinson is a bland pretty boy. (It’s quite telling that he’s so forgettable, than on arrival in Halifax Adèle even mistakes a random officer – played by Truffaut – as Pinson). Our first impression of him is as a coldly ambitious, selfish fellow, a rake on the chance. And maybe, to a degree, he is. But it’s hard to take Adèle as a fair witness for whatever claims she makes about the promises Pinson makes. And the longer it goes on, the more its hard not to feel for the destructive effect Adèle’s constant presence has on Pinson. It costs him a marriage, his status and nearly his career. Does he really deserve this for being, really, just a rather selfish guy?

The Story of Adèle H takes our perceptions and makes clear how our feelings can shift and become more complex. Because really Adèle’s problem is not that she has been jilted: but that she is clearly not well, her mental health collapsing in front of her eyes as solitude and secrecy feed her lonely obsession. Her obsession is so great that she can acknowledge she both loves and despises Pinson, but not let that dent her unrelenting , irrational determination to marry him. This destroys her life.

In fact, it becomes hard not to feel sympathy for both characters whose lives are scarred by unrelenting self-destruction. And Truffaut’s approach in his filming actually adds a great deal to this, its forensic distance on this terrible affair placing it under a microscope that reveals clearly the nightmare they are both trapped in. Match that with Adjani’s incredible performance, a star-making turn that burns through the celluloid in its intensity, and you’ve got a quiet but subtly moving film that grabs you almost unawares in its emotional force.