Category: Family drama

Dead End (1937)

Sometimes stagey mix of gangster thrills and downtown drama, with a great Bogart performance

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Sylvia Sidney (Drina Gordon), Joel McCrea (Dave Connell), Humphrey Bogart (Hugh “Baby Face” Martin), Wendy Barrie (Kay Burton), Claire Trevor (Francey), Allen Jenkins (Hunk), Marjorie Main (Mrs Martin), Minor Watson (Mr Griswald), James Burke (Officer Mulligan), Ward Bond (Doorman), The Dead End Kids

Adapted by Lilian Hellman from Sidney Kingsley’s Broadway hit, Dead End starts with a sharp little political point. The slum boroughs of New York on the East River (that dead end is where the city literally stops) sit side-by-side with towering luxury apartment blocks, after the rich worked out those riverside views are too nice to be left to the working classes. It’s led to an awkward world where mega-rich and working poor sit side-by-side, tensions bubbling. A neat political idea Dead End flirts with, but largely avoids delving into, as more dynamic sub plots dominate the film.

The clashes between the rich and poor focus on The Dead End Kids, a gang of tearaways led by Tommy (Billy Halop) whose sister Drina (Sylvia Sidney) despairingly struggles night and day to build a new life for this troublesome teen. Tommy and his gang beat and rob rich boy Philip and Tommy wounds Philip’s father Griswald (Minor Watson): justice and Griswald demands he be found and punished. It’s a plot line that gets squeezed out by the return of gangster “Baby Face” Martin (Humphrey Bogart), looking for some sort of redemption but rubbing up against the consequences of his life of crime and the suspicion of school friend and would-be-architect odd-job-man Dave (Joel McCrea).

It perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise that Bogart’s plot dominates the film; after all it’s by far the most dynamic and gripping storyline, powered by the film’s most naturally charismatic performer. Bogart’s meanness comes powering to the fore as Baby Face, a snarling bully with a self-righteous streak of self-pity. He’s living on the run – bizarrely he’s had plastic surgery to change his appearance, although nearly all the locals recognise him immediately – now full of sentimentality about his old life. Baby Face has come back for forgiveness and connection with old bonds, as a cheat to avoid actually making amends for his crimes or changing who he is.

This journey is thoroughly in vain, in a series of compelling scenes that remind you what a masterful director of actors Wyler was. As well as Bogart’s glowering resentment at people not responding as he expects – or disgust at their lives not meeting his romanticised ideals – there are masterful cameos from Marjorie Main and Claire Trevor (Oscar-nominated) as his mother and old girlfriend respectfully. Main can hardly bear to look at Baby Face such is her disgust and disappointment in him. Trevor is fabulous as a world-weary woman who – reading between the Hays Code – is essentially a syphilitic prostitute. As certain that Baby Face will reject her when he works that out – and Bogart’s appalled shock and barely concealed contempt are brilliantly done – as she is that any chance things might change for her is a fantasy, Trevor captures in one brief moment the horror of a life that has been a long drudge of disappointment and pain.

These masterfully done scenes – alongside Bogart’s furious resentment at the world, as he growls at sidekick Hunk played with loyal muscle by Allen Jenkin – build into the film’s dynamically filmed finale as Bogart comprehensively rejects turning his back on crime. Wyler – working to excellent effect with Gregg Toland’s Oscar-nominated cinematography – turns this Dead End borough into a world of noirish expressionist shadows. A chase through sewers and rooftops, is shot in shadows, light bursting through wooden slats or streaming through doorways. It’s fast-paced, punchy and exciting.

It also puts into sharp relief the far soapier and duller plot line revolving around the Dead End Kids. This follows a painfully standard plot of whether the soul of a young boy can be saved. Will Tommy, like Baby Face, hit that metaphorical dead end? The Dead End Kids themselves have a fair bit of energy (repeated off stage – the lads were sacked by the Studio after they spent most of their downtime trashing Studio property). And it’s interesting that the film doesn’t really try and sentimentalise them too much. They’re clearly a gang of bullies, quick to punch, who think nothing of beating anyone up.

It really comes down to how much you respond to this sort of plot and to be honest I found it rather hackneyed. Not helped by Sylvia Sidney, who as Tommy’s sister is given little to do other than continuously burst into tears and beg for mercy from the law after each of Tommy’s misdeeds. Since Dead End concentrates its opening and closing acts on these unpleasant little tykes, with the middle acts so overwhelming denominated by Bogart’s petty criminal, it’s hard not to feel your attention wander a bit.

Which isn’t to say there isn’t a fair bit to like about Dead End. It’s studio location recreation of New York’s rough streets is very impressive in its scale – despite rumours that producer Sam Goldwyn insisted the prop litter by tidied up because no film of his was going to look like a trash can. It does make the setting seem rather theatrical – its Broadway roots can be seen in all doorways for important locations opening up onto the same jetty where the Dead End Kids hang – but also throws open so many opportunities for Toland to cover the set in atmospheric shadows and light.

And the film pulls out several terrific performances – Joel McCrea also deserves note for his low-key turn as a disappointed man of decency, who has grown used to battening down his dreams and taking the brush off from girls like Wendy Barrie’s Kay who want men with better prospects. It’s hard to deny it isn’t at its strongest when its focused on gangsters pretending repentance rather than struggles to save kids souls, but it’s still a punchy film for all that.

Imitation of Life (1934)

A surprisingly subversive tale on race under it’s traditional ‘woman’s picture’ exterior

Director: John M Stahl

Cast: Claudette Colbert (Beatrice Pullman), Warren William (Stephen Archer), Rochelle Hudson (Jessie Pullman), Ned Sparks (Elmer Smith), Louise Beavers (Delilah), Fredi Washington (Peola), Alan Hale (Furniture man)

Imitation of Life sits at a fascinating juncture of American life. On the surface, its a familiar “woman’s film”. Struggling widowed mother Beatrice Pullman (Claudette Colbert) turns her life around by building a pancake bakery empire, based on the unbeatable pancake recipes of her Black maid and best friend Delilah’s (Louise Beavers). She builds a better life for her daughter Jessie (Rochelle Hudson) and navigates romantic complexity with dashing ichthyologist Stephen Archer (Warren William), who unwittingly attracts the devotion of the teenage Jessie.

Now, a film establishing it was possible for a woman to make a successful business career without the assistance of a man – and that she wouldn’t be, in some way, narratively punished for her presumption – would be radical enough. But, also in Imitation of Life is a complex, questioning look at race in America. Because humble, deferential Delilah – who sees her life’s purpose as being to serve – is openly the foundation of that success. Delilah isn’t even comfortable taking her share of the company (20% for being the face and genius of the company), an attitude Imitation of Life simultaneously encourages us to find both quaint and frustratingly servile. Instead, Delilah wants nothing more than to keep her apron on and bring Beatrice food and foot massages whenever she needs them. What this says about both of them is kept fascinatingly present all the time.

Imitation of Life presents an intriguing, under-the-surface searchingly frank depiction of a close bi-racial friendship that still drips with unspoken hierarchy. Delilah, of course, wouldn’t think of calling Beatrice anything other than Ms Bea, while Beatrice would never think of introducing her as anything other than Delilah (she doesn’t seem to have a last name). Repeated shots employing staircases – most strikingly a mid-shot that sees both women head to bed, one going upstairs the other down – stress the barriers between them. While the wealthy Bea parties upstairs, Delilah smilingly knows her place is downstairs in her comfortable but considerably less grand servants’ rooms. There is friendship, but everyone has their ‘natural’ place – and the film subtly invites us to feel awkward when we recognise this.

However, Imitation of Life gives its most dynamic plot to Delilah and her daughter Peola. Superbly played by Fredi Washington – bringing a lifetime of personal experience to her passionate portrayal – the pale-skinned Peola, unlike Delilah, can ‘pass’ as white. For a Hollywood film to even present this is daring enough: the clear-spoken Peola, who lacks Delilah’s stereotypical sing-song accent, is a living, breathing challenge to the absurdity of America’s racist segregation laws. She can work in a restaurant, where the punters would be aghast if they knew her background (as aghast as they are when Delilah walks in). She has possibilities in her life beyond the ‘Black college’ her mother wants to send her too or the career of menial drudgery even the most intelligent Black people in America were consigned to at the time.

Imitation of Life, with its romantic regard for the traditional Delilah, can (and does) stare disapprovingly at Peola’s contemptuous dismissal of her mother, whose very existence is a living, breathing reminder to people that Peola doesn’t belong upstairs but very much downstairs. An attitude cemented at childhood, when Delilah unexpectantly arrives at school to ‘expose’ Peola’s heritage to everyone. But there is enough sly commentary in Imitation of Life to suggest this is as much a generational split. That Peola is perhaps right to be frustrated that its Beatrice rather than her mother who has made a fortune from their old family pancake mix.

In fact it can feel like Peola is rebelling as much against the older generation of Black people than she is her mother. The people like her mother, whose grandparents (or even parents) were slaves and accept willingly they belong in deferential service to rich whites, gratefully receiving their parental handouts. Peola dresses and speaks like a modern young woman, and her resentment is as much at Delilah’s lack of self-worth and happy embracing of her (admittedly friendly) economic exploitation. Peola is looking at a new future – one where Black people would (rightly) no longer accept such rigid guardrails on their life.

Imitation of Life captures these ideas slightly clumsily, presented in a way white 1930s Americans were comfortable processing, but it’s there. Sure Delilah – played with a real warmth and tenderness by Louise Beavers, adding emotional depth to a ‘mammy’ character – may be, at heart, a stereotype who turns up in Bea’s life with magical serendipity to improve her life with her service. Peola may often be given the words of a stroppy ingrate who won’t accept her place. But both characters – and Beavers and Washington – are straining at presenting something more complex, smuggling it under the Hays Code radar, as a generational tale of divergent options in the Black community.

This makes Imitation more than the comforting Uncle Tom story it presents as. It’s also, certainly, a heck of a lot more interesting than Colbert’s storyline. (Colbert must have noticed this, so it’s too her credit she enthusiastically took the larger but duller part). Colbert does a fine job, her affection for Delilah measured with just enough patronising paternalism. The melodramatic romantic entanglements with Warren William (not at his most interesting) and the almost terminally flat character of Jessie (played forgettably by Rochelle Hudson) drift dully past the eyes as we wait for the camera to go back downstairs for the real story once again.

Imitation of Life resolves most of its plot lines with comforting forgiveness and with characters stepping back into accepting their more expected roles. But it carries just enough suggestion of subversion, underneath its placid acceptance of a status quo, to make you think the same people would have made an angrier, more dangerous film if they had been given the chance.

The Emigrants (1971) / The New Land (1972)

Troell’s magnificent double bill is a beautifully filmed tribute to the migrant story

Director: Jan Troell

Cast: Max von Sydow (Karl Oskar Nilsson), Liv Ullman (Kristina Nilsson), Eddie Axberg (Robert Nilsson), Allan Edwall (Daniel Andreasson), Monica Zetterlund (Ulrika), Pierre Lindstedt (Arvid), Hans Alfredson (Jonas Petter), Ulla Smidje (Inga-Lena Andreasson), Eva-Lena Zetterlund (Elin), Gustaf Färingborg (Brusander), Åke Fridell (Aron), Sven-Olaf Bern (Nils Nilsson), Aina Alfredsson (Märta Nilsson)

Imagine back-breaking labour made even heavier from centuries of tradition weighing you down. Wouldn’t you be thinking about finding a New Land? That’s what millions of people in the nineteenth century did, making journeys their parents and grandparents couldn’t even imagine. Leaving ancestral homes behind, crossing oceans and continents to claim a share of the American dream. It’s beautifully told in Jan Troell’s epic two-part movie, a poetically filmed, sensitive and absorbingly low-key and naturalistic film that pulls the viewer into people’s lives and its hypnotic spell.

The Emigrants introduces us to Swedish farmer Karl Oskar Nilsson (Max von Sydow) and his wife Kristina (Liv Ullman). Karl Oscar slaves over poor land in appalling weather, labouring desperately to turn rocks into crops. His brother Robert (Eddie Axberg) is treated like a slave by his employer and Kristina’s uncle and lay preacher Daniel (Allan Edwall) and his protégé, former prostitute Ulrika (Monica Zetterland), are treated like criminals by the church. No wonder this group joins the Swedish exodus to America, an epic, exhausting journey with a dream. The New Land picks up (almost minutes later) with the life Nilsson and his family build in Minnesota, facing new problems but always working relentlessly.

Adapted from best-selling novels by Vilhelm Moberg, Troll’s film is measured, stately and plays like a gorgeously filmed fly-on-the-wall documentary. It is reserved, unrelentingly unmelodramatic and in many ways utterly engrossing. Largely because it feels forever grounded in the realities of its story, which feels universally true. These are honest, hard-working and decent people – in many ways unremarkable – but struggling with things we all worry about, searching for a better life for themselves and their children, and working hard to get the best out of the hand life has dealt them.

And it’s frequently a rough hand. Troell’s film doesn’t shirk in showing the toughness of farming on terrible land in Sweden – just as it doesn’t romanticise the struggle of building a new farm in the undeveloped vastness of America. Much of the opening half of The Emigrants focuses on that back-breaking labour in rock-filled Swedish soil. Resources are stretched so much the family can’t even afford to feed a cat – the household pet bagged up and reluctantly tossed in a river. All the time, nature kicks our heroes in the teeth. Nilsson’s father labours to clear rocks from his land only to break his leg falling into the pit he’s dropping them into. The rain the family have been waiting for brings with it lightening that burns down the barn. The idea of making a success of this land feels as impossible to us as it does to the Nilssons.

Even worse is the parade of woes life around throws at them. The local area is firmly under the control of the Church. The parish priest, of course, lives in a well-furnished home and sanctimoniously tells his parishioners they should be content with their humble, unrewarding lot. Anyone challenging this, like Daniel with with his lay celebration of Christ, is treated as a dangerous dissident. Any idea that anyone should forge a life of their choosing is resolutely slapped down as if it’s a revolutionary act.

Nilsson states grimly that “no matter how hard we break our backs” success is impossible. Kristina, who throughout their lives will always be the more conservative but also more emotionally-driven (unlike the stoic Karl Oskar), is appalled by his ‘blasphemy’. But the death of their daughter – a moment of heart-rending tragedy in its simple grief, channelled in silent tears by Kristina and loving casket crafting by Karl-Oskar – is the tipping point. Their late daughter’s shoe will be a totem they cling to for the rest of the lives, both Nilssons clasping it close at moments of doubt or worry.

Leaving this world behind is a decision of impossible weight. Troell captures this in the carefully timed, wonderfully paced static shot that holds the Nilsson’s perspective as they look back at Karl Oskar’s parents gradually receding in the distance. The sudden cut to the sea is a powerful visual contrast to everything we have seen before, the camera capturing the sprawling vastness of the ocean so different from the closeness of the hilly land in the Swedish village. It’s a journey of lice, seasickness and sudden death each stressing the difficulties and dangers of this journey.

It also builds bonds. Our central relationship remains Karl Oskar and Kristina, beautifully played by Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman. Von Sydow really captures the world-weary decency in Karl Oskar, a man who works without complaint but with a strong sense of justice. Ullman is equally wonderful as a sensitive woman, whose life takes a dramatically different course than the one she imagines as a young woman dreaming on a swing (an image she will return to her in mind late in life), quick to judge, liable to lash out, but also fiercely loyal who comes to life in small moments of joy.

Her quick-to-judge manner makes her at first immensely hostile to Ulrika, with her background of easy virtue. But Ulrika’s warmth, genuineness and lack of guile – and her fortunate finding of Kristina’s lost child during the journey – builds an unshakeable bond between them. During their life in America, Kristina will see her as a sister and confidant, Ulrika’s blunt plain-speaking coaching her through medical troubles and also giving her moments of girlish joy (Kristina’s face, lit up with glee, wearing Ulrika’s floral wedding hat is a wonderful moment). Moncia Zetterland is superb.

If only Karl Oskar had the same relationship with his brother. But he distrusts Robert’s dreamy disposition, his flights of fancy utterly contrary to Karl Oskar’s muscular realism. He will defend his brother loyally against outsiders – confronting his abusive master with dangerous threats – but lambast him privately as a burden and a fantasist. Eddie Axberg is marvellous as Robert, a sensitive dreamer constantly unready for the world’s hardness. In The New Land, he chases Gold in California. Dreams, not to Karl Oskar’s surprise, doomed to disaster – a sequence of jerky editing, woozy camerawork and intimidating silence, so jarringly different from everything else in Troell’s films it feels as an oppressive Odyssey to us as it does to Robert (whose spirit it painfully breaks).

Life in America feels in many ways so different from life in Sweden, but in others the same. Trains feel as alien when they arrive, as the bustling streets (shot with hand-held immediacy) of New York. But The New Land is equally full of back-breaking labour. It opens with a montage of never-ending carpentry and woodcutting as Karl Oskar builds a home. Crops are crafted in snow. Everything from taking delivery of letters to cows is expensive. In a scene, surely lifted for Empire Strikes Back, Karl is even forced to gut a precious cow during a snowstorm to wrap his freezing son in its innards. The soil may be more fertile and the houses and fields may rise quicker, but the work doesn’t change.

The New Land also, bravely, makes room to show a touch of the experiences of the indigenous people whose land is now the property of men like Karl. The remains of these communities are frequently glimpsed, drifting from place to place on the horizon. There are several references to how many have grown dependent on charity. Karl finds the mummified body of an indigenous man frozen in the snow. He’ll even be bluntly told that, as a man who has bought (from the US government) ‘stolen goods’, he is an unwitting party to injustice. The New Land isn’t afraid to show the brutal killing of innocent Swedish migrants in the Dakota War, but it also delivers a chilling near-silent sequence of dozens of Dakota Sioux executed in the snow.

Both films remain heartfelt tributes to the bravery and endurance of migrants. What’s really striking, towards the end of The New Land is how old and worn out our heroes are compared to their actual ages (Kristina in particular looks closer to mid-50s than 40). The final coda reveals how their children have assimilated in American culture, with American names, forgetting their Swedish language and culture. Their parents have built them a new life – but at the cost of their old. It’s a sad grace note of the sacrifice of migration, in a stunningly beautiful and very moving pair of films.

Fanny (1961)

Pagnol adaptation is middle-brow entertainment, that feels contrived and little obvious

Director: Joshua Logan

Cast: Leslie Caron (Fanny), Horst Buchholz (Marius), Charles Boyer (César), Maurice Chevalier (Panisse), Georgette Anys (Honorine), Salvatore Baccaloni (Escartefigue), Lionel Jeffries (Brun), Raymond Bussieres (The Admiral), Joel Flateau (Césario)

The most entertaining story about this largely forgotten Best Picture nominee is that its director pushed heavily for it to be titled Joshua Logan’s Fanny – until the obvious was pointed out to him. The next is that Logan directed the original musical version of this Marcel Pagnol adaptation on Broadway; but the songs were dropped here, because producer Jack L Warner was convinced musicals were box office poison.

Fanny adapts Pagnol’s trilogy into a single, simple narrative. In 1920s Marseilles, Fanny (Leslie Caron) is a carefree young woman, in love with Marius (Horst Buchholz), who loves her but dreams of a life at sea – and certainly not of running his worldly-wise father César’s (Charles Boyer) bar. But this young couple won’t be honest with each other (or themselves): Fanny doesn’t want to hold Marius back from his dreams, Marius doesn’t want her to be forced to wait for him. After he leaves, Fanny discovers she is pregnant, so marries César’s old friend Panisse (Maurice Chevalier) who is more than happy to raise Marius’ son as his own. But how will Marius react when he returns?

Logan’s film takes this complex, almost Ancient Greek, set-up and makes it feel rather soapy and twee. It’s not helped by the fact that you can instinctively tell, watching the film, it is the book of a musical where the songs have ceased to exist. Time and again, the dialogue builds towards crescendos where songs are obviously meant to break out – but never do. Or scenes – such as old timers card-playing or romantic ambles – feel designed primarily for songs and now feel a bit aimless. It makes for a curiously disjointed affair, with the constant feeling something is missing.

It also doesn’t help that this very French story (Caron was worried about the reaction at home of taking on an American remake), feels like a rather picture-postcard image of French life. The gallic passions, the rough-edged café regulars playing practical jokes with hats placed over bollards (apparently in France, no one can resist kicking a hat on the ground), the berets and laissez-faire attitudes, the casting of two of Hollywood’s most famous French actors… It feels studied and not always natural. (Not helped by some woefully poor and obvious dubbing of a few of the actors).

Logan fails to bring to this any real flair in filmmaking and storytelling. Despite the presence of Jack Cardiff behind the camera, Fanny is a film full of basic compositions, one-shot/two-shot styles and visually flat storytelling, spiced up with the odd sweeping camera move. Time and again, the action is carefully set-up in theatrical medium shot to get three actors into frame. Logan several times punctuates moments of shock with crashing zooms into extreme close-up. Caron is frequently filmed with a gauzy romanticism in lingering close-up – an effect that looks odd when it’s not applied to any shot either side. Marseilles aerial shots also make the studio sets stick out even more.

As for the story, Fanny has a contrived reliance on no one ever really saying what they think or feel at any time. It’s so painfully obvious Marius is in love with Fanny – from his jealous, soda-squirting fury when Panisse flirts with her, to the looks of awkward devotion he shoots her on dockside walks together – it’s amazing to think they can’t work it out. Likewise, Fanny’s romantic feelings for Marius (captured in frequent doe-eyed close-up) are transparent. With the youth of both these characters – they start as teenagers – you can’t help but feel that there is no reason why they can’t agree to a few years apart before marriage. Instead, both believe the other demands unequivocal personal sacrifice from them, for no particular reason.

What Logan does do well, is draw some good performances from the cast. Leslie Caron is fairly radiant as Fanny, even if the character’s main function seems to be to pine sadly behind a brave face of self-sacrifice. It’s a shame Fanny often doesn’t call for much from her beyond that, since she gives the role a certain steel (none more so than her firm rejection of a returning Marius disrupting her new family life) including her hard-headed decision to marry a man she likes and respects but does not love. Buchholz does similarly well with a character who could be a frustrating Romeo, but who he manages to make his desperation not to be trapped into his father’s life understandable.

The real attraction is the casting of Boyer and Chevalier, who find a fair bit of charm in their characters (even though both are well within their wheel house). Chevalier, in particular, was thrilled to land a non-Musical role – and if the aged flirt he’s asked to play in the first half isn’t that dissimilar from his role in Gigi, his portrait of Panisse as increasingly scared at losing his new family is touching. Although the role really only adds little touches of overt tragedy and sadness to his standard role Chevalier’s charm adds a great deal of affecting vulnerability.

Chevalier campaigned hard for the Oscar nomination he had missed out on for Gigi – so I wonder how he felt that the Best Actor nod went to Charles Boyer instead. (I suspect lingering mud from collaboration slurs against Chevalier probably scuppered his chances). Boyer’s role is really a supporting one, but his smooth, effortless underplaying means he adds a lot of humanity to the otherwise larger-than-life César. Dispensing gruff worldly wisdom, playfully bantering with Chevalier, pained and angry at his son’s betrayal and determined to play a role in his (secret) grandson’s life, Boyer plays it all with an effortless ease which is the film’s greatest strength.

It’s a shame these performers are stuck in such a flat film which makes Pagnol’s story feel rather plodding and exposes its more contrived elements. It’s final resolution teeters on the edge of the unbelievably convenient – from Marius, it transpires, now living only a few miles away but never encountered by the other characters, to a ludicrous ‘happy’ ending that wraps every problem up with a neat bow (another moment where you can feel the missing musical roots). And it’s as uninspired as most of the rest of it. It’s definitely middle-brow entertainment. And, ironically, it lost out on Best Picture to that year’s Box Office smash – the musical West Side Story.

The Pied Piper (1942)

A perfectly judged star vehicle, very slight and competent but entertaining enough

Director: Irving Pichel

Cast: Monty Woolley (Howard), Roddy McDowell (Ronnie), Anne Baxter (Nicole Rougeron), Otto Preminger (Major Diessen), J. Carrol Naish (Aristide Rougeron), Lester Matthews (Mr Cavanaugh), Jill Esmond (Mrs Cavanaugh), Peggy Ann Garner (Shelia), Merril Rodin (Willem), Maurice Tauzin (Pierre), Fleurette Zama (Rose), Marcel Dalio (Focquet), Odette Myrtil (Madame Rougeron), Marcelle Corday (Madame Bonne)

Talk about a part tailor-made for its lead. We need a curmudgeonly old duffer, with the twinkly charm of an avuncular uncle and a secret heart of gold – get Monty Woolley on the blower! In this Nevil Shute adaptation, he plays Howard, caught up in the 1940 German invasion of France while on a fishing holiday. With great reluctance, he agrees to escort Ronnie (Roddy McDowell) and Shelia (Peggy Ann Garner), children of a League of Nations diplomat, across France. Along the way, as well as dodging the Germans, he picks up a shell-shocked French orphan and a scrawny Dutch child and recruits the help of an old ‘acquaintance’ of his son, Nicole (Anne Baxter). Will Howard dodge the Germans and escape?

Woolley eases into this crusty old-timer with consummate ease – after all it’s essentially a twist on his star-making turn in The Man Who Came to Dinner, and Howard might as well be the twin of Since You Went Away’s Colonel Smollett. But he can sell the heck out of characters like this, duly picking up an Oscar nomination. Introduced reluctantly helping Shelia with her homework – a running gag is Howard’s complete lack of knowledge of American geography, insisting Rochester is a state – he’s prickly around the kids, but not too prickly. Leaving us in no doubt that his gruff distance will soon melt on the road. Which of course it does, despite the occasional abrupt grumbling.

Not least since Woolley brings out a tender concern at how these kids are being exposed to the horrors of war. Little flashes of sadness as they see a dead body for the first time, and the sad understanding that crosses his face when he inspects the shell-shocked Pierre. Howard has a hard-won understanding of war, Woolley stiff of lip as he confesses the death of his RAF pilot son, mixed with pride that it took ‘three of them’ to take him down. It’s clear shepherding these children becomes, for him, the war service he was considered too old to do. We already know he’s got a determined never-say-die spirit, imperiously telling a surrender-monkey who joins him to listen to Churchill (a truly terrible voiceover impersonation) that he best never speak to him again.

Woolley is front-and-centre of nearly everything good in The Pied Piper, an otherwise fairly straight-forward mix of road movie, family adventure and war movie. It’s got a smoothly adapted script by Nunnally Johnson and competent, if uninspiring, direction by Irving Pichel. I found the film’s recurrent use of various predictable refrains – most irritatingly ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ – incredibly grating after a while. Most of The Pied Piper is all too obviously shot on studio sets, spiced up with the odd piece of stock footage. (Not surprisingly, considering it was shot while the world was tearing itself apart). Following in the spirit of its woeful Churchill radio impersonator, there are some desperately wobbly plane models super-imposed over a bombing raid on an evacuation convoy. It’s a swift and pacey film – but also a rather slight one.

Because The Pied Piper is only willing to go so far in showing the horrors of war. It will let its precocious children see a dead body but not us. The sense of peril, about what might happen to Howard if caught, isn’t quite there. Perhaps because it’s somehow implausible that anyone caught on the French-Swiss border in 1940 would think their best option was crossing occupied France rather than shooting across the border to Switzerland (those League of Nation parents must have been kicking themselves). The danger of Nazi pursuit only kicks in half-way through the film – until then, Howard doesn’t even bother to conceal his nationality. It’s not helped by The Pied Piper (like most 40s war films) totally failing to wrap its head around what a concentration camp is.

There is an episodic feeling to the film’s half, before most of the second half settles into a single location, with our heroes under the thumb of Otto Preminger dutifully trotting out one of his occasional angry Nazis. Along the way they pick up Anne Baxter, wrapping her tongue around an “ooo la la” accent that sticks out even more when several other members of the cast (including Marcel Dalio as a defiant fisherman) are actual refugee expats. But then part of the film’s family appeal is there isn’t too much peril.

The final act does introduce some – the introduction of a firing squad threat feels suddenly quite extreme – but also resolves all problems with the sort of contrivance that feels a bit like the story has been painted into a corner and without any other way to get out of it. There is a romantic innocence to it in some ways, the hope that any character could have a secret, sentimental weakness that might make them do a good thing. And the capture of our heroes does allow Woolley to showcase another weapon in his arsenal, his ability for proud, stiff-backed defiance in the face of evil.

The Pied Piper is sweet, charming, flies by quickly and offers a perfect, tailor-made star turn. The kids, thankfully, manage to not be too grating (in fact you even kind of wish Roddy McDowell and Peggy Ann Garner were given more to do). It’s a surprise to find a story so slight as this breathing in the vaulted air of the Oscar Best Picture short list, but it’s hard to argue against the relief of watching everyday heroism in the midst of war.

The Sundowners (1960)

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

Director: Fred Zinnemann

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)

Laughton dominates in a dry, rather stately adaptation of the romance between the Brownings

Director: Sidney Franklin

Cast: Norma Shearer (Elizabeth Barrett), Fredric March (Robert Browning), Charles Laughton (Edward Moulton-Barrett), Maureen O’Sullivan (Henriette Barrett), Katharine Alexander (Arabel Barrett), Ralph Forbes (Captain Surtees Cook), Marion Clayton (Bella Hadley), Una O’Connor (Wilson), Leo G Carroll (Dr Ford-Waterlow)

The poet Elizabeth Barrett (Norma Shearer) is confined to her bed (she hasn’t stepped out of the room let alone gone downstairs or stood up in years) and in love with fellow poet Robert Browning (Fredric March), a love he returns with all the giddy enthusiasm of a schoolboy. But despite what you might think, that’s not the real drama in The Barretts of Wimpole Street and there are precious few emotional obstacles between these two. The real drama comes from Elizabeth’s relationship with her father, Edward Moulton-Barrett (Charles Laughton), a possessive control-freak with an unhealthy concern for his daughter who he wants to keep locked away so only he can possess her. Can Elizabeth escape her gilded prison?

Adapted from a highly thought-of Broadway hit, and about two of the most famous poets of the nineteenth century, it’s not a surprise Barretts of Wimpole Street was singled out as another perfect vehicle to cement Norma Shearer as the leading actress of her age. Despite her Oscar-nomination here, as is often the case with Shearer, when called upon to do ‘serious drama’, her mannered breathlessness can be a little trying. That quality is present throughout Barretts, her delivery crammed with heightened earnestness and dramatic intensity. But, there is a real commitment, and she gives a decent performance, capturing Elizabeth’s complex feelings towards her father and the fierceness of her determination – even if it’s a performance that always feels like she’s trying too hard to be taken seriously.

You can say much of the same thing about the rest of this, at times very stately, film, which wears its theatrical, single-set roots very heavily. Shot with a safely staid camera, that frames the action with little invention, it can feel slow and artificial. As with so many other films about writers, we also get little sense of what drives them. The only moment we touch on this is the first meeting between Browning and Elizabeth, with March’s Browning bounding around the room apologetically trying to explain his work while distracted with romantic attraction. For Elizabeth herself, other than settling at her desk once with pen in hand – Shearer cocking her head to the left with a wistful stare as she thinks carefully – you could quite easily forget she is a celebrated poet.

What is perhaps refreshing is how uncomplicated the romance element of the story is. There are no doubts at all about the affections, and no sense of compromise or danger that anything (other than her father) will come between them. March actually seems slightly lost on some level with how little there is to play with Browning: other than a giddy enthusiasm and romantic earnestness, he has almost nothing to do and is all but banished from the film’s most dramatic moments. There is an undeniable chemistry between him and Shearer, but so little stakes between them – and Browning remains largely a pleasant cipher – that it’s very hard to really find much interest in their scenes.

But then that’s because the drama is at home, and the ogre dominating the Barrett household. Franklin communicates the dread this figure holds over his children, even subconsciously, from the start: during the opening shots, we are shown repeated close-ups of Shearer grinning as each of her several siblings enter, culminating in a shot of fixed neutrality when her father enters. This domineering monster controls every inch of his children’s life, makes it clear that disobedience (like getting married) will be met by instant disinheritance and banishment from the family home. A home that is run entirely to his whims and personal tastes.

Who better to play this vile bully filled with fear and loneliness, than Charles Laughton? The film had to remove all references to Edward’s potentially incestuous interest in his daughter but, as Laughton so memorably said, the censors couldn’t ‘cut the glint in my eye’. And they felt fine leaving in dark implications that Barrett’s later children were not “born of love”. Laughton’s performance is towering, a ramrod stiff body of frustrated desires, whose instinct when he feels threatened is to lash out with cruel, verbal and physical violence. He thinks nothing of literally twisting the arms of his daughter Henriette (a very good Maureen O’Sullivan) to extract her confession of loving another man, just as he feels free to browbeat her into swearing on the bible to renounce him.

His creepy parental desire – at one point he sits with Elizabeth and earnestly desires her to stay with him, with all the intense longing of a lover – is palpable, his frustrated sexuality clear. There is a great scene where Marion Clayton’s lisping cousin Bella playfully sits on his lap and asks him to kiss her: Laughton grabs the back of her head for a full-on snog, then leaps instantly to his feet as if terrified that she will detect his obvious arousal. At another, he sweeps a tired Elizabeth into his arms like some sort of Rochester to carry her up to her bedroom.

This but scratches the surface of Laughton’s portrayal of suppressed desires. All of them are bottled up in an intense fear and vulnerability that Edward has of being abandoned – Laughton almost trembles with fear at the prospect of any of his children leaving. At great length with Elizabeth, he hammers away at her confidence, a torrent of passive aggressive words stressing her weakness and incapability to survive. It comes from a deep insecurity but, whenever we feel even a moment of sympathy for this psychologically damaged man, he reverts to bullying, shouting and a willingness to commit acts of petty, damaging cruelty.

Laughton’s superb performance (rightly he was immensely put-out not to be Oscar nominated) not only elevates the film (all its most memorable moments feature him) but also draws some of her best work out of Shearer, who raises her game to match him in their confrontation scenes. The drama of these sequences is the heart of a film that otherwise fails to bring much energy, despite some good performances (including Una O’Connor, giving one of her finest maids, full of exasperated, supportive patience). Away from Laughton, the film feels slight and slow. But with him, it’s a portrait of creepy possessiveness and misdirected desire. Even if, of course, no one could say that at the time.

Since You Went Away (1944)

Overlong attempt to make an American Mrs Miniver which can’t sustain its focus over three hours

Director: James Cromwell

Cast: Claudette Colbert (Anne Hilton), Jennifer Jones (Jane Hilton), Joseph Cotton (Lt Tony Willett), Shirley Temple (Bridget Hilton), Monty Woolley (Colonel William G Smollett), Lionel Barrymore (Clergyman), Robert Walker (Corporal William G Smollett II), Hattie McDaniel (Fidelia), Agnes Moorehead (Emily Hawkins), Nazimova (Zofia Koslowska), Albert Basserman (Dr Golden), Keenan Wynn (Lt Solomon)

With America embroiled in the Second World War, David O. Selznick felt it was his duty to do his bit. And what better way than making a movie. So was born Since You Went Away, adapted by Selznick himself from Margaret Buell Wilder’s epistolary novel, about a woman writing letters to her husband while he fights the good fight abroad. It was nothing more or less than Selznick’s attempt to create a Mrs Miniver for America, to bring the tribulations of those left behind to the screen.

Our family is the Hiltons. Over the course of 1943, they wait for news of husband and father Tim as serves abroad. With Tim’s income gone, wife Anne (Claudette Colbert) needs to make economies and bring in a lodger, avuncular retired Colonel Smollett (Monty Woolley). This brings into their lives Smollett’s nephew Bill (Robert Walker), who begins a romance with Anne’s oldest daughter Jane (Jennifer Jones), while her younger daughter Bridget (Shirley Temple) builds a friendship with their lodger. The family is aided by friends, not least Tim’s best friend Tony Willett (Joseph Cotton), the subject of a long-standing crush of Jane’s and is himself in love with Anne. Over the year, the family does everything they can to support the war effort.

There is probably a fine couple of hours in Since You Went Away. Unfortunately, it’s buried in a film so long it sometimes feels like you are living a year in the life in real-time. It’s not helped by the film’s sentimental scope often repeating the same beats over and over again, a soapy message of the overwhelming importance of hearth and home and the unbreakable bonds of love that keep families faithfully together forever (it’s ironic that this paean to duty and fidelity was made while Selznick was breaking up his marriage for an affair with Jones, while she ended her marriage to Robert Walker).

Essentially, the film has made most of its points and observations by the half-way mark, and is reduced to repeating them again in the second half, all accompanied by Max Steiner’s overly insistent score (which won the film’s only Oscar) which hammers home every single emotional point with laboured riffs on songs like No Place Like Home or Come Let Us Adore Him. Much of the drama is undermined by having almost no sense of threat: unlike Mrs Miniver there is zero chance of any of the characters actually being bombed at home but, just like that film, there is also absolutely no chance at all that Anne will be tempted by the heavily suggestive flirtation of Tony.

Instead, there is a slightly cosy air of gentleness under Since You Went Away. We are told the war, and loss of Tim’s salary, has caused hardship for the family – but it’s the sort of hardship that sees a hugely wealthy family adjusting to merely being comfortably well-off. The main concessions seem to be setting up a vegetable patch and taking in a well-paying lodger (who, of course, becomes an honorary family member). Even their Black maid (Hattie McDaniel, in a truly thankless part) is so devoted that she continues to serve them during her time-off from her new job (for no pay). There is never even a suggestion they may need to move from their massive five-bedroomed house or stop moving in their affluent circle.

This circle is represented by Agnes Moorehead, sneering like a suburban witch wrapped in ostentatious furs, who scorns any idea of pulling her weight during the war and crows about how cleverly she’s exploiting rationing loopholes. This is contrasted with the families growing civic duty, embodied by Jennifer Jones’ Jane casting aside her giddy teenage years to devotedly work as a volunteer nurse with war wounded (much to the disgust of Moorehead) and Anne’s shift to training as a welder in a munitions factory. Since You Went Away heavily pushes the angle that everyone must do their bit, hammered home by refugee welder Nazimova who gives a misty eyed reading of the famous Statue of Liberty message.

What Since You Went Away starts to feel like at times is an over-inflated, Little Women-ish drama, with war as a backdrop. There are moments of loss: Tim is reported missing, cause for much stoic resilience and heartbreak and the son of the local store is killed early on. The film has a tragic romance in the form of Jones and Walker’s Smollett Jnr, which goes through a gentle flirtation, playful hay-rolling into an overly empathetic departing train goodbye (expertly parodied in Airplane!), that holds together due to the charm of the actors. But the main message is one of cosy reassurance: it’s a million miles away from the more doubtful The Best Years of Our Lives – there’s no doubt Tim will settle straight back into a world unchanged from that he left behind.

The characters are pretty uniformly predictable and conventional, but are delivered effectively. Colbert, in many ways with a rather dull part, effectively underplays as the endlessly patient, dutiful and calm Anne, bottling up her doubts and fears into her diary. She makes a generous still centre of the film, even if the film doesn’t call for one minute of playfulness for her as an actor. She cedes much of the best ground to Jones (Selznick’s complete control of the film surely played a role in this), who is full of radiant sparkiness, even if her teenage giddiness gets a little wearing. Jones, looking in her twenties, plays the role as if she was in her teens while Shirley Temple, looking in her early teens, plays her like she was still at elementary school. Needless to say, there is no chance of either of these girls causing serious trouble or going off the rails.

Opposite them, Monty Woolley delivers exactly what is required as the outwardly gruff Colonel whose frosty exterior inevitably melts over time. Woolley does bring a lot of depth to Smollett’s quiet grief and playfulness from Smollett’s love-hate relationship with the families pet bulldog. Joseph Cotton just about manages to make Tony charming – charming enough that his hanging around and constantly flirtation with both mother and daughter isn’t too reminiscent of his psychopathic uncle in Shadow of Doubt. (In many ways, Tony is an overly insistent creep).

But the successes of the film are drowned by its absurd length and overly insistent sentimental hammering home of every single point. It does look fabulous – the shadow-laden photography of Lee Garmes and Stanley Cortez adds a great deal of noirish emotional depth – but it’s flatly directed (Cromwell was one of many directors on the project, including Selznick himself) and lacks pace. In trying to present a reassuring celebration of all-American family values, it frequently lets character and drama drift and never presents a plot development that surprises or challenges. It’s no Mrs Miniver.

No Other Choice (2025)

Jet black comedy, that makes strong, entertaining political points while testing our sympathies

Director: Park Chan-wook

Cast: Lee Byung-hun (Yoo Man-su), Son Ye-jin (Lee Mi-ri), Park Hee-soon (Choi Seon-chul), Lee Sung-min (Goo Beom-mo), Yeom Hye-ran (Lee A-ra), Cha Seung-won (Ko Si-jo), Yoo Yeon-seok (Oh Jin-ho)

Technology changes the world, sometimes so much it leaves people behind. That’s the starting point of Park Chan-wook’s dark (very dark!) comic drama, No Other Choice, which looks at the surreally bleak ends sudden unemployment in a changing labour market has on a regular joe who prides himself on being his family’s provider. It takes Parasite and mixes it with Kind Hearts and Coronets, but with the mood dyed jet black and a complex anti-hero who becomes darker the more we learn about him.

That anti-hero is Yoo Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), a hard-working paper industry supervisor, right up until his new employers follow-up a 25-year loyalty reward with a P45. Because who needs so humans when your factory can be run by a machine? Flash-forward a year later and Man-su is desperate: he can’t land a new job in the reduced paper industry and his wife Lee Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) is suggesting it’s time to sell the home he spent a decade working to buy. Man-su decides on a desperate new plan: identify his more qualified rivals for a possible vacancy, murder them, then murder paper plant manager Choi Seon-chul (Park Hee-soon) and apply for his job. What could wrong?

This extreme response to feeling irrelevant in a changing world becomes the heart of Park Chan-wook’s black comedy, directed with his customary sharp-edged beauty with images and camera angles that make you want to swoon. It also walks a tight line between portraying Man-su as sympathetic, an (at first) laughably incompetent killer and, increasingly, a deeply flawed, bitterly resentful man, who resolutely refuses to adapt himself in any way to a changing world.

At first of course it’s hard not to feel sorry for Man-su, cast aside like a dirty off-cut from a company he has given his whole life too. No Other Choice takes its title from the cringe-worthy, rent-a-therapy mantra a jaw-droppingly shallow careers advisor pushes a roomful of redundant staff to repeat over and over again. It’s a mantra that stresses their lack of power and also bluntly sums up how they feel about their future: there are sod all real choices out there, only to adapt or die.

That’s certainly what Man-su, a hard-working supervisor respected by his staff, finds a year later. In a beautiful static shot of grinding irrelevance, a year flashes by of Man-su humiliatingly stacking shelves having failed time-and-time again at applications. A parade of humiliation follows: Man-su stripping out of his overalls in front of his unsympathetic (much younger) manager to attend an interview (shot in security camera distance long-shot); Man-su flunking an interview with clumsy answers to obvious questions, squinting at his interviewers sitting in front of a sun-bathed window; the smug father of his adopted son’s best friend offering to buy a house Man-su has poured his heart and soul into, while constantly disparaging it; literally begging outside a bathroom for Seon-chul to read his CV….

Is it any wonder he is overcome with something between resentment and despair? All that hard-earned respect, years of experience and mastery of the intricate details of paper production means nothing. All those promises of working hard and getting your due reward exposed as a puff of bullshit.

Maybe murder is a fair way to deal with this. After all, it’s not really his choice, right? Advertising a job vacancy at a fake company, he collects his rival’s CVs and carefully selects the better qualified to remove them from the jobs market. He then embarks on a life of crime which Park depicts with a haphazard chaos. Man-su is no expert: he needs multiple attempts to even take a pop at his first target, leaves key evidence behind at crime scenes (only chance saves from arrest) and makes a mess of hiding his tracks.

Lee Byung-hun has a gloriously disbelieving look to him, constantly unable to fully process what’s happening to him. Instead, he’s trying desperately to keep up a front that slowly collapses. It’s a brilliant performance, one that keeps us liking Man-su, even as his previously well-hidden dark side bubbles to the surface. Man-su prides himself as a careful, methodical gardener and he applies the same to his family, who he wants to protect and nurture. Each murder sees him crush more and more of this quality in himself: the man who tries to shelter his first victim from his wife’s infidelity, later finds himself comfortable dispatching others with cold-faced, determined ruthlessness.

It’s part of what makes No Other Choice such a genuinely surprising film. It would have been very easy for Park to embrace the dark comedy of Man-su’s Kind Hearts removal of obstacles. You could well imagine a Hitchcockian black comedy version. But what Park does is make us question our sympathies with Man-su. Pride is shown as his major flaw. Despite a multitude of transferable skills, he never considers new careers (something he even berates one of his targets for not doing, a rant clearly aimed as much at himself). He refuses free treatment for his tooth infection from Mi-ri’s charming dentist boss. He doesn’t attempt to change his lifestyle – or outgoings – during unemployment, burning through his redundancy package. He can’t imagine anything other than stepping back into an identical position to the one he has left.

On top of this, he’s an insecure, fragile man. A recovering alcoholic, Mi-ri makes clear when on the booze he was short-tempered, even striking their son. He becomes consumed with jealousy at her friendship with her boss (even, pathetically, asking to smell her underwear to check she has remained faithful). He’s very aware of his poor background and limited academic achievements. It becomes clear his job had grown to define him as a man of worth: without it he’s terrified that he is nothing, for all Mi-ri makes clear she doesn’t feel like this (much like the wife of his first victim makes clear its not her husband’s unemployment that’s the problem, more his drunken, self-destructive, self-pity).

Park doesn’t make it easy with Man-su’s victims. These aren’t comic portraits, but deeply human figures, both of whom are eerie self-reflections of Man-su. Goo Beuom is a tragically self-pitying alcoholic. Ko Si-jo is a devoted father of a young daughter, working over time to try and provide his family. These aren’t comic caricatures we can enjoy watching get bumped off (like multiple Alec Guinnesses) but living-breathing people, touched by tragedy. That’s why Man-su can barely bring himself to look at them when the moment comes.

It’s a darkness that starts running more and more through No Other Choice as Man-su’s determination to regain his status starts to destroy the very things he claims to value most: his family, principles and peace of mind. No Other Choice is fiercely critical of a world of AI-powered industrialisation where human workers are irrelevant: but Chan-wook refuses to romanticise the bitter realities of the people left enraged and resentful at the impact on their lives. It makes for an uncomfortable and challenging comedy, full of moral quandaries and sharp political statements.