Category: Directors

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.

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?

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.

Playtime (1967)

On a huge set, modern life is gently parodied in this unique, demanding but joyous comedy

Director: Jacques Tati

Cast: Jacques Tati (Monsieur Hulot), Barbara Dennek (Young American), Jacqueline Lecomte (Her friend), Georges Montant (M Giffard), Erika Dentzler (Mme Giffard), John Abbey (M Lacs), Yves Barsacq (Friend), Jack Gauthier (Guide)

Jacques Tati, heir to the great silent comedians, had dreamed of making his own perfect film. It would have the synchronisation of sound and image together, where every detail could be honed and measured to maximum effect. To achieve this, he was willing to sink every franc he had into the experiment. Most of those went on building a gleaming city block, with the interiors built to Tati’s exact requirements, nicknamed Tativille. And in this playground of his making, Tati created (over a couple of years) Playtime, a sprawling, almost incomparable masterpiece that pretty much lost him every single one of those francs when it was released.

There is no plot as such to Playtime. It follows a disparate group of people across a single 24-hour-period in Paris. Not the Paris of postcards mind you: this is the modern Paris of the 1960s, where every building is a shining, glass-covered cathedral of commerce and every street is a perfectly laid-out boulevard with cars moving down it in perfect unison. Over the course of a series of vignettes – set, in turn, in an airport, a labyrinthine office-block, a series of personality-free apartments, the opening night of a restaurant and a regimented supermarket – a group of American tourists, office workers, visitors and Jacques Tati’s famous creation Monsieur Hulot, stumble about never quite letting the monumental modernity around them crush their free spirits.

Perhaps it’s not a surprise Playtime flopped. It’s a long film and, with every single frame choca-block with comedic action which your eye is invited to roam over it, it’s often hard-work to watch, demanding a large amount of focus and attention to get the most out of it. Tati loathed the concept of the close-up, and Playtime almost totally lacks anything not a medium- or long-shot. Without the camera to guide you, it’s left to the viewer and the odd audio nudge from Tati’s use of ambient, carefully modulated sound to point the viewer where to look and what to pay attention too. This can, however, be richly rewarding, allowing you to ‘pick your own adventure’ in the detail-crammed frames, where almost every character has their own story.

Tati pulled together everything in Playtime himself, working Bresson-like with a cast of amateur actors (some of them his neighbours!) who were carefully drilled into hitting their appropriate marks without losing their spontaneity. Watching Playtime is to see almost a metronome bought to life, with every single decision on every single footstep made to the neatest, closest detail – the sort of obsessive level of detail Kubrick would be proud of. And everything is timed to perfection, a few big sight-gags never crowding out a litany of little moments, small glimpses of situational humour, that reward the viewer whose eye happens to stroll to the correct point at the correct time.

It’s only just controlled by Tati’s use of sound. Dialogue is nearly non-existent in Playtime, as a smattering of French, English, German and other languages is overheard, but only really when we are required to be looking in the direction of the speaker. Otherwise, across the massive 70mm image, sound fades up and down on key points, depending on where Tati wants us to look. The sound of feet walking a corridor can suddenly carry real aural impact. But then so can the squeak of a restaurant door, or the squirt of a lemon, the tapping of a finger… the sound nudges and guides us around this complex, shining world to draw our eye to key moments.

Playtime is a triumph of production design, its gleaming, artificial world of glass-fronted buildings and aesthetically clean surfaces part of the robotic modern world – one far different from our brief glimpses of the Eiffel Tower or Montmartre in reflections. There is no character at all to this world of consumerist, futuristic Utopian surfaces, where chairs are perfect identikit leather, offices are perfectly laid out blocks of cubicles and supermarkets enforce rigid one-way systems between its pristine aisles. Part of Tati’s joke is how this new world of gleaming futurism is not only taking over everything – in a travel agent, a series of posters for exotic locations all show the same anonymous office block – but even seems to excite the tourists more than the idea of the ‘real’ Paris.

It’s easy to think Tati was parodying the sort of commercialist thinking of de Gaulle (satirised here as an impossibly short president arriving at the airport, with a luggage flap prominently blowing behind him). After all, even the homes we see (only filmed from the outside) look like shop windows peering in at a stack of furniture identical to the sort we’ve seen in offices, with people at home as tucked into cubicles as they are in their offices. But in fact, Playtime suggests that, even in a world as hideously over constructed as this one, people will find a way to break down barriers and bond. That people don’t naturally become cogs in a machine, but wild, unpredictable elements.

That’s at the heart of the film’s longest vignette, that covers what is really a disastrous opening night at a restaurant – where the walls fall down, the chairs leave terrible marks on the clientele’s backs, the waiters are overwhelmed and the floor becomes an impassable mass of people. But the night isn’t a disaster, despite a parade of comic pratfalls, sight gags and misunderstandings that would make Fawlty Towers look like fine-dining, because people are there to have a good time. And that they do, whether it’s turning the collapsed area into a VIP zone, forming an impromptu band or encouraging a sing-along, what could have been a parade of fury becomes instead something joyful and, yes, playful. You actually don’t watch Playtime at these moments feeling embarrassed for them, but instead wish you were there.

It’s a tone that Playtime ends on, suddenly upbeat, magical and almost like the entire film is about to break into a charming Busby Berkely number, with cars moving together in circular patterns. That’s where you admire the skill of Tati, the superb control and attention to detail that never also forgets that all this stuff is meant to be fun. And yes, as noted, Playtime puts a lot of focus on the viewer to find that fun. But when they do spot it, it’s hard not to be a little bit charmed and entertained by it.

And there are some great jokes. A business switchboard that emits a shriek of sounds when operated by its concierge (who smokes his cigar whenever out of sight of his boss). Hulot bamboozled in an office, where people call each other to be delivered papers in their own desks. A game of charades Hulot is roped into playing in a house. A waiter who swops his pristine clothes for damaged ones from others until he stands in rags. A doorman who continues operating his glass door, even after it’s been smashed to smithereens. You could spot a thousand other gags in the corner of every frame, in a film almost like no other designed for multiple re-watchings. Tati may have lost a fortune, but he also delivered a film like few others.

The Informer (1935)

Ford’s atmospheric film is superbly directed and visually impressive, despite some clumsy moments

Director: John Ford

Cast: Victor McLaglen (“Gypo” Nolan), Heather Angel (Mary McPhillip), Preston Foster (Dan Gallagher), Margot Grahame (Katie Madden), Wallace Ford (Frankie McPhillip), Una O’Connor (Mrs McPhillip), JM Kerrigan (Terry), Joseph Sauers (Bartly Mulholland), Neil Fitzgerald (Tommy Connor), Donald Meek (Peter Mulligan, D’Arcy Corrigan (Blind man)

It’s hard to make ends meet in the fog-filled streets of 1920s Dublin. Especially if you are a non-too bright former boxer with an eager eye for the bottle. That describes “Gypo” Nolan (Victor McLaglen), a tough bruiser totally at sea after being expelled from “The Organisation” (that’s the IRA to you and me). Desperate for a bit of cash, Gypo instinctively rats out old friend Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford) to the British in return for £20, cash-in-hand. Guilt will slowly eat away at him over one long, self-destructive evening as his old colleagues from the Organisation ruthlessly hunt down the informer.

Ford’s richly filmed The Informer takes a limited RKO budget and makes it work to spectacular effect, disguising its largely unconvincing Dublin street sets with misty, Murnau-inspired photography from Joseph H August. The Informer is supremely atmospheric, fog coating around the edges of the frame and only interrupted by beaming streetlights or the odd shaft of light – almost all of which actually lead to danger (be it lighting the way to the British headquarters or the dreary basement where the Organisation measure out summary justice). The Informer still feels, in many ways, like a silent film – but in a good way, one where its story and the emotions would be perfectly easy to follow from the striking compositions that flood the frame.

This is Ford at possibly his most stylistic and impressionistic – influenced not just by Murnau but also clearly by Fritz Lang, the closing trial of Gypo feeling like a straight lift from Peter Lorre’s pathetic fate in M. As Gypo stumbles through the streets, he seems haunted by super-imposed images of the Wanted poster that instigated his betrayal – not to mention, his feet buffeted by wind-swept remains of the same poster. This fateful Wanted poster pops up repeatedly, even a version burnt by Gypo in a fire seems to sear through the frame as its edges disappear in flames. It’s a continual reminder to our hero of his weakness, foolishness and lack of character – his betrayal being so selfish that even the British toss the reward money to him with veiled contempt.

Our hero is played by regular Ford mucker Victor McLaglen, plucked from his regular pack to play the lead over the claims of several more prominent stars. Although it won McLaglen an Oscar, Ford selected him because he felt he was the sort of actor (a hard-bitten drinker, whose every fault was well-known to him) that could be manipulated into giving a virtuoso performance. McLaglen’s physicality is perfect for it – a former boxer himself, he’s got the perfect boisterousness and knuckle-ready force the part needs – but Ford also readily identified his vulnerability and nervousness. Deliberately keeping the actor on his toes, changing the shooting order on a day-by-day basis, Ford draws from McLaglen a performance of bubbling, hesitant, unaffected uncertainty. Gypo is forever stumbling over his words, glancing around waiting to be corrected, a sweaty nervous mess when the pressure piles on.

It’s a role that many actors could shine in, so rich is the material, and McLaglen doesn’t disappoint. The Informer follows his collapse in excruciating detail, as guilt leads to drink, leads to further guilt. Ford’s film surprisingly isn’t really awash with sympathy for this deeply flawed, child-like bruiser lost in the world of real men – despite the decency we discover in a man who was expelled from The Organisation because he wouldn’t kill an unarmed man. Chalk it up the director’s old-school ideas of loyalty and his notable Irish sympathies – not going to be easy to hold sympathy for a man who has betrayed both those elements.

Ford gives a striking martyrs death of McPhillip – played by his brother Wallace – who is caught in his home with his sister and mother (Una O’Connor, very good). He takes a few Black and Tans with him, before being machine gunned while climbing out of a rear window, our last view of him his hand disappearing over a ledge, nails scratching loudly on the surface. The members of the Organisation look like raincoat wearing hoods from Chicago, but fitting Ford’s sympathies they don’t leap to decisions (even if they execute anyone they find guilty), setting up a people’s court to trial those they suspect.

Their main suspect is an innocent tailor, excellently played with a mix of affronted innocence and weary defiance by Donald Meek, largely because they initially want to give the benefit of the doubt to Gypo and the string of half-formed, barely credible lies he has pulled together to shake the blame. Doesn’t stop them tailing Gypo during a night on the town, surrounded by ordinary people spending time with him for his new-found money, as he impulsively gives away the cash he has sacrificed his honour for.

The Informer does have a tendency to lay on its moral judgements a little too thickly. There are a few too many slightly sentimental shots of McPhillip’s grieving sister, a little too much of the moral judgement piled on Gypo, for all the passing sympathy for the boxer’s general lack of savviness. The Informer’s final ending, set inevitably in a church, is about as close as a great director like Ford can get to being flat-out bad: on-the-nose, clumsy, hectoring and simplistic and (particularly striking in a film as generally so beautiful as this) badly filmed. Max Steiner’s score similarly forces some of the emotional points a little too strongly, while his use of Irish Folk and Rule Britannia to hammer home points can wear a bit thin.

But there is still a lot to admire in The Informer, not least its extraordinary visual brilliance and the creeping paranoia and claustrophobia of its telescoped plot – you can feel the real influence it must have had on Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out with which it would make a fascinating double-bill. It might make its moral points with a little less subtlety than you would like, but it’s still an expertly executed, richly affecting film.

The Defiant Ones (1958)

Kramer’s film is well-balanced mix of drama and message with two strong performances from the leads

Director: Stanley Kramer

Cast: Sidney Poitier (Noah Cullen), Tony Curtis (John “Joker” Jackson), Theodore Bikel (Sheriff Max Muller), Charles McGraw (Captain Frank Gibbons), Lon Chaney Jnr (Big Sam), King Donovan (Solly), Claude Akins (Mack), Lawrence Dobkin (Editor), Whit Bissell (Lou Gans), Carl Switzer (Angus), Kevin Coughlin (Billy), Cara Williams (Billy’s Mother)

The Defiant Ones is a vintage Stanley Kramer message film, one of his best mixings of serious social issues with entertainment. Two convicts escape from a prison transport, making a run for it while chained together at the wrist. They are thief John “Joker” Jackson (Tony Curtis) and Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier), imprisoned for standing up to a racist thug. Cullen is Black – and that’s a big issue in the racist world of Southern America. Forced to work together to survive, despite their mutual distrust and outright dislike, slowly the two form a curious bond – all while dodging the dangers of recapture and falling foul to vigilante ‘justice’ from ordinary people.

The message of The Defiant Ones is pretty clear to see, but Kramer’s film manages to avoid laying it on too heavily, mostly letting it be seen in everyday casual prejudice. Starting with Jackson’s constant use of the word “boy” – and his complete failure to understand why Cullen finds this grating. Jackson has already used the n-word the very first time he speaks to Cullen, side-by-side in the prison transport. Most of the police and enthusiastic deputies helping them are itching to release fierce dogs on the escapees (it’s clear why). The hostility Cullen immediately encounters when they are briefly caught by turpentine workers, accelerates with terrifying speed into ropes being flung over lampposts for a lynching (Jackson’s protest, that you can’t lynch a white man, is telling in itself). Even when they encounter a scared child, he jumps to Jackson to protect him from Cullen (he even assumes Jackson must be Cullen’s guard).

The constant repetition of the dangers and assumptions behind racism probably gained added force at the time because they a white man shared some of the chance of being suddenly murdered for looking the wrong way. Part of The Defiant Ones aim is to show through adversity that more connects us than not. This also comes out when the two men talk about their lives. When Jackson bitterly describes his life of working-class drudgery in a hotel, scraping and smiling for tips from the rich, Cullen quickly points out it places him only a mild rung above a Black man who wouldn’t even be allowed in the hotel unless he was holding a mop. Both are firmly wedged on the bottom of the social ladder, part of the film’s suggestion that, prejudice aside, they are natural allies.

Allies is what they become, a relationship that develops smoothly thanks to the skilled playing and excellent chemistry between Poitier and Curtis (both Oscar-nominated). They certainly were put through their paces physically – aside for brief doubles (or dummies) work when they traverse some rapids, pretty much all the difficult stunts (all the more so, since they were chained together) were done by the actors themselves. In particular, an awkward escape from a clay pit was remembered by Curtis as possibly the toughest thing he ever did on a film set. Kramer throws the two stars into a parade of dangerous terrain – wading bogs, fast rivers, climbing awkwardly up and down heights – which adds a narrative energy to his issues-based plot.

Poitier at this time had to carry the burden not only of acting, but also representing a significant share of the American population single-handed. Here, he’s sharper, rougher and more resentful than his reputation suggests. Poitier makes Cullen a no-nonsense fist, someone who refuses to take crap from anyone – least of all Jackson. Frequently he uses singing to express his refusal to knuckle down and be silent, and it’s his strength and resourcefulness that does the most to keep the men moving. If Poitier does have a disadvantage, it’s that Kramer’s film gives him less of a personal journey – it’s the world that must accept Cullen, not vice versa, and rightly-or-wrongly the character is little different from his journey (aside a personal loyalty to Jackson) than he was at the start.

This means, Tony Curtis actually many of the more interesting character beats. If Cullen remains largely unchanged, Jackson progresses from holding thoughtless, knee-jerk assumptions into someone who forms his own opinions and loyalties. It’s very well-drawn by Curtis – who relished the chance to play such a complex character – as he slowly reveals Jackson as a vulnerable, regretful and lonely figure under the bluster. So much so, that his late realisation of where his true loyalties lie – an outburst of anger, expertly delivered by Curtis – feels completely earned, as an expression of all the character depth we’ve watched him develop. Its Curtis’ finest performance.

The Defiant Ones does lose some energy in its later stages. It splits, fairly naturally, into three acts: the convicts alone, the convicts at the turpentine camp and the convicts at the secluded home of a lonely woman (an Oscar-nominated Cara Williams) who takes a shine to Jackson. Each of these acts is, if I’m honest, marginally less compelling than the one before, in a film at its strongest when focused on the relationship between its two stars and their conflict with each other, the elements and the wild terrain. There is something more melodramatically familiar about watching Cullen resentfully face down would-be-lynchers, or Curtis’ flirt with a desperate woman who doesn’t even need to know his name to have the hots for him.

There is good work from the rest of the cast. Cara Williams does manage to make a lot of her quietly siren-like character, with surprising depths of selfishness and cruelty – even if her section is the film’s least narratively intriguing. Lon Chaney Jnr is very good as a work boss, appalled by the racist violence his colleagues are capable with. The police crew following our heroes – oddly soundtracked to a constant barrage of music from their portable radios (the only music in the film) – are little more than narrative tools, but Theodore Bikel (Oscar-nominated) finds a fair bit of humanity in his sheriff.

The Defiant Ones though is strongest with the focus on its two excellent leads, with the constant parade of obstacles and dangers it throws them into powering the film strongly without letting it lapse too much into moralising and preaching. It’s a very good balance of high-brow earnestness, and genuine entertainment, one of Kramer’s most successfully films.

Disclosure Day (2026)

Spielberg returns to Close Encounters in a film that explores interesting ideas but doesn’t quite no how to conclude

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Emily Blunt (Margaret Fairchild), Josh O’Connor (Daniel Kellner), Colin Firth (Noah Scanlon), Eve Hewson (Jane Blankenship), Colman Domingo (Hugo Wakefield), Wyatt Russell (Jackson), Henry Lloyd-Hughes (Casper Boyd), Elizabeth Marvel (Sister Maura), Hettienne Park (Serena)

After almost fifty years, Spielberg returns to Close Encounters territory: the wonder and fear from learning we might not be alone. Disclosure Day wraps this up in a very modern conspiracy, a shady organisation keeping secrets, but still carrying the optimism and hope Spielberg’s previous encounters with Little Green Men had. Disclosure Day is a film awash in different ideas and concepts, assembled with the flair and skill you expect from Spielberg, but somehow not quite sensational enough to hold together as well as you hope it’s going to from its punchy opening.

It does start with the sort of guts that you only get after a lifetime of directing mega-hits, throwing us into the middle of the story and avoiding clumsy flashbacks and voiceover and trusting we will catch up as we go. Two very different people find their lives surprisingly changed: Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a mathematics genius, feels compelled to steal (to release to the public) a mountain of evidence of extra-terrestrial visitations (and our mistreatment of them) hidden by shady corporation Wardex, run by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth). And TV weather presenter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) suddenly finds she has the ability to know people’s whole live stories just by looking at them and to speak every language fluently, including a clicky alien dialect that sounds like dolphin chat but is clearly not of this world.

This forms the set-up for a mix of chase movie and earnest plea for patience, understanding and togetherness that feels very in-tune with Spielberg’s greatest hits. Disclosure Day is set in a world where, playing in the background of many scenes, the world teeters on the edge of World War Three – right down to panicked small-town citizens stripping a convenience store to the bones. There is a half-formed argument bubbling here about whether the world is ready for the revelations to come. Will it tip everyone into destructive panic? Eve Hewson’s Jane, a former novitiate, worries it could lead to a brutal shattering of faith – and rightly argues Daniel would have responsibility for the possible negative effects that might come out of whistle-blowing.

It’s avoiding this that is the justification used for by Wardex, our sinister corporation, with its small private army that uses its control of alien tech to call the shots with the government and hunt down whistle-blowers. They are represented by Colin Firth, perfectly cast as an imperiously gruff corporate suit who has just enough humanity bubbling under the surface to make you believe he regrets the things he does. Wardex uses alien mind-control tech, to form a psychic bond with people over great distances, something akin to heightened interrogation and mind-control. These sequences are the film’s stand-outs, Spielberg skilfully using simple effects (both parties pupils switch colour to a sky blue) and effective editing to cross-cut between two people talking while their bodies are miles apart (and he cleverly shows the punishing impact – especially on Firth of the strain of using the device) – as well as the creeping, unsettling horror of mind control pushing people to do and say things they don’t want to do.

It’s a perversion of what Disclosure Day holds up as the alien’s evolutionary advantage: their empathy. That’s the root of Margaret’s powers, which come so naturally to her that when she drops into Russian from nowhere when talking to her slacker boyfriend (a good performance of unreliable decency from Wyatt Russell) or enters into a long fast-paced Korean conversation with a visiting professor in her TV studio (so fast, the official translator can’t even keep up), she doesn’t even notice she’s not talking English. Similarly, her ability to “see” people’s lives – allowing her to offer small titbits of immediate advice that instantly disarm everyone she meets – happens so naturally, it takes her few moments to notice and become scared by her insight.

Her mixed feeling about these skills – which sometimes seem like a blessing and others a terrible curse – are beautifully played by Emily Blunt, who gives a stand-out performance of a driven, successful woman, increasingly terrified but still resolute in the actions she feels compelled to do. Blunt is able to handle the emotion and distress, as well as deliver on the comedy (there is a very funny sequence where, in pelting rain, she grows increasingly frustrated by Jackson’s inability to crush her phone by driving over it with her car). She finds a great deal of sensitivity and gentleness in Margaret, who mixes responsibility, fear, anxiety and exhilaration.

This all comes together very well in the momentum-packed first-half of the film, which sees Margaret and Daniel (a decent performance by Josh O’Connor, that largely fails to really stretch him) travelling together. It’s crammed with inventively shot sequences, such as Daniel and Jane’s escape from a blown countryside safe-house – a brilliant sequence of tracking camera-shots, inventive angles and nerve-tangling tension, helped by O’Connor’s rather sweet nervous fear (“What am I doing?”) throughout. Match that with Margaret’s engrossing pilgrimage across country, and the fascinating use of the alien bond-control device and it makes for a film that sets up a lot of interest.

It’s a shame then that the second half never quite pays this off. As the film proceeds, it feels compelled to start answering the questions that have been bubbling under most of its chase. It’s here the film’s deliberate narrative card-holding starts to work against it. Since our heroes don’t even fully know the questions they should be asking, Colman Domingo’s whistle-blower has to both ask them and then immediately answer them. It leads to a long ‘revelation’ scene, that rather overwhelms us with points about our heroes’ backgrounds stretching back to their childhood that feel both rather heavily delivered and not quite engaging enough.

It also builds towards a sort of modern recap of the ending of Close Encounters, but this time in a TV studio – and it’s interesting to see that Spielberg perhaps still believes that a TV news programme showing footage of aliens would be instantly trusted the world over, without any talk of AI fakery. This long sequence, spooling out the whole backstory of the film’s close encounter phenomena is also similar to Close Encounters in the sense that it’s a simple presentation – but differs in that it lacks the awe-inspiring scale and spectacle of that movie. Without it, it feels somehow slightly drier and more earnest, rather than carrying the sort of magical force the film needs.

It’s part of a sense that Disclosure Day throws a lot of complex stuff at us – our place in the universe, ability to empathise, the potentially dangerous impact revelations can have – but lets these drift away, in favour of a more reassuring and slightly simplistic ending that leaves you feeling its points have been underexplored. This is slightly more disappointing because there has been so much good stuff in Disclosure Day – Blunt is excellent, Hewson and Firth are very good, the direction and film-making on show is first class – but there doesn’t feel like a fully satisfying conclusion is found for everything we have seen.

Jezebel (1938)

A star turn helps to lift this bonkers melodrama into the realm of delicious entertainment

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Bette Davis (Julie Marsden), Henry Fonda (Preston Dillard), George Brent (Buck Cantrell), Donald Crisp (Dr Livingstone), Fay Bainter (Aunt Belle Massey), Margaret Lindsay (Amy Bradford Dillard), Richard Cromwell (Ted Dillard), Henry O’Neil (General Theophilius Bogardus), Spring Byrington (Mrs Kendrick), John Litel (Jean la Cour)

It’s pretty much the first line in any review about Jezebel so let’s start with it: rumour claims it largely exists as a consolation prize for Bette Davis after missing out on Scarlett O’Hara. It makes sense: Julie Marsden is a Southern Belle so similar to Scarlett they could almost be sisters. And Bette Davis is so wonderfully, passionately, brilliant playing her that, if it wasn’t for Vivien Leigh’s landmark performance, Jezebel could make you deeply regret Davis never got that role. But there is more to Jezebel than that, a handsomely filmed adaptation of a hit play by Owen Davis Snr, which predated Margaret Mitchell putting pen to paper. This is delicious, old-school, scandal-tinged Hollywood melodrama, with a star actor in a custom-made star role.

Julie Marsden is a fiery, independent-minded woman in 1850s New Orleans, convinced she can bend the world around her (and the wills of men) to her own whims. She’s engaged to strait-laced Pres Dillard (Henry Fonda), but flirts with playboy Buck Cantrell (George Brent) and won’t play by societies rules. So much so, she plans to attend the high-society Olympus Ball in a dress not of virgin white but Jezebel red. This goes down like a lead balloon; Pres effectively drops her in disgust at her wilful selfishness and a year later returns married to someone else. At which point Julie, a woman spurned, plans revenge even as yellow fever rips through the city.

Jezebel is a great big, melodramatic soap with a celluloid-burning turn by Davis (who won her second Oscar) at its heart. Davis dominates the film, a boundless force of charisma from the moment she sashays (late!) into her own party, whipping her dress up behind with a riding crop to when she departs the film, eyes full of genuine remorse, nursing a fever cart. She plays the role full of sinful flirtatiousness and playful certainty. No one will tell her what to do and where to go – from charging through a bank (captured in a beautiful tracking shot from Wyler) to drag Pres out for the day, to headstrongly ignoring all pleas to not wear her dress of choice, to holding court a year later in her own home planning revenge with burning, destructive glee.

It’s a portrait of bull-headed, feminine, self-destructive foolishness and pride that Davis would make her own, a marvellous star-turn that helps lift this otherwise rather silly melodrama with an inevitable message (this bull-headed floozy will learn the error of her head-strong ways) into something quite magic. That and the superlative richness of Wyler’s direction (and Gregg Toland’s sumptuous camera work), full of dynamic images, as well as a series of top-drawer performances from a strong cast.

Obviously, it’s hard not to spot that Jezebel lacks the scale and colour of Gone with the Wind (has any black-and-white film ever so openly revolved around colour as a source of drama?). But it has a lot of its dramatic energy, despite the fact you can sense its theatrical roots (it splits rather neatly into four acts, each set in a distinct location). Jezebel juggles its balls remarkably well, balancing a focus on Julie’s desire for attention and control with a fine portrait of two different men. George Brent, with a sly, self-satisfied grin as a Don Juan and Henry Fonda, prissy and stuffed-of-shirt (mouthing, at points, an awkward Southern accent) successfully making Pres profoundly wise, surprisingly weak despite his certainty, rigid and unpersuasive.

The pivotal ball-room sequence, and its build-up, works particularly marvellously. Despite Julie’s determination, its clear everyone around her feels it to be a terrible idea. Pres concedes to it with a grudging irritation and, once it becomes clear even to Julie it’s an appalling idea, forces Julie to be swallowed up in her public humiliation. After watching a parade of genteel ladies and gentlemen scurry away from her, as if in fear of catching her loose morals, Pres drags her to the dance floor (despite her pleas). Tracking back, Wyler shows the dance floor clear in moments, leaving just these two dancing alone (Pres even insists the band continues playing), cementing her humiliation. He’s made his point and, even though she slaps him later, even she knows he was right. Not that this will help either of them in the long run.

It’s part of the moral of the story, that sometimes women need a firm hand. (Sometimes literally so, as Donald Crisp’s grouchy Dr Livingston tells Pres). There has to be a punishment for Julie’s willingness to scheme, her constant placing of her own whims above everyone else and her inability to even consider that there might be dangerous consequences to her actions. It doesn’t wear us down though, because Davis is such a dynamic and forceful presence it’s hard not to rather like her. And then, of course, you sort of sympathise with her (even though she is awful and selfish) as a conga-like of damage and guilt leave her reeling before converting her into an ideal self-sacrificing woman.

Of course you watch Jezebel today and can hardly fail to notice that the greatest wickedness all these Southern gents and dames can possibly imagine is turning up at a ball in the wrong dress. Certainly not the slavery all around them. There is a parade of “yasum” slaves in Jezebel, all of them (like old retainer Cato) perfectly content in their lives of servitude. Pres may get a few loose critiques off about the South, but even those are focused on its economic and political short-sightedness: like everyone he’s paternally fond of his naïve property but wouldn’t imagine giving any of them freedom.

It’s another echo perhaps of Gone with the Wind and not a welcome one. Jezebel settles down for another genteel, Birth of a Nation myth of a sublime South doomed for being too noble. Not even the terror of yellow fever – and, at one point, the shooting of an infected man for fleeing his island ghetto – can get in the way of that feeling, that this way of life is not the problem, even if it does allow the odd bad apple like Julie to pop up.

That’s a more awkward political point, but it’s hard to imagine it crossing the mind of many at the time. And it doesn’t stop an enjoyment of Jezebel as a masterfully executed soap. Wyler’s direction is excellent, the filming wonderful and the actors firing on all cylinders. (Fay Bainter also won an Oscar for her fine performance as Julie’s horrified Aunt). Davis of course reigns supreme in the cinematic equivalent of an airport novel, a big, steamy, sex-fuelled melodrama with a handwringing ending of moral enlightenment delivered with such earnest, underplayed sensitivity by Davis and Wyler that it convinces. A big, brash, hugely enjoyable entertainment.

Night Moves (1975)

A private detective out of his depth in this excellent 70s conspiracy-thriller tinged noir detective drama

Director: Arthur Penn

Cast: Gene Hackman (Harry Moseby), Jennifer Warren (Paula), Susan Clark (Ellen Moseby), Melanie Griffith (Delly Grastner), Edward Binns (Joey Ziegler), Harris Yulin (Marty Heller), Janet Ward (Arlene), James Woods (Quentin), John Crawford (Tom Iverson)

“Yeah, but he didn’t see it. He played something else and he lost. He must have regretted it every day of his life. I know I would have.” That’s how Harry Moseby – PI, retired footballer and chess enthusiast – explains the fall out of a 1925 chess championship game, where the losing player failed to spot a checkmate in three through a brilliant flurry of knight moves. There’s a reason why a tweaked version of this makes the title (Penn argued it was because so many key scenes were set at night, though I suspect he just worried the alternative would either be too confusing or tip the wink too much). Turns out the case Moseby is investigating is just like that chess game, with himself as the losing player failing to spot the killer checkmate move.

That’s the set-up for a very seventies private detective movie, where the hero is effectively living out a fantasy of being Marlowe or Spade, turning down every opportunity to bring himself into the modern world (via a near-fangled database-using detective agency, awash with cash) and pays a heavy price. Because, rather like Matthau in Charley Varrick, Moseby sees himself as last of the Independents, but without (it turns out) the nous or ruthlessness to succeed. Instead, Harry misses everything that turns out to be important, heads down blind alleys, focuses on the wrong motives and ends the film like he spent it, drifting in circles drenched in defeat.

Harry (Gene Hackman) is hired by an ageing former Hollywood starlet (Janet Ward) to find her daughter Delly (Melanie Griffith), a case he solves with relative ease since she is staying with her estranged father-in-law Tom Iverson (John Crawford) and Tom’s wise-crackingly flirtatious marinist girlfriend Paula (Jennifer Warren). Easy peasy right? Wrong, as Harry finds himself embroiled in a further mysteries and deaths, revolving around links between the family and the world of Hollywood stunt drivers, led by the good-natured Joey Ziegler (Edward Binns). As he scratches the surface of the mystery, he will discover to his horror he is way out of his depth.

Arthur Penn’s detective drama soaks in the paranoic style he virtually made his own, mixed with grimy depression at the world gone to hell. “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” Paula asks Harry who responds with a weary sigh of “which one?” Everything feels sordid and shabby: Harry’s job is essentially trailing unfaithful wives; Hollywood is a cheap exploitation flick machine and alcoholic ex-starlet Janet bemoans how good her breasts used to be. It’s a film shot with a grainy, dirty detail by Bruce Surtees and edited with a deliberately disjointed suddenness by Dede Allen, scenes often feeling like they end abruptly or jarringly, leaving us as off balance as Harry is. There is, throughout, a creeping air of confusion and uncertainty – Penn designed the film to require multiple viewings and even then questions remain – not least since vital clues and hints are dropped in with marked casualness, while major red herrings are flashed in front of us.

In the middle of this, Harry wants to be a resourceful, determined, ingenious private eye plucked from Chandler. But he’s far from that, not quite smart enough to realise he’s not that smart. His naïve cluelessness should be clear, since he stumbles only by chance on an affair his wife (Susan Clark) has been having for some time. He lets his prejudices and opinions get in the way of conclusions – most especially in the instant dislike he takes (who can blame him) of James Woods’ snivelling bitter mechanic, a casual boyfriend of Delly, who looks more beat up and scarred every time we see him (a nice hint he’s not the criminal-in-waiting Harry assumes he is). On the other hand, since he likes Edward Binn’s jovial stunt driver Joey, he seems to forget in their first meeting he watched Joey violently rough up a young man in a bar for trivial reasons.

He’s superbly played by Gene Hackman, who makes Harry full of vulnerability and shyness that marks him out as a slightly naïve lost soul, despite his more hard-bitten outer shell. Hackman understands perfectly that Harry is really a big kid, living out a fantasy, but without the instincts or the skill to pull it off. He’s flustered by women (Delly’s casual teenage sexuality, in particular, disorientates him no end) and his all-too-obvious crush on Jennifer Warren’s very well-played mix of femme fatale and wisecracking sidekick is rather sweet. Hackman also invests Harry with an old-world decency and (knightly!) sense of chivalry: he’s disgusted at Tom’s sleeping with his step-daughter (“There should be a law against it” Tom sighs; “There is” Harry contemptuously states) and quickly feels a protective feeling towards Delly.

But despite this, he’s as much a clueless patsy in all this as he is in his marriage, unable to see the wood for the trees. Just like Chinatown, he ends up out of his depth – the difference being the case turns out to be far more mundane then he suspects. In fact, Harry turns out to be the main destructive force of the film: his ham-fisted persistence in delving deeper, panicking characters into murderous actions, even while Harry fails to understand for a moment what he is involved in and who he should be wary of.

It’s a great visual metaphor that Harry only realises (possibly) what’s been going on in the whole film, when he stares down through the sea-view window of Paula’s boat at a vital clue he’s missed all this time. Harry has to strain to interpret what he can see, water and bad lighting obscuring his view. It’s the murky, obscured world of the film bought to visual life. A film during which Harry has closed his ears and eyes to all the crucial details, failed to appreciate the real meanings of the things he has focused on and left himself alone and adrift in a sea of carnage, only just beginning to piece things together (but far too late).

It makes for a superb, labyrinthine detective drama, laced with paranoia and unsettling mystery, with a superb Hackman full of a mix of bashful charm, world-weary cynicism and tragic naivety, clinging to a fantasy that can’t survive contact with reality. Penn’s film might rival Chinatown as the definitive hard-bitten detective drama of the 70s, one where the hero’s every action leads to disaster, every decision is misguided in some way, every conclusion flawed and learns only too late how wrong he was. If that’s not hard-bitten 70s cynicism I don’t know what is.

The House of Mirth (2000)

Masterful adaption of Wharton, beautifully judged, brilliantly acted and superbly filmed

Director: Terence Davies

Cast: Gillian Anderson (Lily Bart), Eric Stoltz (Lawrence Seldon), Dan Aykroyd (Gus Trenor), Anthony LaPaglia (Simon Rosedale), Laura Linney (Bertha Dorset), Terry Kinney (George Dorset), Eleanor Bron (Julia Peniston), Jodhi May (Grace Stepney), Elizabeth McGovern (Carry Fisher), Penny Downie (Judy Trenor), Pearce Quigley (Percy Glyde), Lorelei King (Mrs Hatch)

When Scorsese bought Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence to the screen, it was seen as a wild swing out in his career. You could have said the same thing when Terence Davies made The House of Mirth, an unlikely follow-up from a host of artistically constructed, meditative memory pieces. But in doing so, Davies executed perhaps one of the most perfectly executed translations of a novel to the screen, a gorgeous, beautifully moving film. Put simply, in its grace and magic glow, it’s pretty hard to imagine The House of Mirth being done better.

Our hero is Lily Bart (Gillian Anderson), a woman who feels she is at the heart of 1905 New York society but will discover her grip on life is far less secure than she believes. Dependent on her aunt (Eleanor Bron) for financial support, needing to marry for money, perhaps in love with not-quite-rich-enough bachelor Lawrence Seldon (Eric Stoltz), unwilling to compromise on her principles and desires, Lily will make a series of catastrophic decisions. Thee will leave her facing the brunt of the ruthlessness of her so-called friends such as banker Gus Trenor (Dan Aykroyd) or Bertha Dorset (Laura Linney) and her world falling apart with extraordinary speed.

Shot with a visual beauty inspired by a host of painters – most notably John Singer Sergeant, whose compositions are referenced throughout to breathtaking effect – Davies film is measured, wise and slowly unleashes a powerful emotional impact. Carefully adapted, Davies film is awash with the intricate, ornate dialogue of early twentieth century New York: speech that, it quickly becomes clear, is about disguising and obscuring the true meaning of what is being said. New York society is awash with lies, deceptions, selfishness and greed, all of it disguised with fine words and high-living – as Lily says “Why is it when we meet we always play this elaborate game?”

What’s tragic about Lily Bart is that it’s a game she believes herself to be skilled at, time revealing she is a novice stumbling in the big leagues. On top of which, as someone penniless, unmarried and reliant on others, she has a terrible lack of security. A lack of security meaning people like Trenor can demand a very personal reward in exchange for his financial services, without worrying about disgrace. Someone savvier would have seen through Ackroyd’s wonderful portrait of barely concealed greed under Trevnor’s avuncular pleasantness. Just as a more worldly figure would have seen that (the simply brilliant) Laura Linney’s gossipy Bertha sees Lily as nothing more than a simple soul ripe for manipulation, a pathetic fall-guy to hide her own infidelities.

It becomes clear there is a doomed, tragic quality to Lily. She’s introduced emerging from a blackened screen in a puff of train steam, an Anna Karenina-ish echo hinting at her eventual fate. In an extraordinarily complex, perfectly judged performance from Gillian Anderson, Lily emerges as a woman of far greater depth and principle than we (or she) suspects. But prone to terrible errors of judgment, often for the right reasons. She is too principled to marry for money, but not savvy enough to play the courting game, publicly humiliating the wealthy Percy Glyde (Pearce Quigley) who she dutifully woos, only to stand him up for a walk that is a clear proposal hint.

But she is too aware of her wordly needs to embrace the mutual love between her and Eric Stoltz’s charmingly enigmatic Lawrence Stern. These two conduct a dance of suggestive flirtation, without ever truly committing their feelings openly. Lily seems to be almost a tease, but Anderson beautifully demonstrates a hesitancy born from an attempt to be honest, to find love and money in one man. The heart-rending realisation later in the film that she has made a terrible mistake, out of a mix of principle, pride, foolishness and decency is captured in Anderson’s superbly pained expression – not to mention a late emotional out-pouring that is heart-breaking in its pain and honesty.

Slowly, Lily’s world falls apart, Davies capturing the tragedy with coolly observant camerawork gliding through society, echoing the photographic approach that defined his earlier work. In every sequence, and between every scene cut, Lily’s position slowly, at first imperceptibly, becomes worse and worse. Less and less secure, until eventually she’s lost to society, in a world of run-down bedsits and laudanum addictions. Where she brutally realises her life of society balls has made her a “useless person”, with no skills and utterly out-of-depth in a world where she must earn her living.

Anderson’s punctures Lily beautifully throughout with a naïve vulnerability. In a way, the undeserved social disgrace Lily suffers (wrongly seen as a slut and a home wrecker) makes her cling even more closely to her principles – even as they become more and more damaging to her. These principles can seem as inexplicable to us as they do to her few allies: she pays out a stock of her limited personal finances to cover up Bertha’s affair with Lawrence, continuing to cover for her even as Bertha burns her in front of all of New York (and barely considers using her evidence for blackmail). It’s part of what makes Lily an astonishingly admirable figure, even as her life spirals downward.

The powerful emotion of this, the deep investment Davies helps us feel for a woman who becomes more and more understandable to us as she is more and more stripped of privilege, is complemented by exquisite film-making. One breath-takingly superb transition sees Davies camera drift through a grand house with all its furniture and fittings carefully hidden under dustsheets, out into a rain-speckled stream, the camera swooping lower and faster until the water transitions into the sun-kissed waves of the Mediterranean: a gorgeously, masterfully simple transition that moves us across weeks and miles in a moment. Haunting images abound, a spilt ink pot in the film’s closing sequence like a gut punch of emotional rawness.

Really, what Davies understands, is that Wharton’s bitter comedy is set in a ‘vile’ world. In society, nothing matters other than the quality of homes and classiness of backgrounds. The finest people can lie, cheat and steal with no blowback. Nouveau riche like Simon Rosedale (a very good Anthony LaPaglia) are judged as vulgar when their actions reveal they are decent. It’s a world where you start to expect no one is happy: Lily’s cousin Grace (an excellent Jodhi May) is unloved, her aunt miserable, half of society are privately humiliated cuckolds, deeply bitter and unhappy.

The House of Mirth is a truly outstanding literary adaptation, beautifully assembled, wonderfully acted – Anderson, in particular, was and is an absolute revelation – and directed with a deeply powerful simplicity by Davies. It’s possibly his masterpiece.