Category: Directors

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

Russell Crowe captains in the marvellous Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Director: Peter Weir

Cast: Russell Crowe (Captain Jack Aubrey), Paul Bettany (Dr Stephen Maturin), James D’Arcy (First Lt Thomas Pullings), Robert Pugh (Master John Allen), Max Pirkis (Midshipman Lord William Blakeney), Max Benitz (Midshipman Peter Myles Calamy), Lee Ingleby (Midshipman Hollom), Richard McCabe (Mr Higgins), David Threlfall (Preserved Killick), Billy Boyd (Barret Bonden), Bryan Dick (Joseph Nagle), Joseph Morgan (William Warley), George Innes (Joe Plaice), Mark Lewis Jones (Mr Hogg)

There’s a reason so much of our everyday language comes from naval terms. There was a time when Britannia ruled the waves: and for almost as long we’ve had a history of stories of great fictional sailors. If your archetype is Hornblower, then following close behind is Patrick O’Brian’s 21-novel sequence following the career of Captain Jack Aubrey and his surgeon/spy friend and colleague Stephen Maturin. There have been many, many attempts to bring this series to the screen, but you could never have expected that the eventual film would be as triumphant as this. I saw this film on my birthday years ago – the same day I was thrown a surprise birthday party – and I enjoyed it so much that just seeing that would have been treat enough, even without the surprise party (which was also marvellous).

It adapts elements from several O’Brian books – principally elements of the first, Master and Commander,and the tenth, The Far Side of the World, (hence the unwieldy title). The film throws us into the mid-point of Aubrey’s (Russell Crowe) career, with the captain of the Surprise tasked with protecting British interests in the Southern oceans from the onslaught of the French ship Acheron during the Napoleonic wars. Early skirmishes find Aubrey and the Surprise on the back foot, out-matched and out-gunned by the more modern, sleeker, more powerful French ship (quickly known as “the Ghost” by the crew, stunned at her ability to catch the Surprise on the hop). As well as following Aubrey’s struggle to best the Acheron, the film also explores the complex relationships on board during the dangerous mission, and specifically Aubrey’s close friendship with Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), ship’s surgeon, naturalist, sceptic and his confident.

Peter Weir’s film is, I’ll say it here, a masterpiece of both boys-own adventure and action, but also of the intriguingly warm and human relationships (and also the stresses and strains) that come when you throw a group of nearly two hundred men in close confines together for months at a time. It’s also a masterclass in authentic world creation. You can see in seconds the time, effort, research and imagination that have gone into recreating the world, the rules and the structure of the ship and its crew – and it has paid off in spades. There is not a foot put wrong, either in the recreation of the ship described in the books (the early shots of the film, the camera panning through the decks of the ship, capture everything from the geography of the ship to the names of the individual cannons) or the world of the navy.

Weir’s film is technically superb. The photography is beautiful, the sound and editing totally immersive. Weir understands the detail counts for nothing, if the actual action of sailing, the dramatization of man’s struggle with the wind and water, isn’t engrossing. Not a single sequence in the film that shows the ship at sea – struggling with wind, tides, storms, fog and mist – falls flat. You feel like you are there, being buffeted by wind and rain, living every beat of the dangers the men face from the elements. The professionalism and skill of the sailors is brilliantly captured by the actors – who practically lived as sailors for the months of filming – and, with the music superbly worked to complement the adversity the sailors overcome, the scenes of naval skill are brilliantly done. I love them – it almost makes me want to become a sailor (almost).

Master and Commander also works as a superb study of men, and brilliantly brings to life the two heroes from the book. Russell Crowe is wonderful as Aubrey, the film expertly using his charisma. Aubrey is a natural leader who adjusts and adapts his style to meet the needs of the men he deals with. He’ll share pun-filled gags at the dining table about his personal encounters with Nelson – but follow it up with a sincere anecdote of Nelson’s patriotism when he sees that something else is needed to avoid disappointing a young midshipman. With some men he’ll take a firm line, with others he will try words of encouragement. He’s an inventive and flexible thinker, able to adapt his plans and ways of working to meet new challenges and shows no pride or rigidity in his planning.

We also find out much about him from his genuine, heartfelt friendship with Stephen Maturin, his intellectual surgeon. Embodied damn-near perfectly by Paul Bettany, in one of those performances that feels like the character has literally walked from the pages of the book. Maturin and Aubrey’s friendship gives the film its heart. Genuinely close, with the one often teasing the other (usually around naval rules and regulations, around which Maturin displays a playful lack of understanding) they also speak freely to each other, and with honesty. When Maturin feels Aubrey is pushing the crew too hard in his obsession to best the Archeron he will speak up; when Aubrey feels the need to remind Maturin that a promised naturalist trip to the Galapagos will need to be cancelled due to the demands of war (“We do not have time for your damn hobbies sir!”) he feels no reluctance to say so. It’s a friendship that bobs and weaves through the tensions that come from almost permanent contact, but it’s a true, very strong bond that sees both men going to great lengths in the film to make sacrifices of the things they hold dearest for the sake of each other.

And we see a lot of how they think in their shared mentorship of young midshipman (barely a teenager) Lord Blakeney, played with a superb assurance by Max Pirkis. From Aubrey, Blakeney learns the confidence, authority and flexibility needed for command. From Maturin he learns the intellectual curiosity and humanity that broadens and widens his horizons. It’s a reflection that, as a team, the two men make one marvellous man.

Weir’s film also shows that the pressures of command and responsibility, worn so lightly (it seems at times) by Aubrey, can also crush men. As if in contrast to Blakeney’s growing confidence, the film also throws in Midshipman Hollom (played with tragic weakness by Lee Ingleby), a man approaching his thirties who has missed all the opportunities to become the man he would want to be. Nervous, weak, eager to please but insecure and uncertain of himself – exactly the qualities that automatically alienate sailors yearning to put their faith and trust into a leader – Hollom is a man who can listen to everything Aubrey has to say about becoming a leader, but has not the strength of character to implement it. And, strikingly, the film also shows that this weakness alienates not only the men who look to him for leadership, but also his companions and even (to a degree) Aubrey himself. In a single storyline, the weaknesses and dangers of this self-contained world (and the impact it can have on people) are superbly captured.

The film works alongside all this because its sense of adventure, of derring-do, of gripping, fist pumping bravery, skill and excitement of high-seas adventure grip the audience completely. There has never been a better film made about naval warfare or ships at sea (and there probably never will be). Mix that in with a superb story of personal relationships and men under pressure at sea (and the cast is uniformly brilliant), with sacrifice and also good fellowship at every turn, and you’ve got a simply faultless film. Master and Commander failed to launch a new franchise – and that has to be one of the greatest losses to film history that I can imagine. Weir’s direction is simply superb, Crowe and Bettany are perfect and the film is a brilliant adventure. I could watch it every day and never get tired of it.

The Boxer (1997)

Daniel Day-Lewis returns from 14 years in prison in this passionate but obvious film about the Troubles in Ireland, The Boxer

Director: Jim Sheridan

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis (Danny Flynn), Emily Watson (Maggie), Brian Cox (Joe Hamill), Ken Stott (Ike Weir), Gerard McSorley (Harry), David Hayman (Hamill’s aide), Ciaran Fitzgerald (Liam)

Daniel Day-Lewis and Jim Sheridan collaborated before this on the stirring, passionate and angry In the Name of the Father, a film that acutely analysed the impact of the Troubles on ordinary people. That film was about a miscarriage of justice that ruined lives. This film tries to cover similar ground, but somehow the force of the narrative never really comes together as much as it should.

The Boxer himself Danny Flynn (Daniel Day-Lewis) is released from prison after 14 years, due to his peripheral involvement with the IRA. He’s guilty for sure, but has played the game inside and refused to name names. He comes out still in love with Maggie (Emily Watson) – but she is married to another man currently in prison (putting her out of bounds by the code pushed by the IRA). Making things more complex, her father Joe (Brian Cox) is a leading IRA man currently part of negotiations with the British government. Danny and his former trainer Ike (Ken Stott), now a struggling alcoholic, decide to reopen the local boxing gym, making it a denomination free facility for all the community. But their efforts to try and build bridges are not welcomed by all – not least local IRA enforcer Harry (Gerard McSorley) who makes it his mission to destroy Danny.

Why does The Boxer not work as well it should do? It’s got nothing to do with the commitment of the cast, all of whom offer excellent performances. Day-Lewis, inevitably, spent almost three years in preparation learning to be a boxer. It’s just a shame that the script doesn’t really give anyone here something interesting to play with. Instead it makes fairly familiar points about the dangers when we let hatred govern our lives, and carefully sorts and packages most of its characters into goodies and baddies, while making sure in every single scene we are always told exactly what we should be thinking and feeling.

It’s a flaw that I’ve often found in other of Sheridan’s films. He’s a passionate but rather blunt director, full of righteous anger and a determination to make films that carry a social message. But he often makes these points without subtlety or imagination. Here we get an Ireland shot almost completely in a washed-out blue, with the tensions of a community increasingly simplified down into rotten apples playing on the fears and resentments of different groups to continue the spiral of hate.

In the middle of this, Sheridan places a love story between Day-Lewis and Watson’s character that both of them play with a tender commitment and an emotional vulnerability, but which never really invests the audience. It always feels too heavily built on cinematic contrivance – with its long separation, new relationships and social obstacles put in the way. Much as Day-Lewis and Watson give it their all, they never manage to make it feel anything other than it is – a rather tired “movie” love story, that moves it characters through familiar beats.

More interesting than this by far are the real tensions in a community that is tired of violence and wants to move on, but keeps on getting dragged back into old ways because there is simply too much history to overcome. The most interesting character by far is Brian Cox’s IRA bigwig, a man carrying a burden of blood from the past but has an actual desire to see the country change. A film about a man like this, trying to walk a tightrope between negotiations with the British and keeping his own furious foot-soldiers in line (when all they want to do is to bomb something) would have carried real impact. Sadly, it’s too often relegated to the margins of the story while the film follows the immediate social impact of Danny trying to find a third way between war and surrender.

Peaceful co-operation is what Danny wants, and the gym for all people in the Belfast community is how he intends to go about it. Boxing itself is peripheral to the film – what really matters is that idea of bringing people together, of giving them something they can all own and feel some pride in. It’s an idea that Ike believes in above all things, and the prospect of recreating it with Danny’s release from prison gives his life real meaning (Ken Stott is very good as a character who is something of a cliché but still carries a real emotional wallop). Ike and Danny’s vision offers the community a possibility of moving on – something some are not ready to take on.

Not least Harry, played by a quietly fuming Gerard McSorley, prowling scenes like a man who can’t wait to hit someone. The film does at time suggest that there are “good” IRA and “bad” IRA chaps (with Harry firmly in the bad), but it does at least show that these extremists are a danger to everyone, not least the people they claim to protect. Harry’s prejudice towards Danny is motivated above all by his fear of Ireland’s way of life changing, and in that way it forms a decent expression of the film’s core message about the difficulty – but essentialness – of moving on.

Sheridan’s film is a cry for hope and opportunity at a difficult time – and its alarming watching it now to remember what a ghastly place Northern Ireland was at this time, when it’s so well known today as the Game of Thrones backlot. It’s just a shame that the story feels like such a – well – story. The film feels like a slightly over-cooked melodrama, and as the character clashes you expect and the twists you can see coming start to work their way into the narrative, it feels like the central story of a man wanting to make a better life for himself and his neighbourhood gets lost in the mix.

And it does. That’s the basic weakness of The Boxer in the end. For all of Day-Lewis’ skill and Watson’s emotional truth, their story just ends up feeling not that important, you feel that the more interesting things are happening on the margins: Cox’s IRA man feels more worthy of a film, while Stott gets some of the most electric moments of emoting. Sheridan’s film has fire in it, but it ends up burning up his main narrative, while the story relies too heavily on melodrama and cliché. Eventually it fizzles out and you end up not feeling as outraged as you should. Where the true story of In the Name of the Father helped control Sheridan’s spoon-feeding tendencies, here the fictional story allows full reign for the sort of narrative twists that end up feeling a little too tired and obvious.

Blue Jasmine (2013)

Cate Blanchett dominates the screen in Blue Jasmine

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Cate Blanchett (Jasmine Francis), Sally Hawkins (Ginger), Alec Baldwin (Hal Francis), Peter Sarsgaard (Dwight Westlake), Louis CK (Al Munsinger), Andrew Dice Clay (Augie), Bobby Cannavale (Chili), Michael Stuhlbarg (Dr Flicker), Aldren Ehrenreich (Danny Francis)

Every so often an actor intersects with a director and, such is the actor’s brilliance, they seem to take the film by the scruff of the neck and almost carry the director along to success. Such is the case with Blue Jasmine, a film so seized upon, so wonderfully played and brilliantly observed by a truly phenomenal (she won every award going) Cate Blanchett, you feel Woody Allen just let the camera record her work and carefully built the film around her.

Allen’s film, easily one of his best of his troubled later years, is a modernised remix of Streetcar Named Desire. After a Ponzi scheme scandal leads to her husband Hal’s (Alec Baldwin) arrest and suicide, Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) finds herself landing in the poor end of San Francisco and sharing a house with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins). Ginger’s marriage to Augie (Andrew Dice Clay) collapsed after Hal’s dirty dealings destroyed their lottery win landfall. Jasmine, teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown, living half in the present and half in an imagined version of her own past, soon clashes with Ginger’s new boyfriend Chili (Bobby Cannavale) and eventually finds hope for a second chance with diplomat Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard) who is oblivious to her background.

The parallels between Blue Jasmine and Streetcar should be pretty clear to anyone reading that summary, and Allen draws some neat modernisation parallels (and thankfully, and wisely, drops the rape plotline that ends that play) between the two. Placing Blanche/Jasmine as the trophy wife of a corrupt businessman, who has shut her eyes to his dealings and let her own intellect drain away in shallow frippery, works really well. Not least dramatizing very well the cultural shift from this extreme wealth (detailed in a series of cleverly interwoven flashbacks) to the relative poverty of normal life.

But the film really works from the super-intelligent, hyper-brilliant, eye-catching wonderfulness of Cate Blanchett in the lead role. This is one of those performances for the ages, a tour-de-force of fragility, self-pity, self-deception, hostility, undirected anger, desperation and pain that dominates and shapes the entire movie. Blanchett is particularly effective because she never, ever overplays the role, but let’s these complex, contradictory emotions play constantly behind her eyes and slowly seem to dribble out until they dominate her entire body. Several times, Allen plants the camera and allows us to simply watch Blanchett go through various stages of mental collapse in front of our very eyes, with this amazing actress able to seemingly fall apart in slow motion in front of us.

Jasmine is a complex and fascinating character, in some ways hugely unsympathetic. She’s a massive snob, she certainly feels the world owes her something (she flies into San Francisco first class complaining she has had to sell everything just to make ends meet, while dragging Louis Vuitton luggage behind her), she lies when she needs to and treats everyone around her with a slight air of condescension. But she’s also incredibly vulnerable, and carrying a great deal of guilt and pain, as well as only barely able to deal not only with the loss of her privileged lifestyle, but also her growing (but denied) realisation that the price of the lifestyle wasn’t worth the having it.

The film throws her into a series of contexts that show her at her best and worst, as victim and as fantasist. Getting a job at a dentist’s reception desk – a job she seems to only barely have the patience or aptitude for – she is forced to see off the unwelcome advances of her creepy boss (played with a passive aggressive sleaziness by Michael Stuhlbarg) with horror. Later though, she wilfully deceives Dwight (a fine performance of assured arrogance by Peter Sarsgaard) about her background and character. She is partly right in her assessment of her sister Ginger having a very low opinion of herself, so only pairing herself with men who treat her badly; but Chili is also right about her having no regard or time for her sister when she was wealthy.

The use of flashbacks throughout the film works very well to show us Jasmine before and after her economic crash. What’s fascinating is that her fragility is an ever-present, kept suppressed under a shower of gifts, but quickly coming to the fore when Hal’s (has there been a better role for Baldwin than this jovial, greedy cheat?) serial infidelity is bought to her attention. It also serves to remind us to keep Jasmine at a certain distance, her own evaluations of what her past life was like frequently not squaring with the version we see.

All of this hinges on Blanchett’s brilliant work, but she’s not alone in delivering a fine performance. As her blousy sister, moving like a weathervane from person to person, changing her opinions quickly depending on her recent experiences, Sally Hawkins is possibly at her best here as well. Andrew Dice Clay is excellent as an honest Joe who hovers over the film like an object of destiny. Bobby Cannavale does some very good work as a feckless but sort-of honest Stanley Kowalski.

Allen’s direction is calm and almost in awe of Blanchett, and that’s fair enough because whatever you look at, it comes back to her striking genius in the film. Blue Jasmine may remove some of the depth that Blanche has (with her life of pain and guilt in the play’s backstory) but it substitutes that with a gripping exploration of a long-running mental collapse that is so movingly and superbly brought to life by Blanchett you can’t help but be engrossed by it.

Foreign Correspondent (1940)

Hitchcock’s thriller is a stunning adventure story and a passionate call for action

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Joel McCrea (John Jones/Huntley Havestock), Laraine Day (Carol Fisher), Herbert Marshall (Stephen Fisher), George Sanders (Scott ffolliott), Albert Basserman (Van Meer), Robert Benchley (Stebbins), Edmund Gwenn (Rowley), Eduardo Cianelli (Mr King), Harry Davenport (Mr Powers), Edward Conrad (Latvian)

In 1940, Hitchcock was new in America, after a parade of successes in Britain. 1940 was a red-letter year for the master, directing not one but two of the films up for Best Picture. The Oscar was carried home for his masterful gothic adaptation of Du Maurier’s Rebecca, but equally memorable was Foreign Correspondent, a stirring, heartfelt thriller about the build-up to war in Britain, a passionate cry for American intervention and brilliant propaganda contribution to the British war effort (even Joseph Goebbels tipped his hat to it).

John Jones (Joel McCrea) is the new foreign correspondent in Europe for the New York Morning Globe. Given the pseudonym “Huntley Havestock” (because it sounds better), Jones is picked out because he’s a hard-boiled crime journalist, practised at winkling out a story, rather than the cozy posh boys usually sent out to Europe. In Amsterdam, Jones attends a peace conference hosted by leader of the British peace party Stephen Fisher (Herbert Marshall), where eminent Dutch diplomat and architect of the fragile European peace Van Meer (Albert Basserman) is due to speak. While Jones falls in love with Fisher’s daughter Carol (Laraine Day), Van Meer mysteriously falls to show at the dinner – and arrives at the conference the next day only to fail to recognise Jones and immediately get assassinated. Suddenly Jones finds himself in the middle of a dangerous game of spies with only British journalist Scott ffolliott (George Sanders) and Carol to help him.

Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent is a masterful spy caper, in the style of many of his early successful works such as The Thirty-Nine Steps, superbly assembled by a genius at the top of his game, with access to funding and techniques beyond what he had in Britain. Hitchcock went through several versions of the script – there were no fewer than nine writers who worked on this film, four of whom are credited – but it matters not a jot when the script they finally came up with matched such superb, zingy, screw-ball style dialogue with such brilliant set-pieces.

The film also had a serious purpose as well. From the start, this is a cry of one of Britain’s most prominent ex-pats to his newly adopted nation to join the effort to preserve Western civilisation against the onslaught of Nazi oppression. Joel McCrea’s Jones – a part written for Gary Cooper, who forever regretted turning the role down – is the quintessential American, disinterested in the world, sure of America’s place in it, who has his eyes opened and passion ignited by seeing up-close and personal the dangers from the agents of totalitarianism. The agents of the enemy nation – probably Germany, a country that is referenced in passing, but the film deliberately keeps it shady in an attempt to appear even-handed – are ruthless, brutal and unscrupulous. Their plans are fiendish and they are bent on world domination. But all this is worn very lightly within a caper framework that has as much interest in Jones falling in love with Carol as it does with foiling the baddies.

It also plays neatly on Jones’ very old-school American obsession with fair-play, and bringing down the baddies no matter what. Witnessing Van Meer assassinated before his very eyes, Jones is determined to go to any lengths to ensure both that justice is done and he is the man who gets the story. At the same time, Jones also has an honest and homely sense of romanticism about him. The film gets a tonne of comic and romantic mileage out of the cracking dialogue between McCrea and Loraine Day as Carol, with the sort of intelligent, witty banter that wouldn’t seem out of place in a screwball comedy, with Jones’ blunt “I say what I mean” attitude crashing beautifully against Carol’s more English rectitude.

Hitchcock shows himself a brilliantly adept director of comedy – something he doesn’t get enough credit for – in these sequences between the two of them sparring over the course of the movie. And it’s not just them, but also his work with George Sanders – cast against type as a cool, noble British agent – brilliantly hilarious as the curiously named “ffiolliott” (the sequence, mid car chase, where he calmly explains to the befuddled Jones while bullets fly why his name has no capital letter is hilarious). Comedy is a rich vein in Foreign Correspondent and it works so well here because it lightens both the drama of the thriller elements and the political message of “pro-intervention”.

The thriller sequences are just as superb. The assassination sequence is a stand-out, a shooting on a rain soaked series of steps outside a conference, with the assassin making his retreat through a crowd of on-lookers carrying umbrellas under hot-pursuit from Jones. Hitchcock takes his camera above the crowd, meaning we only follow its progress through the disruption of the umbrellas, before the two men emerge (bullets flying) and move straight into a breathless car chase through the Dutch countryside. It’s a masterful sequence.

And it’s far from the last. The film has a superb series of tension-filled sequences, from Jones playing an elaborate game of cat-and-mouse in a Dutch windmill, trying to avoid being seen by the German agents occupying it while finding out as much as he can about their plans, to Jones reporting what he has found to a man we already know is a double agent. Edmund Gwenn, cast well-against type as a jovial, remorseless assassin, gets a brilliant sequence of attempts to kill Jones without putting him on guard, culminating in a vertigo inducing sequence at the top of Westminster Tower. It’s the second such sequence, Jones already having to climb over the roof of a hotel in Amsterdam to escape assassins (along the way brilliantly hitting the neon sign of the Hotel Europe so that it reads “Hot Europe”). Hitchcock tops it all with a brilliant plane-crash sequence shot with chutzpah and daring and is a technical marvel considering the resources available in 1940.

All this excitement and adventure helps to deliver the message of the film as strongly pro-interventionist to encourage the Americans to enter the war on the side of the Allies. Van Meer (a fabulous performance from Albert Bassermann of old-school nobility, made even more astonishing by the fact he didn’t speak a word of English and learned it all phonetically) has a brilliant, impassioned speech – all the more affecting for its lack of histrionics – that condemns the brutality and violence of the dictatorships. The film is capped with Jones’ Ed Murrow-style broadcast from Blitz-besieged London. Both sequences raise genuine lumps to the throat – McCrea’s delivery is perfect – and the final sequence is all the more astonishing when you realise it was conceived and shot before the Blitz even started.

Not that the film is completely obvious in its allegiances. The turn-coat Brit in the film is a complex, even sympathetic figure who is merely serving his actual home country in the best way possible. He’s largely presented as reluctant to commit crimes, but believing that they must be done and is even allowed a heroic death. His identity perhaps is fairly guessable (he even has a Germanic dog!) but it still works very well in the film.

Hitchcock draws superb performances from the cast – helped by that script of zingers. McCrea is just about perfect, Day very sweet, Sanders is brilliant, Herbert Marshall’s Stephen Fisher a brilliant portrait of arrogance and tortured duty, Robert Benchley very funny (and writing his own scenes) as Jones’ colleague who’s struggling to stay on the wagon, Harry Davenport superb as Jones’ His Girl Fridayish editor. Basserman was Oscar nominated – and deserves it for his big speech – but it could have been any of the cast who got that nod, such is the quality here. Foreign Correspondent is often overlooked among the master’s many, many triumphs. But any pro-interventionist, anti-German film that has even Joseph Goebbels singing its praises must have a fair bit going for it.

Lilith (1964)

Jean Seberg lures Warren Beatty and Peter Fonda into a psychologically dangerous web in Lilith

Director: Robert Rossen

Cast: Warren Beatty (Vincent Bruce), Jean Seberg (Lilith Arthur), Peter Fonda (Stephen Evshevsky), Kim Hunter (Dr Bea Brice), Anne Meacham (Mrs Meaghan), Jessica Walter (Laura), Gene Hackman (Norman), James Patterson (De Lavrier), Robert Reilly (Bob Clayfield)

Movies have long had a fascination with mental illness – in particular the impact of mental illness on women. Lilith is an intriguing, elliptical, somewhat cold but intriguing film that looks at the impact isolation, loneliness and seclusion can have on people and how these damaged psyches can sprawl out and cause further pain and suffering for others. However, it’s also a difficult, unclear and occasionally hard to like film, that deliberately clouds so many of its points in a veil of doubt and uncertainty that it’s difficult to really embrace it.

Returning from an undisclosed war (possibly Korea), Vincent Bruce (Warren Beatty), a lonely, slightly troubled young man, drifts into a job as a counsellor at a private mental hospital, under the supervision of Dr Brice (Kim Hunter). Bruce is empathetic and keen to understand and help the patients, but he finds himself slowly drawn towards Lilith Arthur (Jean Seberg), a sensual and seductive patient at the institute. Encouraged to spend more time with Lilith – as only Vincent seems able to draw her out of a fantasy world to engage with the real one – he increasingly finds himself infatuated with her, increasingly bending any personal or professional ethics to fuel his emotional and sexual need for her.

Just in case you are in any doubt from reading that, it’s pretty clear from early on in the film that the real person in need of help is Vincent. Played with a methody introspection and brooding insecurity by Beatty (he impassively and wordlessly drifts through several scenes or merely watches, and only rarely shows any emotional engagement), Vincent is frequently framed by Rossen alone, lost in the centre and sides of frames, or walking seemingly aimlessly forward. The camera often drifts towards him, if only to stress his lack of real engagement with the things he is seeing in front of him. His obsessive qualities are there from the very start, with his fixations switching between his mother, a former girlfriend (played with a flirtatious seductiveness by Jessica Walter) and finally settling, overwhelmingly, on Lilith whom he follows with the glazed eyes of a potential killer. Beatty struggled with the part – and I can see why, as our central character is such a distant cipher that he becomes someone very hard for the audience to invest any interest in.

Lilith herself is an intriguing if, it seems, unknowable character – almost impossible to tell if she is a truly destructive force or someone who simply behaves as she feels in the moment with no understanding of the impact her actions have. She is frequently callous and cruel, and then will revert to sadness, vulnerability and insecurity. She looks for love – or at least affection and loyalty – at every turn, but then also seems unable to understand any personal relationship except through the filter of sex. Starting the film placing an erotic spell around sensitive fellow patient Steve (Peter Fonda, vulnerable and rather sweet) she quickly switches all her efforts to wrapping Vincent in a web of enchantment (as the film rather clumsily stresses to us in a scene where a doctor explicitly compares her to a spider).

Lilith is increasingly seen as an unsettling, indiscriminate figure. No sooner does Vincent become her lover, than she begins flaunting a sexual relationship she is having with another female patient. (Lesbianism was quite radical for a film at the time). Even more surprisingly the patient is a staid, rather imperious middle-aged woman (played imposingly by Anne Meacham), and the relationship seems to be partly conducted to get a rise (of one sort or another) out of Vincent. Earlier, Lilith flirts disturbingly and erotically with a very young child (who seems disturbed) – although the viewer is perhaps even more disturbed by Vincent’s blank watching of the whole scene. At every point we are reminded of Lilith’s erotic allure – and the framing of the film, and its beautiful photography by Eugene Schufftan helps to create this mystic image. Lilith is often shown behind grills and bars earlier on, before she emerges into the outside world and one enchanting image sees her kissing her reflection in a lake, the very act reducing the reflection to shimmering ripples on the surface: can anyone know her?

The part leans on being borderline sexist, the idea of the enchanting, liberated woman as somehow being a dangerous (almost evil) threat to the safety and mental security of the men around her, deliberately endangering the decent world with her sexual openness. It largely manages to avoid this due to the performance of Jean Seberg, who gives Lilith a vulnerability and suggestions of deep psychological trauma that underpin her surface sexuality, flirtation and predatory nature. It’s no surprise that she is so completely able to overwhelm the repressed, inverted Vincent, or that he becomes such a willing slave to her whims and spur-of-the-moment suggestions.

Much of this disintegration of Vincent underpins the second half of the film, as he and Lilith engage in a dance that ends up having overwhelmingly negative consequences for each of them and for many of those around them. Intriguingly, Rossen’s vision of this mental institute as a more bohemian organisation suggests that the staff all seem aware of (and even tacitly encourage) the relationship – although whether this is part of a treatment or some sort of bizarre other motive is unclear. However, all this doesn’t help to make either character one we really care about, or make the story crystallise into something that carries real impact.

That captures the central problem of the film – Rossen deliberately builds the story with an elliptical sense of mystery in which the actions and motives of characters remain deliberately unclear, and the world they live in takes on elements of the dreamlike fantasy world that Lilith herself sometimes lives in (complete with her own language). Events seems to move with little sense of time. There are surreal interludes, not least an extended sequence where Vincent takes Lilith to a jousting competition (yes you read that right). It’s perhaps all a part of understanding how the personalities of the two lead characters slowly collapse over time into themselves, but it also serves to keep a distance between the film and the viewer. The final tragic outcomes are predictable from the very start of the film, but there is still a certain power to them. As a study of what slow mental disintegration may look like, Lilith is an intriguing little picture, but basically a little too hard to invest in emotionally to carry real impact.

How Green Was My Valley (1941)

Donald Crisp and Sara Allgood raise Roddy McDowell in How Green Was My Valley

Director: John Ford

Cast: Walter Pidgeon (Mr Gruffydd), Maureen O’Hara (Angharad Morgan), Donald Crisp (Gwilym Morgan), Roddy McDowell (Huw Morgan), Sara Allgood (Beth Morgan), Anna Lee (Bronwyn), Patric Knowles (Ivor), John Loder (Ianto), Barry Fitzgerald (Cyfartha), Rhys Williams (Dai Bando), Morton Lowry (Mr Jonas), Arthur Shields (Mr Parry), Richard Fraser (Davy), Frederick Worlock (Dr Richards)

John Ford is by far-and-away best known for his Westerns, many of which are classics. So it’s a bit of a surprise that Ford always claimed the film closest to his heart was this occasionally sentimental drama about a young boy growing up in a Victorian Welsh mining town. Perhaps it was partly because, despite winning four Best Director Oscars, this was the only time Ford directed a Best Picture winner.

Following the remembrances of young Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowell), the youngest son (of several) of Gwilym Morgan (Donald Crisp), long-running foreman at the mine. The village is beautiful and life seems idyllic – until harsh economic conditions start to take their toll on the village. Wages are cut, moves towards unionisation are harshly resisted by the management, one-by-one the sons are laid off in favour of cheaper labour and the slag of the mine slowly turns the village into a dirty, stained mess. At the same time, the village is shown to be increasingly insular and judgemental, distrusting of outsiders, and suspicious of the preacher Mr Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon) and the attraction between him and Huw’s sister Angharad (Maureen O’Hara) – made worse after she marries. Huw’s youthful innocence and naivety are met with an increasing attack from reality.

Ford’s film is today a controversial choice for Best Picture – among the films it beat were The Maltese Falcon and, most strikingly of all, Citizen Kane. It’s tough for any film to hold onto the same level of public affection, when it’s widely seen to have robbed a film commonly held up as one of the best (if not the best) of all time. But How Green Was My Valley is no travesty of an Oscar-winner. On its own merits it’s a solid, impressive, sentimental piece of episodic film-making that won’t disappoint you, even if it doesn’t inspire as much as it should.

John Ford directs a handsomely mounted film, full of luscious monochrome shots. It’s a shame that the original plans for the film – to shoot on location in Wales in technicolour – were prevented by World War Two, as the sweep of the real locations would have added a real epic scope to the drama, not to mention make the decline of the village even more obvious visually. But the recreation of the Welsh mining village they planned to film in (in Malibu of all places!) is faultlessly impressive, and Ford creates a real Celtic charm in his shooting of the film.

Celtic is perhaps the key word here as, along with the location, the other thing that ended up jettisoned in the film was its Welshness. There is precious little – if anything – Welsh about this film. It contains one Welsh actor (Rhys Williams), and Ford’s cast use a parade of actors ranging from an attempt at Welsh from Crisp to an imperious mid-Atlantic drawl from Walter Pidgeon. Most actors however settle solidly for something close to Irish – and it’s pretty clear to me that Ford, proud of his own Irish heritage, basically saw this a story of the old country forcing its sons to head to the new country, in the same way his own parents emigrated. It also makes sense for casting the film – there seemed to be precious few Welsh actors in Hollywood at the time, but a parade of Irish actors.

But look past the film’s complete lack of Welshness – not to mention its presentation of the Morgan’s family home as far more clear and spacious than it would have been in real life – and pretend this is an almost Irish story, and you can focus on the film’s strengths. Although presented with sentiment and nostalgia, How Green is actually a more coldly realistic film than that. While shot with a luscious regard for the past, the film’s themes work to undermine this as much as possible – dealing with disillusionment, depression, unemployment and societal collapse. While Huw may remember the past as being a glorious country, we can see from the tumoils of his family that it was far more complex than that.

Of his siblings, most lose their jobs at the mines and are forced to emigrate. One who remains loses his life due to the mine’s working practices. Their father buries his head in the sand, and refuses to support any moves towards unionisation or the worker’s attempt to improve their lot. The family relies totally on the mine, but by the end of the film have been more-or-less destroyed by it. Even Huw’s sister Angharad, who has a good marriage to the son of the mine owner, finds herself trapped in a loveless marriage with her affections for Gruffydd the source of cruel comment from the village. The valley may be green on the surface, but it’s far darker underneath.

And poor Huw either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care. After struggling through bullying from a teacher at school, he finishes school and is awarded a scholarship – only to reject it in favour of remaining to work in the mine, having learned all the wrong lessons from his life (and to the horror of his father). Ford stresses Huw’s youthful naivety by not ageing up Roddy McDowell (very good) at all as Huw – Huw remains forever a 12-year-old-boy, even as events race on. It’s a neat capturing of both the older Huw (who narrates) imagination of what he was like, and also serves to stress how Huw’s nostalgia is framing the story we are seeing. It also makes Huw seem even weaker and vulnerable than he is – a shot of Huw labouring in the mine behind a seemingly giant cart hammers home his weakness – Ford shoots many scenes with low-angle lenses to make us visually emphasise with Huw and to see the world from his perspective.

How Green’s main weakness is its hesitation to commit to either the cold reality, or the hazy nostalgia that the film’s filming style uses. It lands between the two stools, wanting to tell us the truth while also wanting us to leave with a warm feeling towards the simpler times of the past. It’s perhaps not helped in this by the episodic nature of the script, which moves from event to event without much in the way of overarching narrative. It makes for a film that leans even more towards a slightly maudlin view of the past as a series of entertaining stories, which serves to cover even more the darker themes of the film.

Ford’s cast are a mixed bag. Donald Crisp is superb as the father, part imperious patriarch, part loving father – and won the Oscar. Equally good is Sara Allgood as his wife, the ideal loving mother that a son would remember, but with a spine of steel. Maureen O’Hara brings a passionate romanticism to Angharad, while Barry Fitzgerald and Rhys Williams are entertaining as a drunken trainer and his boxer protégé. Mnay of the rest of the cast though are weaker, with Walter Pidgeon rather stolid as Gruffydd and many of the actors playing Huw’s brothers reduced to balsawood under the burden of odd accents and earnest characterisation.

Ford’s film is a very good one that, if it catches you in the right mood, will certainly move you. I am not sure it caught me in the right mood on any of the occasions I saw it, but I appreciate its technical assurance and excellent direction. It fails to really find an effective balance between its darker tones and its nostalgic outlook, but it still works for all that. It’s not Welsh but it is a good film.

The Big Heat (1953)

Lee Marvin, Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford feel The Big Heat coming on

Director: Fritz Lang

Cast: Glenn Ford (Det Sgt Dave Bannion), Gloria Grahame (Debby Marsh), Lee Marvin (Vince Stone), Jeanette Nolan (Bertha Duncan), Alexander Scourby (Mike Lagana), Jocelyn Brando (Katie Bannion), Adam Williams (Larry Gordon), Kathyn Eames (Marge), Willis Bouchey (Lt Ted Wilks)

Films like Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat were generally seen at the time as easy-to-overlook pulp thrillers. Today however, they are seen as classics and few look as ahead of their time as The Big Heat, a skilfully constructed, almost nihilistic, revenge thriller that turns its view of America into that of a land big, grim and full of corruption.

Detective Sergeant Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is called in when a senior policeman is found to have committed suicide. All is not what it seems though: the wife Bertha (Jeanette Duncan) doesn’t seem as sad as she should, there are conflicting reports that the death might be suicide and the dead man’s possible lover is found brutally killed shortly after Bannion talks to her. Bannion is a stubborn, bull-in-a-China-shop type, so he quickly assumes smooth local gangster Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) is connected up in all this, not least after his wife Katie (Jocelyn Brando) receives a threatening phone call. But Bannion’s methods lead to tragedy, and he soon finds himself going rogue to find justice, with the eventual help of Debby Marsh (Gloria Grahame), gangster’s moll of brutal sadist and Langana lieutenant Vince Stone (Lee Marvin).

Lang’s film is a strikingly un-rose tinted view of America. The very first shot of the movie is a gun, and violence is endemic in this corrupt world, where justice is for sale. We barely see a character who doesn’t have some whiff of corruption. Bannion finds cops doing guard duty outside Lagana’s home while he throws a party and half the higher-ups in the department are either in the pocket of the gangsters, or determined to do as little as possible to rock the boat. The lives of the families of those causing trouble for this system don’t account for much either, with any unpalatable truths brushed firmly under the carpet.

Thown into the middle of this is Glenn Ford’s Detective Bannion. At first glance Bannion looks like exactly the hero we would want – a straight-down-the-line type who says what he thinks, and determined to let nothing stand in the way of, or water down, his investigation. Better known for comedies, Glenn Ford is very good as this bullish man, who very clearly thinks of himself as “the only good cop in town”, and whose determination to stop at nothing very soon tips over into recklessness. Because reckless is what he is: Bannion is fixated on revenge after a tragic attack on his family, and he has no compunction – or even it seems moral awareness – that this path causes danger and consequences for other people around him.

Bannion’s situation is largely self-inflicted – is it sensible going straight to the house of a leading local gangster and threatening and humiliating him? – and Bannion turns out to be largely a destructive force for those who meet him. Most affected are the four female characters he interacts with in the film. A mixture of innocent, corrupt, in denial and cruel, all four of these women find themselves thrown into often mortal danger, with Bannion barely stopping to consider the risks to them. Bannion, it becomes clear, is the ultimate ends-justify-the-means kind of guy, willing to accept collateral damage of almost any kind if it means he can take down the bad guys who have done him wrong. It makes for an intriguing anti-hero at the film’s centre, with Bannion increasingly resembling a sort of proto-type Dirty Harry, the hard-boiled cop who’ll do things his way and damn the consequences.

Mind you, it doesn’t mean he isn’t right about the corruption in this damn dirty town. Preening gangster Mike Lagana (played with a wispy arrogance by Alexander Scourby) has everyone in his pocket, and couldn’t give tuppence for any small fry causing him problems. First introduced lazily in bed setting in chain events that will cover up the reason for the suicide of a leading policeman, he has fingers in every pie. He’s also – the film economically suggests – sexually indiscriminate and a bit of a mummy’s boy to boot, sure signs of cadism in any 1950s detective story. His decadent home and personal cowardice (for all his speed in ordering deaths) make his corruption probably even more galling for straight-shooter Bannion.

In fact, I’m not sure Bannion can even accept Lagana as a “worthy foe” and he increasingly zeroes in on Lagana’s number two, the brutish Vince Stone as the man he intends to take down. Played with a star-making swagger by Lee Marvin, Stone is a force of nature, an act-first-think-next-week kind of guy, who terrorises people around him and will resort to anything from fists to pots of boiling coffee to exact obedience. Marvin scowls and prowls his way through the film like a caged bear, constantly on the verge of violence. It’s a brilliant performance.

It also makes clear why he’s pushed Debby – played with a wonderful fragility behind all her femme fatale looks by Gloria Grahame – so far under his thumb. As she says, why intercede against anything he does when she could be next to take a beating. Grahame is excellent as a woman who has suppressed her conscience about what is going on around her, and learned to use her sexuality as a tool for getting what she wants. Watching her slowly begin to come to life as a moral force provides one of the film’s finest stories – her desire to do the right thing and get revenge, a firm contrast with Bannion’s more hardline goals.

All of this is packaged neatly and without fuss by Lang into a superb indictment of America. Every official is at least shady, if not outright bent. Every scene bubbles with the possibility of violence and danger. The innocent are swiftly trampled and the heroes need to bring themselves down to the same brutal, intimidating rough and tumble as the villains to have any chance of cracking the crime. Bodies pile up, lives are ruined, but at the end you still wonder if any of it will have any lasting impact. For Lang it feels like America is a constant spiral of danger and corruption that begins and end with a gun. Either way The Big Heat is a true classic.

Body of Lies (2008)

Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio fail to master the Middle East in Ridley Scott’s spy thriller Body of Lies

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Roger Ferris), Russell Crowe (Ed Hoffman), Mark Strong (Hani Salaam), Golshifteh Farahani (Aisha), Oscar Isaac (Bassam), Ali Suliman (Omar Sadiki), Alon Abutbul (Al-Saleem), Vince Colosimo (Skip), Simon McBurney (Garland), Lubna Azabal (Cala)

Ridley Scott is a bit of a curate’s egg as a director. You can always expect a film with a certain visual flair, as well as a story that attempts to tackle big themes and engaging topics. However, it doesn’t always produce an end result that really grips or feels like something that particularly stands out from the crowd. That’s what you end up with Body of Lies, a film that constantly feels like it is on the cusp of saying something important or interesting about the relationship between East and West, but constantly falls back on the sort of spy movie tropes it initially feels like it wants to debunk.

In the Middle East, Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a dedicated CIA operative, with an intricate knowledge of the cultures and issues of the region. He constantly finds himself frustrated and undermined by his boss Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe), based in Langley, who is constantly willing to sacrifice long-term gains for short-term political pay-offs. Assigned to Jordan, Ferris begins an investigation into a terrorist cell, working closely with head of Jordanian security Hani Salaam (Mark Strong) – but Hoffman’s intercessions increasingly cause tension.

Scott’s film is stylish and well assembled, with a great sense of pace and place. The contrasts between DiCaprio on the ground (in the dirt, facing dangers and tackling everything from terrorists to rabid dogs) and Crowe back in the States (rarely if ever seen without a hands-free phone set dangling from his ear, viewing everything at a distance with no understanding of the intricacies) is well drawn. The sense of complete cultural misunderstanding and lack of connection between East and West is established early, and attempts to cross it generally lead to disaster. The patience and expertise of the Jordanian security forces is contrasted constantly with the more slap-dash, hasty efforts of the CIA to meet the same goals. It’s all set for something quite interesting.

But then the film somehow doesn’t quite come together. Its episodic structure increasingly stretches out as action moves back and forth from Jordan to Langley and back again. A particularly wild scheme by Ferris (which, to the viewer not the film, suggests he is as incompetent and reckless as Hoffman) turns the film towards the sort of kidnap/torture/nick-of-time-rescue plotline that wouldn’t look out of place in 24 or James Bond. Basically, the plot turns on the film transitioning from something with a genuine political statement to make into the sort of disposal rent-a-spy-thriller that you forget pretty quickly.

DiCaprio gets a lot of “big” moments to juggle with, as well as a rather forced romance with a Jordanian nurse (something that he and Golshifteh Farahani play very well, but seems to have wandered in from an even more conventional film) but the film works hard to paint him as the “hero” who knows better than his superiors, despite the film chronicling a string of mistakes. Crowe enjoys himself as self-important windbag behind a computer, as uncaring as the institutions he represents.

The real star of the show however is Mark Strong, excellent as the suave head of Jordanian intelligence, seemingly the only character who has any understanding about what is going on. With a cool sharpness, slightly playful politeness and a slight chill of threat, Strong is the film’s most interesting character. There is a striking point made here that the most effective person in the film is a Jordanian spy chief with a mixed reputation – but the film largely shirks the possibility of really using this to demonstrate how out-of-their-depth the CIA agents are, as if worried that flagging up their manifest incompetence at every turn would sell badly Stateside.

It’s part of the film’s general lack of soul behind the skill of its construction. I know Scott is deeply interested in these themes of East vs West and the culture clashes that develop from it, but it just doesn’t come out here at all. There was a film to be made here about how the war on terror has thrown the CIA and the West into a setting they don’t understand, playing by rules they haven’t been briefed on. But all too often the film instead settles for telling us the same-old-same-old, padding out its runtime with spy story clichés and thriller plotting. Scott himself even uses visual tricks – surveillance drone shots and 24 style action – which suggest that somewhere along the line his heart wasn’t really in it. Body of Lies could have been a really interesting thriller about the world today. Instead it’s just another spy thriller about the war on terror.

Tess (1979)

Nastassja Kinski is Thomas Hardy’s tragic heroine in Polanski’s Tess

Director: Roman Polanski

Cast: Nastassja Kinski (Tess Durbeyfield), Peter Firth (Angel Clare), Leigh Lawson (Alec Stokes-d’Urberville), John Collin (John Durbeyfield), Rosemary Martin (Mrs Durbeyfield), Carolyn Pickles (Marian), Richard Pearson (Vicar of Marlott), David Markham (Reverend Clare), Pascale de Boysson (Mrs Clare), Suzanna Hamilton (Izzy Huett), Tony Church (Parson Tringham)

At first sight it looks like a rather odd project for Roman Polanski: a faithful adaptation of a Thomas Hardy novel, shot in sumptuous period detail. But look a little closer and you’ll see it’s a neat fit for the director’s interests. A human interest story that revolves around the man’s capability for misusing, abusing and disregarding his fellows. With isolation, despair and depression thrown into the mix (what do you expect, it’s Thomas Hardy?!) and a depressing conclusion (again, it’s Hardy…) it feels less and less like an anomaly in its director’s CV. On top of this, it’s the film Polanski planned to make starring his murdered wife Sharon Tate (the film is dedicated to her memory).

Tess (Nastassja Kinski) is a young girl growing up in 1870s “Wessex” (Hardy surely the first major writer to create his own universe of interlocking stories in a fictional location). Her life is thrown into chaos when her father (John Collin) learns his family descends from the ancient lineage of d’Urbervilles. Tess is sent to find work and, maybe, fortune with her “cousin” Alec Stokes-d’Urberville (Leigh Lawson). But instead of a place at the family table, she finds herself charmed and then seduced (and perhaps raped) by Alec, leaving the house disgraced and pregnant. A few years later, she meets would-be-farmer and idealistic parson’s son Angel Clare (Peter Firth) – but their marriage cannot survive revelations of her past. As Tess’ life unravels, she is thrown into ever more desperate situations that entangle both men in her life with fatal consequences.

Polanski’s film is shot with a wonderful eye for period and makes extensive use of the “magic hour” (just after sunrise or just before sunset) to place some truly gorgeous images on the screen. Despite this, the film never compromises on the grinding lack of glamour in poverty, and few period dramas have had such an eye for mud, uncleanliness and shabby huts and bedding arrangements than this one. Polanski spent years making the film in several carefully selected locations, designed to make France look as much like Dorset as possible (for obvious legal reasons, Polanski had to rule out filming on location in England).

In this, Polanski creates a heartfelt drama of human suffering, with Tess repackaged as a sort of “every-woman” sufferer, whose entire life is shattered by a passing comment made to her father by a distant clergyman (a man whom we never see again). It’s part of Polanski’s theme of how events that we have little or no control over can shatter our lives and change the entire path of our existence. Tess frequently finds her life changed or altered by the actions of third parties (from the parson who speaks to her father, to the parish do-gooders who find the working boots she has quietly taken off to make a good impression for people she never meets and take them to a poor house – the sort of stunning moment of bleak “blow-upon-a-bruise” that the film does so well) and has no real power over what happens to her.

When she does finally take decisive actions with the two men in her life, both events rebound with tragic consequences on her – first with her rejection by Angel and then by her final escape from the influence of Alec. In between, we see her drifting gloomily from location to location, never able to find the energy, will or strength to make her life her own. Polanski’s film seizes on Hardy’s themes that we become trapped in our own fates, events spiralling constantly to leave us ever more at the mercy of factors over which we have no control. Tess is an isolated character, with few friends and confidantes, and whom society has left behind. It’s a film that follows an individual in a monolithic society with its own rules and structures, that makes no room for personal circumstances when rushing to its judgements.

Making Tess an innocent victim meant Polanski needed to cast someone who would not bring too much overt “actor” presence. Kinski, only 16 when filming started, brings a very natural innocence and gentleness to the role. She is certainly completely believable as a young woman who cannot truly understand what all these men who take such an interest in her really want, and feels unable to impose herself (just as Kinski struggles to impose herself on the film) on her life. That Kinski is not the strongest actor in the world, and that her accent erratically drifts between Dorset and Dutch, is counterbalanced by this gentle, unprocessed innocence. It matches perfectly Polanski’s idea of Tess as a victim, trapped in a perfectly constructed world.

It also allows the two men in her life a bit more scope for some domineering acting. Peter Firth does a very good job as the idealistic Angel who turns out to be nowhere near as liberal or understanding as he would like to think he is, until it is way too late. Firth walks a very neat line between sanctimonious, naïve and pompous. He also makes a great contrast with Leigh Lawson’s corrupt creepiness as the pervy Alec, all moustachio-twirling charm and caddish manner, but hiding a desire beneath to be the decent, better man.

Polanski positions Tess as the constant victim pulled between these two men, from the beautifully filmed misty forest glade where Alec forces his attentions on her, to the eccentrically furnished would-be family home (complete with lascivious elderly maid, giggling about the possibilities of the couple’s wedding night) where her marriage to Angel falls apart. It’s a film where Polanski throws in many lovely touches that ground the film in a particular time and place, from that giggling maid to the ominous sound of hedge-clippers when Angel arrives at seaside hotel in search of Tess. Every moment of the film feels realistically placed in Hardy’s Wessex, and it’s crammed with small sequences and moments that stick in the mind.

It’s a film with a masterful understanding of time and place (it rightly won Oscars for cinematography, costumes and production design) but uses that to build a story of a woman made an internal victim in a society that thinks it cares, but really doesn’t. Tess is a woman whose life is buffeted and changed by the actions of others, and who cannot escape from the dark shadows of being trapped in her own destiny. You can see why these themes appealed to Polanski – and perhaps this helps explain why the film feels like such a darkly personal one, right up to its near final image of Tess as a sacrificial victim laid out at Stonehenge.

Call Me By Your Name (2017)

Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer are lovers drawn together in Call Me By Your Name

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Cast: Timothée Chalamet (Elio Perlman), Armie Hammer (Oliver), Michael Stuhlbarg (Professor Perlman), Amira Casar (Annella Perlman), Esther Garrell (Marzia), Victoire Du Bois (Chiara)

First love is a story everyone can relate to. Call Me By Your Name unfolds an engrossing early romance, where precocious 17-year old Elio (Timothée Chalamat) discovers his bisexuality through his deep attraction to his professor father’s (Michael Stuhlbarg) summer research assistant, 24-year old Oliver (Armie Hammer). An attraction which, over a long hot summer in Northern Italy in 1983, finally leads to a deep romantic and sexual bond forming between the two.

Refreshingly, Guadagnino’s film is relentlessly positive and devoid of tension or disapproval. You’d expect a romance such as this – especially a gay one – to lead to an eventual outburst of furious disapproval from someone or tear-filled remonstrations that what the couple have isn’t wrong. These are avoided completely, for something that feels intensely real and convincingly grounded, especially as it follows Elio’s stumbling attempts to identify his own sexuality and understand how his feelings affect him.

This is also a showcase for acting, a film like this living or dying on the chemistry between the two lead actors, and Chalamet and Hammer have this in spades, suggesting from the very start a deep bond, that grows in emotional intensity. The relationship is a slow dance, with both of them blowing hot and cold at different times. Oliver’s first tentative approach is resoundingly rebuffed by Elio, only for Elio’s fascination with Oliver to grow into a deep unexpressed longing, which Oliver is nervous about responding to for a host of factors, from the age difference to his residence in Elio’s parents’ house. Even after the two come together, Elio’s confusion about his own feelings leads him to turn colder before the two finally find an equilibrium that works.

It’s also a classic coming of age story, as Elio moves out of adolescence and into adulthood. Elio never feels like a traditional teenager in the first place, a musical prodigy and talented autodidact who seems to have read nearly everything (“Is there anything you don’t know?” Oliver jokingly says at one point after Elio explains the detailed history of a war memorial). But in other ways he is the same as any other teen: sex-obsessed and confused, spending a lot of time with two female friends who he seems to be unsure of his feelings are towards, indulging in explorative sexual fantasies and fumbled exploration of his own and others’ bodies, working out what he likes and what he doesn’t.

It leads to a superb performance from Chalamet (youngest ever nominee for Best Actor at the Oscars), who perfectly captures both the intelligence of Elio, and his confused lack of understanding of who or what he is. Chalamet’s body language – a mixture of awkward teen and assured adult, is a perfect physical expression of his part-adult, part-child psyche. Like any teenager, he’s at times selfish, greedy or plain annoying. But at many others he’s sensitive, delicate, vulnerable and desperate to express his love. Chalamet juggles all these competing emotions and hormonal drives brilliantly, and his face is a true instrument of expression, a sliding kaleidoscope of confused urges that compels your attention.

It’s a perfect match-up with Hammer, who is superb as just the sort of boisterous, confident, exciting and sexy presence you can imagine being drawn towards. But Hammer also laces Oliver with a tenderness, a concern and a gentleness beneath his joie de vive that really expands the character’s soul and makes him not just a force of vibrancy but also a genuinely lovely man. Hammer is very careful (as is the film) to avoid the possibility of Oliver being seen as a seducer, and it does this by giving him a touching restraint as well as manipulation-free openness, an honesty and an emotional freeness that helps make him more often the pursued rather than the pursuer.

Guadagnino lets this gentle love story unfold over a luscious, gorgeous Italian summer, with his camera drifting contentedly around the two lovers and their environment, as much a part of the dance of their initial attraction. The film is resolutely “in the moment” and has no flashbacks, flash forwards or any real reference to any narrative events outside of what we see on screen. It unfolds gracefully and naturally, with the camera work largely taking an unflashy but still warm view on everything we see.

Guadagnino deliberately treats much of the central romance element with reserve, avoiding too much nudity and panning discretely away from sexual encounters between the two. (I will say though, that he has no such reserve with Elio’s heterosexual encounters, where female nudity and sex are shown in full.) It does successfully preserve a sense of innocence and purity in the relationship – and keeps the focus on the fact that this love between the two is about them becoming better people, who understand themselves better, through the relationship.

This positive message is reinforced by the acceptance of Elio and Oliver from all in the film, including Elio’s parents. Michael Stuhlbarg in particular has a scene near the end of the film of wonderful power – cementing his status from this film as a dream dad – with a speech to his son so full of acceptance, encouragement and love that you’ll feel your heart melt. Both Elio’s parents are very aware of the relationship and tacitly encourage it: according to this film at least, if you’re young and gay, growing up in a Bohemian, academic household does make your life easier! (Even Oliver comments that Elio has no idea how lucky he is.)

This film is also refreshing for its lack of casualties. Sure the two girls Elio and Oliver flirt with are disregarded swiftly, and the film gives only a little time to their rather shabby treatment, but generally it’s a film about learning who you are by spending time with someone else. And if that includes a few moments of teen awkward sexual exploration that are almost unbearable to watch (a scene with a curious Elio and a peach is a case in point, replete with queasy sound effects) then so be it.

Call Me By Your Name is a terrific coming-of-age tale, emotionally honest, true and mature and directed with a graceful ease and unshowy skill that is a testament to the deep confidence and grace of its director. With two superb performances and some excellent support work, it’s a glorious summer movie of love that will speak to you regardless of sexuality.