Category: Film about friendship

Becket (1964)

Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton make unlikely friends (and then enemies) in Becket

Director: Peter Glenville

Cast: Richard Burton (Thomas Becket), Peter O’Toole (Henry II), John Gielgud (Louis VII of France), Donald Wolfit (Bishop Gilbert Foliot), Martita Hunt (Empress Matilda), Pamela Brown (Eleanor of Aquitaine), David Weston (Brother John), Sian Phillips (Gwendolen), Felix Aylmer (Archbishop of Canterbury), Paolo Stoppa (Pope Alexander III), Gino Cervi (Cardinal Zambelli)

Burton and O’Toole in the same movie? There must have been a few late night benders on that shoot… You suspect actually that the backstage fun might have been just a little more sprightly and engaging than the movie itself, a lavish 1960s Hollywood Prestige film of English history. Based on Jean Anouilh’s semi-satirical play, it translates the clash between Church and State under Henry II into a very personal conflict between two men who each feel the other has let them down.

Thomas Becket (Richard Burton) is a Saxon who has risen high in the service of Henry II (Peter O’Toole) at a time when all the top jobs are held by Normans. Becket and Henry do everything together: hunting, hawking, whoring, you name it, the two of them are inseparable. But while both are sharply intelligent men, Henry is basically lazy and principally interested in enjoying life, while Becket always has a slight streak of responsibility for his people and their rights. But despite this, the two men both have England’s interests at heart and a strong friendship. So when Henry makes Becket Archbishop of Canterbury, it should work a treat, right? Well wrong, because Becket quickly begins to feel his loyalty is to the Church and God, not to Henry – and soon a debate over the legal rights of the church has blown up into a full scale clash between the two former friends. Will no one rid Henry of this turbulent priest?

Becket is a fairly sharply written, waspish play about the love/hate relationship between two men, but its themes and ideas are basically secondary to the showcasing opportunities it gives to its two lead actors. That’s pretty much what happens with this film: for all the ups and downs of the plot, the thing that really lifts this film are those two performances. Take that away and you essentially have a stately period pace, flatly and unimaginatively filmed with the look-at-the-scenery-and-costumes steadiness of other films of this genre and time. So it’s just as well that both leads are clearly having a whale of time.

Burton invests Thomas Becket with a quiet authority and a growing sense of something that, if it’s not morality, is at least a sort of moral certitude. Burton’s Becket is not the straightforward good-guy: his stances are always governed at least partly by his own pride and ambition. His defence of the Church is partly motivated by the need to secure his position, and in his career beforehand he constantly shows that he is won’t let doing the right thing damage his position at the court. But there are also touches of genuine faith throughout, and Burton plays the monologues imploring God for guidance with earnest conviction. Alongside this, he plays Becket with a great deal of wry observance and subtle wit that makes this kaleidoscopic character constantly fascinating: you never quite know what he is thinking.

Burton’s restraint also allows O’Toole more room in the more expansive role of Henry II. The powerful king – proud, controlling, intelligent and bombastic – was always a perfect role for O’Toole: indeed he would play it again four years later in another play adaptation, The Lion in Winter (becoming one of the few actors to get two Oscar nominations for the same character). O’Toole roars through the film, bringing immense energy and humour to Henry’s many scenes of intense speechifying. But what O’Toole does so well is balance this with a genuine sense of vulnerability, a genuine pain at losing Becket’s friendship. For all the power and control, O’Toole understands that Henry is essentially a very lonely man with only one man anywhere near his equal. O’Toole’s sharply intelligent, dynamic performance is a real treat.

And it feeds into the underlying theme of the film: this sense of unrequited love between the two men. Henry, for all his egotism, is clearly in love on some level with Becket: a fact that Becket seems aware of, but doesn’t quite return with the same intensity. And in fact, to double Henry’s pain, it feels like the friendship is one partly driven by Henry’s position rather than something genuine between the two men – Becket is always more guarded and more critical as a companion. Though of course that is fair enough: Henry is, however good-naturedly, a supreme ruler who cares little for the welfare of the Saxons under his rule, happy to help himself to attractive women from the peasantry if he wants them. But then perhaps it’s Becket’s very distance, his certain level of speaking truth to power, that makes him so appealing to Henry: when Becket is around, Henry has competition for smartest guy in the room.

There is a lot going on between the two leads, so it’s not surprising that much of the rest of the film doesn’t get a look in. For the other performers, John Gielgud landed an Oscar nomination for his two scenes (barely five minutes) as an arch and manipulative King of France, while Donald Wolfit is all puffed-up pomposity as Becket’s church rival. But the film is only focused on the two men and their political rivalry, so the context is always sketched in quickly, and the energy drops out of the film noticeably when they are apart. The film wants to frame the rivalry so much as a personal one that it doesn’t develop another interest in the political issues – so when scenes are obliged to focus on this, you feel the film starting to drag.

But that might also be because Anouilh’s play is famously historically inaccurate. For starters, Becket wasn’t Saxon, so his early lack of social standing makes no sense. The Constitutions of Clarendon (historically the reason for the falling-out in the first place) don’t merit a mention. Henry’s wife Eleanor of Aquitaine is presented as a shrew rather than one of the most intelligent women of the era, while Henry is also shown to be on poor terms with his mother, again contrary to the truth.

But that stuff all stems from the play, and in the end it hardly matters as the film is positioning itself as the tale of a friendship turned sour between two men. O’Toole and Burton are sublime, and if the direction and film-making around them is pretty pedestrian (although the film looks great and has an impressive score) it doesn’t really matter in an actors’ piece like this. Most of what is good from the play is carried over to the film, and the dialogue and speeches are often very strong. It’s a very stately and rather overlong play that doesn’t really keep the momentum up. But it’s still enjoyable, still has plenty to admire and even if it’s overlong and dry, it gives you performances that really sing.

The Deer Hunter (1978)

Robert De Niro goes into a journey into the dark heart of America’s Vietnam experience in The Deer Hunter

Director: Michel Cimino

Cast: Robert De Niro (Mike Vronsky), Christopher Walken (Nick Chevotarevich), John Savage (Steven Pushkov), John Cazale (Stan), Meryl Streep (Linda), George Dzundza (John Welsh), Pierre Sagui (Julian Grinda), Shirley Stoler (Steven’s mother), Chuck Aspregren (Peter Axelrod)

The Deer Hunter is a mighty 1970s milestone of American cinema. Michael Cimino’s Vietnam story is a big poetic epic – its plot is slim but it’s all about the atmosphere, and Cimino’s understanding of the impact that the trauma of war has on different types of men. For vast stretches of the film nothing much in particular happens, followed by short, sharp bursts of gut-wrenching tension – but these have such impact because we have taken the time to see these men’s ordinary lives.

Mike Vronsky (Robert De Niro), Nick Chevotarevich (Christopher Walken) and Steve Pushkov (John Savage) are three Polish-American friends working in a Pittsburgh steel yard, who have volunteered to serve in Vietnam. Before they ship out, they celebrate Steve’s wedding, in a traditional Polish ceremony, and go for one last deer hunt in the woods together – where Mike outlines his philosophy of “one clean shot” (or “This is This”) and the near sacred experience of man communing with nature and hunting. In Vietnam, the three friends are captured by the Viet Cong and forced to take part in a chilling competition of Russian roulette. The impact of these experiences changes their lives – and not for the better – as they struggle to adjust as the war comes to an end.

Michael Cimino was seen at the time as the next great director. This reputation lasted little more than two years, when the box office disaster of his next film Heaven’s Gate (with its tales of ludicrous excess and Cimino’s overly demanding perfectionism) led to the destruction of a studio and effectively ended his career. To be honest, the roots of all this are there in The Deer Hunter. Cimino fought tooth and nail to prevent anything in the film being cut – and he lucked out that he had a few supportive producers and a picture powered by great performances and capturing something of the spirit of the age. Because just this once, more was indeed more.

In some ways The Deer Hunter is an over-indulgent mess. It’s very long, its plot is very slight, it’s very pleased with itself, the camera dawdles for ages through first the friends preparing for a wedding, the wedding itself and then a long hunting trip. This takes up a solid opening hour and 15 minutes of this long film – and progresses the plot forward very little other than establishing the characters and their relationships. But somehow, despite this, the film is magnetic during this. I’m almost not quite sure why, because nothing really happens at great length, but there is a sort of poetic majesty about these sequences that just makes them work.

It’s also a perfect entrée into our characters. After basically sitting and watching them for over an hour do little more than live their everyday lives, we really feel like we understand them. We know Mike is distant, controlled, slightly repressed but prone to moments of exhibitionist wildness that suggest primal, raging emotions beneath the surface. We also understand, with his famous “this is this” speech (“what the fuck does that mean?” his frustrated friend-cum-adversary Stan blurts out), that he is reaching for some sort of symbolic, expressionist understanding of man’s place in the world. He wants to be a poet but doesn’t have the abilities of expression to achieve that.

Similarly, we see Nick as a more carefree, open spirit, someone more in touch with expressing himself and more ready to seize life by the horns. He’s also got a gentle, conciliatory quality to him – out of all the characters, he fits most naturally into the role of confidante. Steven is a child, just trying to do his best in the world, but too naïve for the grown-up world. Most crucially we also see how they interact with each other, and how they relate to women.

Most women in the film are clearly of very little importance to the characters. Wives and girlfriends are very much on the outskirts of the macho world of the steelyard. And they are of similarly little concern to the men when they come home. Meryl Streep – excellent in an almost nothing part, really it’s amazing how slimly this role is written – plays a woman torn between feelings for Mike and Nick, but the men’s feelings for her waver between uncertainty, indifference and confused affection. Barely any other woman gets a look in, certainly not Steve’s wife who is treated with open suspicion as some sort of floozy.

All this thematic manly matiness then explodes in the later acts of the film, as the after-impact of war – and PTSD, although the word is never used – hits our characters square in the face. And there are few things that will hit you as square on as a bullet. Cimino of course faced waves of criticism about his inclusion of the grisly gambit (no evidence that it was used by the Viet Cong) – but as a metaphor for going to war, and the trauma it will do to your mind, there are few things better than a “sport” which involves placing a gun to your head and pulling the trigger.

These scenes are already tension-inducing to watch (you can’t help but put yourself in the shoes of the men putting that gun to their heads and wondering if they’ll hear a click or nothing ever again) but Cimino ramps up the pressure here, helped by truly powerhouse performances by De Niro, Walken and Savage. The unbelievable intensity of these scenes, and the total gear shift from everything you’ve seen up to this point in the movie, is a justification of Cimino’s slow pace earlier. After a luxurious opening sequence where we’ve watched the guys fool around, dance, sing and play pool, to suddenly be thrown into this grim, despairing, terrifying situation works brilliantly.

No wonder the rest of the film feels as much in shock as the characters do. Walken is exceptional (and Oscar-winning) as the sensitive soul whose spirit and will to live are destroyed by the incident, who no longer sees any point going home and barely even (by the end) seems to remember who or what he was. Cimino even makes the film feel colder, drabber and chillier in the third act back in Pittsburgh, following Mike’s return home – and his utter inability to deal with his experiences or communicate the horrors of what he has gone through to his friends.

This is also where the film gains immeasurably from a truly sublime performance from De Niro as Mike. In any other actor’s career, this performance would be the stand-out, so it says a lot for De Niro that it’s so often overlooked. But he underplays to devastating effect, as an inarticulate, slightly shy man who has a sheen of confidence, who will do what it needs to survive, who has a poetry and power of love in him that he can’t really express or understand. De Niro is truly brilliant in this film, a still centre that bears almost the total weight of Cimino’s thematic intentions. Essentially De Niro kinda plays an everyman Vietnam vet, and the burden of a whole country after the war without ever having the release of fireworks. He’s excellent.

But then the whole film is a little bit excellent. The Deer Hunter is a masterpiece of a sort, a compelling, dark, tragic and unsettling piece of poetic movie-making. Saying that, there’s something uncomfortable in its depiction of its non-American characters – to a man they are all violence loving degenerates – but then in a film that focuses on the unsettling experience of these Hicksville Americans in a land they don’t understand and can’t deal with, this is at least justifiable in a sense. The Deer Hunter’s main problem at points is that it is a rather pompous, pleased with itself film, but it’s not so much the story that is so strong here but the telling – and Cimino’s telling is first class.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Robert Downey Jnr and Jude Law made a great odd couple in Sherlock Holmes

Director: Guy Richie

Cast: Robert Downey Jnr (Sherlock Holmes), Jude Law (Dr John Watson), Rachel McAdams (Irene Adler), Mark Strong (Lord Henry Blackwood), Kelly Reilly (Mary Morstan), Eddie Marsan (Inspector Lestrade), Hans Matherson (Lord Coward), James Fox (Sir Thomas Rotheram), Geraldine James (Mrs Hudson), William Houston (Constable Clark), William Hope (Ambassador Standish)

I don’t think there has been a single character brought to the screen more often than Sherlock Holmes. Sure there are certain tent-pole performances (Rathbone, Brett, Cumberbatch) that people automatically think of when you say “Sherlock Holmes”, but there are hundreds of others. It’s a character that survives constant re-imagination. In fact, you could argue it’s pretty much vital to bring something of your own to the table when putting together a Sherlock Holmes dramatisation. It’s what made Sherlock so successful. And it’s something that works very well here.

Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jnr) is part Bohemian artist, part mad scientist, part kickboxer. The sort of guy who can think so far ahead he can plan out an entire fight in his mind before it even begins. He’s partnered up with determined, smart, handy-with-a-sword Dr Watson (Jude Law). With Watson preparing to move out of 221B to marry Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly), they take on their last case: defeating creepy Dracula-lite Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), who claims to have returned from the dead and wants to take over the British Empire. Along the way they are helped (or hindered) by the mysterious Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) an old flame of Holmes’.

Guy Ritchie’s rollicking adventure is actually a huge amount of fun that, underneath the crashes and bangs, actually has a really strong respect for the original stories (the film is littered with references and quotes from the originals, none of which feel shoe-horned in except maybe Rachel McAdams’ Irene Adler, perhaps because the producers felt Holmes needed a love interest to stop any worries that he might be a bit too much in love with Watson). Ritchie has crafted a Holmes-Watson relationship that repositions them as a sort of odd-couple surrogate brothers, a marriage of equals (and make no mistake, a marriage is basically what this Holmes and Watson have). It’s big and silly, but then so were the original stories (The Creeping Man anyone?).

Ritchie is a film-maker it’s easy to find faintly annoying, with his faux-geezer attitudes, his bizarre philosophical views and his love of the poor-taste gag. But on this film he’s basically a director-for-hire rather than putting his own story together and, you know what, putting this director into a studio strait-jacket is actually pretty good. It smacks some disciple on him, makes him drop his indulgent and poor-taste jokes and instead brings his strengths as a director – his sense of pace, his eye for a witty image, his rollicking sense of fun – to the fore. That’s probably why this is his most enjoyable and best film.

It’s a film that mainly works because Downey Jnr and Law make a terrific pairing as Holmes and Watson. They have great chemistry, they spark off each other extremely well as performers and they really give the sense of two life-long devoted friends. Both actors are very good here. The film hits these notes of male friendship extremely well – a mixture of mocking and abuse, mixed with devotion and loyalty. The film gets the balance of these things exactly right: from debates to fights, you really get a sense that these two are honorary brothers, almost a bickering old married couple.

In fact, the whole film revolves quietly around this relationship coming under threat (as Holmes sees it) of Watson leaving Holmes to get married – although, nicely, the film makes clear his fears of Mary are completely unfounded. Part of the dual engine of the film is Holmes continuing to tempt Watson into getting more and more involved with his cases, because he doesn’t want to lose his friend. It’s actually quite sweet. As are the protective feelings both have for the other: Watson knows Holmes puts himself at ridiculous risks, in turn Holmes shows a gentle worry for Watson’s gambling addiction (a popular Sherlockian society interpolation from references in the story).

All this warm, brotherly stuff from two excellent performers is built into a dramatic, thrillingly shot, series of action and detection scenes. The film’s big gimmick is Holmes’ ability to use his analytical abilities to accurately predict the outcome of fights (which the film communicates with slow motion and forensic narration by Downey Jnr, before staging the entire fight again at real time). It’s actually a fairly neat way of turning his deductive abilities into a visual language. Alongside this, plenty of this great fun – exciting or, as in Holmes’ battle with a 7ft giant, funny. All hugely entertaining.

Placing the focus on this relationship and the action does mean that the mystery elements of the plot get a bit short-changed. The story is a rather silly series of near-Dracula style high-Gothic mysteries that may or may not be real (all these occult references more than echo The Young Sherlock Holmes!). There isn’t much in the way of the small intricate puzzles of the early stories here – but then plenty of the later ones became increasingly hyper-real Gothic stories, so I guess that is fine. Mark Strong does a decent job as the villainous Blackwood, using his sinister looks and imperious voice extremely well.

It also looks wonderful – the photography and set design is marvellous – and the score by Hans Zimmer must be one of his best ever, a sprightly mix of Irish music, Westerns and Music Hall. Ritchie directs it with a wonderfully, tongue-in-cheek, entertaining sprightliness, like Sherlock Holmes meets Indiana Jones. Holmes more than survives his re-imagination as an action superhero – and in fact he brings across a lot of the tone and character of the original book along with him. A terrific entertainment and a more than worthy entry to the Holmes movie cannon.

Midnight Run (1988)

Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin go on the road in terrific buddy-movie action comedy Midnight Run

Director: Martin Brest

Cast: Robert De Niro (Jack Walsh), Charles Grodin (Jonathan “The Duke” Mardukas), Yaphet Kotto (Special Agent Alonzo Mosely), John Ashton (Marvin Dorfler), Dennis Farina (Jimmy Serrano), Joe Pantoliano (Eddie Moscone), Richard Foronjy (Tony), Robert Miranda (Joey), Jack Kehoe (Jerry Geisler), Wendy Phillips (Gail), Danielle DuClos (Denise Walsh), Philip Baker Hall (Sidney)

There are few comic set-ups you can get better mileage from than an “odd couple” – they meet, they argue, they grow closer, they fight again, they reconcile. It’s a standard formula. Midnight Run throws this together with a road trip formula (two people have to get from A to B but via every other letter of the alphabet). Really it should be hugely predictable. But Midnight Run is well written, very well acted and hugely fun – it manages to feel both light and frothy, but also sufficiently real and dangerous. It’s a great comic movie.

Jack Walsh (Robert De Niro) is a down-on-his-luck bounty hunter. Having been run out of the Chicago police force years ago for not taking a bribe, he’s skilled at his job but fundamentally unlucky and disenchanted. He’s looking for one big job to get him out: and it comes when mob accountant Jonathan “The Duke” Mardukas (Charles Grodin) skips bail. Hired by bail bondsman Eddie Moscone (Joe Pantoliano), Walsh has four days to find the Duke bring him back to LA before his bail is forfeit – manage it and he’ll get a cool $100k. But the Duke has stolen millions from the mob – so they want him dead, the FBI want him to testify, rival bounty hunters want to take him in – it’s all working out into a very long week for Walsh.

I really enjoyed Midnight Run when I first watched it years ago – and it’s been years since I’ve seen it – so it’s a delight to find it is as good as I remember. In fact, if anything, I think it might be better. It’s very funny – without anyone playing the material for overt or obvious laughs – but it’s also got a lot of soul. It never loses sight of the characters at its heart, in particular the loneliness, sadness and regret at the heart of Walsh, who presents a chip-on-his-shoulder stance to the world, to hide a decent and honourable man who can’t believe his principles are rewarded.

De Niro took on Midnight Run because he wanted to try comedy (he had just played Satan and Al Capone, so probably had earned a rest). Walsh is probably one of his best comedic performances, because he treats it with the investment he gave his greatest roles. He makes Walsh a real person – and he’s willing to downplay the comedy. He doesn’t mug or play to the camera (as he has more recently), he just plays the role with a slight wryness, a touch of lightness from the actor, while the role itself is kept real. His increasing frustration and world-weary resignation matches up perfectly with the hint of sadness he keeps under the surface. It’s a very effective performance.

It helps as well that De Niro allows Charles Grodin to carry the bulk of the comedy. Grodin was cast over the wishes of the studio – but it was an inspired move as the chemistry between the two actors is fantastic. They play off each other brilliantly, Grodin the more worldly, urbane and dry accountant, opposite the stressed out Walsh. Grodin is very funny, and very genuine – and he’s as whippersmart as the Duke himself, constantly keeping us on our toes as to when the Duke is telling the truth, and when he is pulling the wool over our (and Walsh’s) eyes.

The film throws these two into a series of increasingly hilarious events – from a panic-attack on a plane, to a sneaky piece of con-man work in a back-district town – but mixes it up with genuine moments where the two open up to each other (there is a wonderful scene where Walsh, under the Duke’s gentle probing, final opens up about his past). Each of these moments is wonderfully played, and works so well because the two actors have a genuine connection between them. Both lift the other: Grodin clearly helps De Niro relax and loosen up, De Niro encourages Grodin to bring a greater depth to his acting than ever before.

The contrivances and competing parties they take on also throw in plenty of fun problems. My recording from the BBC from years ago was somewhat sanitised, so it’s a surprise to hear how many times De Niro uses the f-word in this film! Martin Brest films all this with a controlled restraint – perhaps a little too much control (Yaphet Kotto has talked of his misery of performing endless takes of even the simplest scenes). But the dangers Walsh has to take on walk just the right line between feeling real, and feeling comedic.

So we have a sinister gang-boss (played with lip-smacking relish by Dennis Farina), but his underlings on the ground are realistic-feeling, but non-too-bright gangsters (sharp enough to keep track of Walsh, dull enough to constantly say the dumbest things). The Feds are led by a tensely wound-up Yaphet Kotto, but the comedy comes from his cold stares at his underlings, who are prone to state the obvious. John Ashton is good value as a rival bounty hunter, a regular joe not-as-smart-as-he-thinks, but more than smart enough to win the odd hand. Joe Pantoliano gives possibly one of his most Pantoliano-performances of weasily whininess as Walsh’s bail bondsman boss.

Midnight Run rattles along brilliantly. It’s hugely entertaining, with a series of surprisingly high-blown action set-pieces (all met with a dry reaction from the Duke – “I’m sure we’re completely safe” when a pursing gun-laden helicopter temporarily drops out of view – and in turn a furious “Will you shut the fuck up!” from Walsh). Martin Brest gets the balance just right between comedy and drama, and creates a very funny movie where you end up caring a great deal for the characters. It’s a road-movie, buddy comedy that feels fresh and really works because it manages not to feel like it’s trying too hard. And of course it has a great closing scene – and one of my favourite end-lines to a movie ever: “Looks like I’m walking”. Check it out. You’ll like it.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely explore the mysteries of the Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

Director: Billy Wilder

Cast: Robert Stephens (Sherlock Holmes), Colin Blakely (Dr John Watson), Geneviève Page (Gabrielle Valladon), Christopher Lee (Mycroft Holmes), Irene Handl (Mrs Hudson), Clive Revill (Rogozhin), Tamara Toumanova (Madame Petrova), Stanley Holloway (Gravedigger), Mollie Maureen (Queen Victoria), Catherine Lacey (Old Woman)

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes may just be the best Sherlock Holmes film you’ll see. It’s certainly one of the most original. Wilder’s semi-pastiche, described by Mark Gatiss as “both reverent and irreverent”, was a major box-office disaster at the time, but it’s a film that has grown richer and more enjoyable with age – particularly as we’ve caught up with its “fan fiction” style, its placing of the great detective in unusual emotional and social situations.

Wilder’s film follows two “buried” cases of Sherlock Holmes, both suppressed by Watson. In the first (taking up the first quarter of the film), Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens) and Dr Watson (Colin Blakely) are invited to a production of Swan Lakeby the Russian Royal Ballet, where a curious and unusual case is proposed to Holmes. In the second story, a mysterious woman suffering from amnesia (Geneviève Page) winds up on the doorstep of 221B Baker Street. Investigating who and what has brought her there leads into a case that covers continents, the upper echelons of the British government, and (possibly) the deeply hidden depths of Holmes’ own heart.

First off, it’s impossible to talk about Private Life without noting we only really have half the film. Not only did audiences not get it, nor did the studio. Both were expecting a traditional Holmes adaptation. Getting an amusing and wry exploration of Holmes’ psychology, built into a film where the great detective makes several errors, was categorically not that. So half the film was cut and chucked in the bin (including two whole cases). The footage no longer survives (there is an excellent recreation of what is left on Eureka’s new blu-ray) – but it’s a film that might have been.

It’s also a film that was apparently hell to make. Wilder had always been demanding – he demanded a completely faithful interpretation of his text, and often gave scrupulous line readings. It went to extremes here: epic rehearsals before every shot, with every line and movement dictated. For Stephens – a fragile alcoholic going through a divorce – it was too much, and part way through filming he attempted suicide. Shooting was delayed while he recovered, though Stephens’ pale, wan face needed to be overly made-up to compensate (in the opening scenes he genuinely looks like a drag act).

So you can’t forget the turmoil that brought it to the screen. But the end result (what remains) is largely a delight, even if it isn’t perfect. But it really is decades ahead of its time. Just like Sherlock (and it’s certainly the parent of that show), its main interest is not the case but the detective, his foibles and his emotional hinterland. Motored throughout by the wonderful chemistry between Stephens and Blakely (the two actors were good friends), it’s a wonderfully written film, full of wry humour and banter, mixed with moments of genuine heart and emotion.

The film asks: who is Sherlock Holmes? Is he the cold fish he appears to be? While it doesn’t want to answer the enigma, it enjoys trying to unpeel those layers. Stephens’ Holmes is wry, witty, slightly fey, playful but also distant. He stands off from genuine intimacy and emotion – and why is that? As he spends time with Gabrielle Valadon, how much does he warm towards her – when he ruminates on his fears about trusting people, particularly women (in a marvellous late night conversation in an overnight train bunkbed), the film asks us to think: how damaged can this man who lives to investigate crimes but seems to have only one friend, be? It’s everything Sherlock took further: in fact the relationship between Holmes and Vardon has more than a few echoes in A Scandal in Belgravia.

The film’s real genius though is its opening short story, revolving around Holmes, a ballet company and a serious of unusual requests. This pastiche is very funny, very clever, beautifully played and crammed with invention and wit. The dialogue is beautiful, while both actors are perfect: Blakely is hilarious as a Watson full of joie de’vivre while Stephens’ drily amused Holmes works hard to never let surprise penetrate his raised eyebrow. The story goes down some mysterious alleyways – not least some curious questions around Holmes’ sexuality and experience with women. But it’s just about a perfect half hour of Holmesian pastiche: probably the best of its kind ever made.

The larger story doesn’t quite live up to it, but there are some beautiful moments in there, not least the growing bond between Holmes and Vardon in which nothing is ever said or done – and much is left open to interpretation – but where Holmes shows more of his humanity than he has perhaps ever done. The case itself is half humour, half expansion of Conan Doyle. By the end we are left asking ourselves how much on the back foot Holmes was for most of the case: and the case’s resolution eventually sniffs of satire. But the film itself ends on a bittersweet resolution, with Holmes facing the impact of emotions in a way he perhaps never has before.

Wilder’s film is sharp, witty and crammed with great scenes and jokes. It’s very well acted, particularly by Blakely as a hilarious Watson, full of good humour and bombast but with a sharp sense of cunning. He may not be as bright as Holmes, but he’s certainly bright enough to get the most out of life. Stephens is a little uncomfortable as Holmes (this film sparked a career nosedive that it took nearly 20 years for him to emerge from) but at certain moments he gives the part a really unique lightness masking an unknowable emotional hinterland.

It’s a film that’s easy to mistake for straight comedy, but it really isn’t. It’s a fascinating, entertaining and rewarding exploration of the leading character’s psyche, by writers who clearly know of what they speak. It throws in a case framework that smacks of the high-blown, Giant Rat of Sumatra-style cases Watson makes passing reference to in the stories. It’s a film that focuses on character and relationship – that captures a sense of friendship between Holmes and Watson that few other films have managed – and that spoofs the cannon while still feeling very true to it.

It’s not perfect: it’s overlong and sometimes the pace drags or the sparkle fades. But Wilder and Diamond’s script has plenty of jokes and cannon knowledge (this was the first pastiche to explore Holmes’ cocaine use – and the psychological reasons for it) and has some terrific performances. Christopher Lee makes a wonderful urbane, whipper-thin Mycroft while Irene Handl is a wonderfully bumptious Mrs Hudson. Not only did it inspire Sherlock – it must also keep inspiring all fans of the great detective.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001)

Daniel Radcliffe gets sorted in the first of the franchise Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Director: Chris Columbus

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), Emma Watson (Hermione Granger), John Cleese (Nearly Headless Nick), Robbie Coltrane (Rubeus Hagrid), Richard Griffiths (Vernon Dusley), Richard Harris (Albus Dumbledore), Ian Hart (Professor Quirrell), John Hurt (Mr Ollivander), Alan Rickman (Severus Snape), Fiona Shaw (Petrunia Dursley), Maggie Smith (Minerva McGonagall), Julie Walters (Molly Weasley), Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy), Zoe Wanamaker (Madame Hooch), David Bradley (Argus Filch), Warwick Davis (Filius Flitwick)

In 2001, I was in my first year at university. I went to the cinema to watch this new, much-hyped children’s-fantasy film. I’d never heard of this Harry Potter fella going into it – so must have been one of the few people watching who was coming to it completely fresh. I was swept up in the film’s story when I first saw it. But how does it stand up watching it again decades later?

Well it’s a long bloody film. I was actually amazed this is nearly two-and-a-half hours long. Strewth. I mean this is the slightest and most childlike of Rowling’s books. Did it really need such a bum-numbing run-time to bring it to the screen? I guess it needed a lot of that time, because there is a heck of a lot of backstory and wizarding world to introduce very early on – and the film explains this in very careful, loving detail.

But Columbus’ world building here is excellent. I think it’s easy to forget how much pressure must have been riding on this film. How many imaginations worldwide did this need to satisfy? Not only that, but this had to cater for, and build towards, a host of sequels, some of which hadn’t even been written yet (other than in Rowling’s brilliant mind). But the film succeeded in bringing this wizarding world enchantingly to life. There is a delight in every magical sequence, or trick, produced in the film – so many that poor Daniel Radcliffe must have swiftly exhausted his repertoire of “awe-inspired” faces. But the film’s loving reconstruction of the world of the book is perfect, and the fact that it not only didn’t alienate people, but that so much of it has become integral to the popularity of the books as well, says a lot.

Later films would get more daring and imaginative in bringing book to screen – with Rowling’s full support – but this first one probably did need to hew pretty close to the original book in order to hook and secure that fan-base. So while Kloves’ screenplay may feel at time like a mixture of transcription and rewording rather than a true work of adaptation, it meets the needs of this first film.

The design elements of the film were also spot on. Much of the wizarding world would be radically overhauled design-wise in The Prisoner of Azkaban, but the foundations are all here. John Williams’ score was also pretty much perfect from the start so winningly constructed and so perfectly matched with the mood of the book that it has also become an integral part of the Harry Potter world.

But, watching the film back, it’s clear still that this is one of the weakest films in the series. Part of this is of course is that it’s also the most simple and childish of the books – Rowling would immeasurably enrichen and deepen the series with each book – but when placed in context with the rest of the franchise efforts, this does seem like a brighter, more colourful, Roald Dahlish, traditional children’s film. Again, a lot of this is faithful replication of the book – but considering how children embraced the later more emotionally mature films, it would not have been a disaster to include more of that material here.

The other main issue with the film is quite simply that it is averagely directed and rather mundanely filmed. It’s a bit of a shock to be reminded that Oscar-winning photographer John Searle shot this film, as it’s ludicrously over-bright and conventionally framed. In fact, it lacks any real visual interest at all, looking more like a child’s picture book than any form of motion picture. There is hardly a shot or visual image in the film that sticks in my head – and I am literally writing this as the credits roll on the movie. As a piece of visual storytelling, it’s pretty mundane.

Similarly, Chris Columbus is a solid but uninspired film maker. He marshals events on camera with a reliably safe pair of hands, unspectacular and undemonstrative. But he doesn’t have any real dynamism as a film maker – perhaps that’s why the material never really feels like his own. When the series did have a film maker with vision in Alfonso Cuaron (in Prisoner of Azkaban), the difference in imagination and vision was immediately striking – so much so the two directors who followed Cuaron effectively trod in his footprints.

But Columbus may well have been what this franchise needed at this stage: a safe pair of hands, who could work with the studio and the producers and shepherd to the screen a series of films that would be running for over a decade. Much as other names bandied around to direct at the time would have been better film-makers, I can’t imagine them having the “safe pair of hands” quality that Columbus did, providing the solid foundation from which the series could later grow – let’s be honest could you imagine Terry Gilliam successfully kick-starting a huge-franchise series like this?

And let’s not forget either the casting gifts Columbus left the film-makers with here. Have three child stars ever been better chosen than Radcliffe, Grint and Watson? And indeed all the other young actors, all but one of whom stayed with the series to the end? The triumph of choosing not just the talent, but the level headedness, was quite something. And the three actors here are very good.

Grint probably wasn’t better than he was here – his natural comic timing becoming an overused tool in later films, but here he’s charming, likeable and endearing. Watson is raw but a good mix of know-it-all and vulnerable feeling. Radcliffe gets a rough ride in a hugely challenging part – and yeah he’s not yet an actor here – but he does very well, considering how often he is called on to look amazed, and how many deep feelings of isolation, loneliness and confusion he is called upon to show during the film. Not one kid in a thousand could do what he does here. Columbus got magnificent work from the entire child cast – and that alone is enough to give him a pass.

The adult cast is of course pretty much perfect. Robbie Coltrane is a stand-out as a loveable Hagrid, immensely cuddily and endearingly sweet – perfect casting. Rickman was of course similarly inspired casting, Smith was perfect, Harris an unusual choice but one that worked. Ian Hart’s twitchy nervousness gets a bit wearing, but it’s not an easy part. Griffiths and Shaw embrace the cartoonish Roald-Dahl-bullying of the Dursleys. Pretty much every casting choice is spot on.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is the least deep and rich of the Harry Potter films, but it had a hell of a difficult job to do. And what I have to remember is that I was one of the uninitiated who sat in the cinema to watch it and needed all that introduction. Any film that has to get Muggles like me up-to-speed while keeping the die-hard fans happy faces a very difficult task. I think you can say, for all the later films surpassed it, that Philosopher’s Stone managed that in spades.

The Westerner (1940)

Entertaining but unspectacular Western fun as odd-couple friends turn rivals

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Gary Cooper (Cole Harden), Walter Brennan (Judge Roy Bean), Doris Davenport (Jane Ellen Matthews), Fred Stone (Caliphet Mathews), Forrest Tucker (Wade Harper), Paul Hurst (Chickenfoot), Chill Wills (Southeast), Lilian Bond (Lillie Langtry), Dana Andrews (Hod Johnson)

In 1882, Cole Harden (Gary Cooper) arrives in the town of Vinegaroon in Texas. The town is ruled by “Judge” Roy Bean (Walter Brennan), a corrupt, self-proclaimed justice of the land, who collects unfair fines and hands out “suspended sentences” (i.e. hangings). Nearly hanged, Harden escapes by peddling a story of his (fake) friendship with Lillie Langtry, the obsessive focus of Bean’s love. Over time the two men find themselves drawn to each other, forming a friendship – which is challenged by Bean’s favouring the violent cattle ranchers over the homesteaders.

The Westerner is a well-constructed, decent old-style Western that doesn’t do anything particularly radical – as if those making it needed a bit of downtime between more demanding projects, so put together something quite enjoyable to fill their time. It’s nominally a film about the clash between cowboys and homesteaders, but this plotline actually gets very little play – and is pretty unclear.

What it really is, is a sort of romance between Harden and Bean. They are two people surprisingly drawn together, who have a similar outlook on the world, and share a very natural and immediate bond. They have very real chemistry. In fact their chemistry is so strong there is barely room for anyone else to get a look in.

So the film is a sort of bromance tragedy, because of course it’s clear that they will end up on opposite sides. Because Bean has principles of control which Harden cannot allow to stand. Because the same instincts that lead Bean to champion the cowboys, are the same ones that lead Harden to champion the homesteaders. Both men think that they are basically in the right. The main difference between them is probably that, if push comes to shove, Bean would rather win than be right, while Harden is more concerned with meeting his moral standards than anything else.

Wyler brings all this together with professional crispness, shooting the action and more chamber-piece moments with skill. He draws a real playfulness from Brennan and Cooper – could many other directors have thought about including a scene where Cooper wakes up slightly confused in a bed with Brennan’s arm around him after a night of drinking? Confrontations throughout the film have a playful edge to them, even when guns are on the table. Even the final gun fight between the two has a reluctant edge to it, as if this was a game with a few more consequences than normal.

The bond between Bean and Harden is so strong, and so central to the film, that the relationship between Harden and Jane Ellen Mathews never quite clicks into gear. There is a charming scene where Cooper (with an honest flirtatiousness) cuts a lock of Jane Ellen’s hair – but the film isn’t really interested in this relationship. It feels like it exists for plot and scripting reasons – that the writers felt a romantic plot was needed, and wanted to give Harden a very clear personal motivation above and beyond his sense of justice. Doris Davenport is fine as Jane Ellen, but it’s not a performance you really remember.

Gary Cooper is rather good as Cole Harden, despite his reluctance to do the film. Cooper identified that Brennan had the best role and the best lines, and felt that he would actually be playing the support rather than the lead. Contractual obligation got him into the film. And it’s a good thing, as Cooper is actually very good. He has a light comedic touch which you don’t often associate with him, which he matches with his upright honesty and unflinching decency. But there is a playful grin behind his eyes throughout, and you get a real sense of his conflicting loyalties.

But Cooper was right – Judge Roy Bean is the role in this film, and Walter Brennan (who won his third supporting actor Oscar in five years for this) is quite simply terrific. His Bean is a wily, slightly crooked, maverick bully with a warped sense of personal justice – but he’s also a charming, rather sweet old man with a tough streak. The script gives a lot of focus to Bean’s obsessive love for the actress Lillie Langtry, which not only humanises him, but turns someone who we first see carrying out a ruthless judicial murder into some sort of teenage, love-struck rogue. That’s the genius here – Bean could be awful, but actually we (like Harden) end up loving him. Brennan’s effortlessly charismatic performance is central here – he is terrific in the role.

Take away these performances though and you probably only have flashes here and there of class alongside. Scenes are well constructed, and the entire film is very well filmed by the great Gregg Toland, but it’s very much a solid piece of professional work rather than a great classic. Brennan is brilliant and Cooper impressive, but not much more of the rest of the film really settles into the memory.

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

It’s a lesson in how not to spend your gap year in American Werewolf in London

Director: John Landis

Cast: David Naughton (David Kessler), Jenny Agutter (Alex Price), Griffin Dunne (Jack Goodman), John Woodvine (Dr Hirsch), Lila Kaye (Pub landlady), Frank Oz (Mr Collins), David Schofield (Dart Player), Brian Glover (Chess Player), Rik Mayall (2^nd Chess Player), Don McKillip (Inspector Villiers), Paul Kember (Sergeant McManus)

Horror and comedy are both extreme genres, on the edges of normality and are designed to provoke extreme reactions, of either terror or hilarity. So it’s often a bit of a surprise that more films haven’t attempted to put the two of them together. But that’s what John Landis does in An American Werewolf in London. You’ll laugh, you’ll scream, you’ll even cry a bit. You’ll probably also look away a few times. And you probably won’t want to go hiking straight after it.

David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) are two students backpacking through the English countryside. Taking shelter from the rain in a pub, The Slaughtered Lamb (pub sign a wolf’s head on a spike), they are swiftly intimidated by the locals and head back out – ignoring suggestions to keep on the road. Sure enough, they are attacked by a crazed wolf… Three weeks later David awakens in hospital, plagued with nightmares and visions of himself running through the forest. Could he be a werewolf? Falling in love with his nurse Alex (Jenny Agutter), he soon finds himself staying in her flat in London – just as the full moon rises…

AAWIL is a playful movie, with a grungy, college-humour to it. The jokes are often laugh-out loud funny, and the central characters are very engaging. As well as this the film is filled to the brim with blood, guts and slaughter. Guts fly, blood sprays. Landis gets the balance more or less spot-on between heightened humour and bloody slaughter – every bloody moment is followed by an excellent comic punchline, and just when the humour and romances start to get too much of a hold, you get a moment of shuddering violence. It’s also crammed with some great music – although in a terrible oversight there is no playing of Werewolves of London (if ever a song seemed written for a film…).

It’s best remembered for its influential werewolf transformation sequence. Rick Baker won the first Oscar for make-up for this tour-de-force at the film’s centre, which showpieces David’s painful looking transformation. This sequence has inspired every single werewolf transformation since, including David Thewlis’ in Harry Potter. Limbs stretch and distort. Hair springs up. His body arches and his spine practically snaps itself into new positions. His face distort, and the entire shape of the body changes. And of course it’s screamingly painful. The sequence hasn’t aged a day, and it’s still a marvel of make-up and practical effects.

Landis’ decision to largely shoot werewolves from POV or in flashes is a good one – when we get the animatronic wolf on the screen towards the end it is strikingly unconvincing and artificial looking, like a wobbily muppet. But for the bulk of it he makes these animals terrifying forces of nature. No wonder the creepy pub denizens are terrified of them.

The opening pub sequence is a masterpiece of small village aggression. Who hasn’t gone into a pub like this and felt like the room went silent as soon as you entered? The actors here revel in these hostile villagers, not least Brian Glover as a domineering loudmouth and David Schofield as a sinister darts player. It also brilliantly shows from the start that David and Jack are fish out of water – stuck adrift in a land they don’t quite understand, with a condition they don’t really seem to be completely aware of.

Not that it’s all bad for David, as he gets a steamy love-affair with Jenny Agutter’s alluring Alex, every geeky college boy’s dream of a gap-year love affair. Sure the bond between them is rushed – and Alex alternates between being caring-and-observant and is actually fairly dim when the film demands it (Yeah David has come home naked over than a woman’s coat, having spent the night sleeping in a zoo and has no memory of the night – but nothing odd strikes her about his behaviour…) – but she still gives a cracking performance.

David Naughton balances the film very well as David – a geeky student, horny and almost wilfully ignoring what’s happening to him. Griffin Dunne possibly steals the show as Jack, a strange mixture of best friend, geeky off-the-cuff wit and giver of bitter-but-straight-forward advice (the make-up for Jack by the way is almost more impressive than the transformation itself).

American Werewolf in London is a bit of a (forgive me!) shaggy dog story. Structurally I’m not sure if it’s that great, as it tends to drift at times before a rush to the finishing line. The ending in particular is abrupt – not helped by a deliberately jarring final musical choice. It bowls along, but it’s so in love with its mix of horror and comedy that you never quite end up pulling for the romance at its centre as you should. I’m not sure John Woodvine was quite the right casting for the doctor investigating the werewolf phenomenon – he’s almost seems to feel as if he is above the picture. Landis gets some neat hits on British culture, but you can’t help but feel that there is more to be mined here – there isn’t quite enough American-British culture clash there to really sell David’s confusion.

It’s not a brilliant masterpiece – but it is very entertaining and crammed with striking scenes. Landis is playing around here – in fact he may be telling a massive joke, taking the piss out of monster movies while knocking slacker comedies by turning the slacker into a murderous monster. But it’s very good for all that – and for several key sequences alone you’ll find it hard to shake. It’s a film for late-night viewing and such a good mixture of comedy and extreme horror that it will always feel unique.

The Deadly Affair (1966)

James Mason deals with marital and professional deception and betrayal in spy thriller The Deadly Affair (in every meaning of the word!)

Director: Sidney Lumet

Cast: James Mason (Charles Dobbs), Maximilian Schell (Dieter Frey), Harriet Andersson (Ann Dobbs), Harry Andrews (Inspector Mendel), Simeone Signoret (Elsa Fennan), Kenneth Haigh (Bill Appleby), Roy Kinnear (Adam Scarr), Max Adrian (Adviser), Lynn Redgrave (Virgin), Robert Flemyng (Samuel Fennan), Corin Redgrave (David)

The Deadly Affair is a faithful adaptation of John Le Carré’s first novel, Call for the Dead, that first introduced to both Le Carré’s distinctive vision of espionage (a world where spying is a dirty, depressing business, miles away from Bond), and also his principal recurring hero George Smiley – although Smiley here is renamed Charles Dobbs (Paramount held the rights to several recurring Le Carré characters as it was making The Spy Who Came in From the Cold). The Deadly Affair often gets forgotten in the list of Le Carré films, which is unfair – this is a fine, gripping, character-led thriller.

Charles Dobbs (James Mason), a senior case officer in British intelligence, meets with Samuel Fennan (Robert Flemyng): a civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, who has been anonymously accused of being a Russian agent. Dobbs all but agrees to clear Fennan in a friendly meeting – only for Fennan to go home and commit suicide. Dobbs investigates, but quickly finds that the facts – and the story of Fennan’s wife Elsa (Simone Signoret) – don’t seem to tie up. Working with retired police inspector Mendel (Harry Andrews), Dobbs investigates further – against the wishes of his superiors. This also helps to distract Dobbs from his disastrous home life with his serially unfaithful wife Ann (Harriet Andersson) and her growing closeness to his old war friend Dieter Frey (Maximilian Schell).

The Deadly Affairhas an old-school, unflashy, Hollywood professionalism to it, very smoothly directed by Sidney Lumet. Lumet and photographer Frederick A. Young slightly exposed each shot of the film to give the colours a drained, murky quality, which works extraordinarily well for the grimy Le Carré feeling. Lumet uses a series of careful POV and shot-reverse-shots to involve the audience neatly in the action – we are nearly always seeing events from someone’s perspective, and this helps us empathise with the characters and action. He also uses London locations expertly – everywhere is carefully chosen and shot for maximum impact, creating a world of dingy backstreets that perfectly matches the feeling of the story.

It also helps that Lumet changes very little from what was already an excellent source novel. It’s an intricate “whodunnit” puzzle, twisty and challenging enough to keep the audience guessing. What the film does really well is introduce Dobbs’ wife Ann as a central character in the storyline, and to make marital betrayal and deception a complementary subplot, alongside Dobbs’ involvement in the world of professional bluff and counter-bluff: during the day he practises the very same deception that pains him so much at home. (Le Carré would effectively lift some of the ideas of this film adaptation and reproduce them in later books, most especially Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy.)

This marital disharmony becomes a key theme in the movie – two people who are totally reliant on each other but can’t seem to stop hurting each other. Ann is in many ways the hellish wife – serially unfaithful and largely unrepentant – but Dobbs is equally difficult, unnervingly patient and silently (but never vocally or perhaps even consciously) judgemental. They have a complex arrangement, but also a clear understanding of each other, and their conversations sound like careful, familiar routines. Like a scab, Dobbs keeps picking at this wound of his wife’s infidelity – early in the film he returns home after a late call out to find his wife naked in bed. She rises to greet him provocatively, and they kiss, but Dobbs seemingly can’t let go of his own sense of impotence. Later Ann demands Dobbs expresses some rage and jealousy – as if looking for him to show some sort of feeling.

It’s a neat sub-plot for a film that focuses on a series of major personal and professional betrayals – I counted no fewer than five over the course of the film but there are probably more depending on how you define it – and which shows how spying can become wrapped up in personal affairs. Despite Dobbs’ apparent pride at treating his work with a determined coolness, everything is so very personal in this film. Characters react often with emotions rather than cool rational thinking – with the exception of one character who uses the emotions of others very rationally to manipulate them. Even the final confrontation of the film has a sad loss of emotional control at the centre of it – and leads to actions bitterly regretted by the survivors.

James Mason is very good as Dobbs, buttoned-up but slightly run-down, a man who presents a face of calm control and wisdom to the world, but at home is an insecure, deeply pained, impotent mess. Determined and principled in the world of espionage, he is hopelessly in love with his wife, to the extent of practically allowing her free rein to do as she wishes. Despite being in nearly every scene, it’s also a very generous performance, quiet and unshowy, that often cedes the scene to his partners. Harriet Andersson (though clearly dubbed) manages to make Ann someone who feels sympathetic and understandable – even though she is a colossal pain.

Lumet also gets some wonderful performances from the rest of the cast, not least from Harry Andrews who I think steals the movie as a narcoleptic Inspector Mendel, obsessed with facts and possessed of a dry professionalism. The film also gives a gift of a role to Simeone Signoret, a woman with a troubled past and indeterminate motives, bubbling with guilt and resentment. She is given no less than three tour-de-force scenes (one played almost in complete silence) and plays each brilliantly. There are neat cameos as well from Max Adrian (as a campy popinjay running Dobbs’ department) and Lynn Redgrave as an eager stagehand for an amateur theatre company with some vital evidence.

The film’s conclusion revolves around two masterfully done sequences: one during a performance of Edward II (by the real Royal Shakespeare Company – spot several familiar actors on stage), the second an emotional confrontation at a dock that erupts into violence. It’s a wonderful dwelling on betrayal and its impacts. It also works an absolute treat as a low-key counterpart to Bond at his Swinging Sixties height, while still packing a jazzy score from Quincy Jones (which at first seems completely incongruous but actually helps to establish the mood really well). Directed with professional assurance with a host of fine performances – it’s a little bit of an overlooked gem.

Double Indemnity (1944)

Barbara Stanwyck is the dark force beyond Fred MacMurray in Wilder’s classic Double Indemnity

Director: Billy Wilder

Cast: Fred MacMurray (Walter Neff), Barbara Stanwyck (Phyllis Dietrichson), Edward G. Robinson (Barton Keyes), Porter Hall (Mr Jackson), Jean Heather (Lola Dietrichson), Tom Powers (Mr Dietrichson), Bryon Barr (Nina Zachett), Richard Gaines (Edward Norton)

In the wake of the Second World War, morally complex and dark (in every sense of the word) stories spoke to a nation coming to terms with what it had been through. Out of this was born a new genre: film noir. Double Indemnity might just be the best example and one of Billy Wilder’s best films.

Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) is a bored insurance salesman, smitten with the sexually alluring Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), wife of a potential client. When she suggests that, with his help, they could get rid of her husband and collect a massive insurance payout on his death, Neff is quickly won over. But murder is a hard thing to get away with – particularly when Neff’s colleague and close friend Barton Keyes (Edward G Robinson), the best investigator in the business, smells something amiss in the ‘accident’.

Double Indemnity is one of those films that it’s easy to forget was as influential as it was, precisely because it’s narrative and filmic techniques have been so comprehensively imitated in a host of films since. But imagine: this was one of the very first real film noirs. It was one of the first films that used shadows and darkness as effectively as this to reflect mood and atmosphere. It was the one of the first films to use a femme fatale as prominently (and unapologetically) as this. It’s also one of the first films where sex permeates almost everything you see in the picture.

Phyllis is a woman who understands the power of sensuality, who is well aware of how she can use her body and aloof mystery to get what she wants out of men. But even more than that, Stanwyck’s wonderfully cold performance suggests she hardly seems to care about anything at all: in fact the impression is almost that she is locked into moving forward, passing through husbands and lovers, leaving men dead on the wayside. That’s the magic of Stanwyck in this film: can you remember a character as unremittingly, unapologetically sinful, manipulative and conscience-free as this?

Of course Fred MacMurray’s Walter Neff is the perfect rube for this fiercely intelligent and determined woman. MacMurray’s slight B-movie blandness – his lack of star quality, his everyday, folky unimaginativeness – is perfect for the overconfident, slightly smarmy, laziness of Neff. It’s never said outright, but you suspect that the attraction of the danger Phyllis offers is escape from his own dull life. Does he love Phyllis? I would say almost certainly not – but is he horny for her? You better believe it. It’s a man on the cusp of a mid-life crisis getting a chance to throw himself into a sex-driven affair.

What do these two think of each other? Both of them seem barely capable of trusting each other, using sex and flirting almost as a filler between bouts of mutual suspicion. Does she care for him even a little behind her use of him? And does he feel anything like a bond with her inbetween the bouts of sex? They stumble so quickly into the plan that it almost feels like they are going through the motions – she is so used to manipulation and murder, it’s all she knows; he is so bored with his life that the excitement of violence and murder with his sex seems impossible to resist.

And Wilder lets sex run through this whole film. From Phyllis’ long descent down her flight of stairs at her first entrance to the irresistible anklet, everything about Stanwyck in this film is about the power of her sex. The dialogue exchanges between Neff and Phyllis crackle with magnetism. Later, Wilder skilfully shoots a sex scene without showing a thing: we cut from the two of them kissing on a sofa, to their positions shifted, Phyllis fixing her dress and Neff reclining smoking.

It helps that the dialogue is scintillating. Each exchange is packed with crackling and quotable lines. You get a perfect marriage here between Wilder’s acerbic cynicism and dry wit, and Raymond Chandler’s arch, spiky, carefully constructed dialogue, with its gritty poetry. I mean just watch the exchange here – perfection.

And they write some knock-out speeches too – but then you would if you had an actor as brilliant as Edward G. Robinson to deliver them.

Neff’s voiceover uses the technique where it should be used – not to tell us information any well informed viewer can already work out for themselves, but to allow us insight into Neff himself and his situation, that complements and develops our appreciation of the picture (it’s also beautifully well delivered by MacMurray). I’d also add it’s the same conceit as Sunset Boulevard – its lead character narrates the film mortally wounded – and it works just as well here, stressing the disaster that hangs over every action by our anti-heroes.

Added to this, the film looks beautiful. The shadows have an all-consuming inky depth. Cinematographer John Seitz is not afraid of turning the lights down and down, and the darkness absorbs and consumes the whole picture. It allows striking lighting effects – the blinds that seem to be in every room allow slits of light through them that draw lines across the faces and bodies of the actors (as many viewers have commented, it also has the effect of making half the characters appear like they are behind bars). The darkness looms in from the corners of the frame, trapping the leads into the action – and into their own disastrous decisions.

Wilder’s skilful camera placement is what makes this film really work. He presents action constantly in challenging and different ways, never doing the expected. During the actual murder (committed while Phyllis drives), the camera never looks at Neff committing the crime, but closely follows the look of almost sensual satisfaction on Phyllis’ face: she never once looks at what is happening in the seat next to her, but her face makes us experience the killing in an even more disturbingly intimate way than watching it would be.

But what makes this film truly brilliant and unique is that its main relationship isn’t even the one you expect. Neff and Phyllis may have an electric physical relationship, but the real romance in the film is between Neff and his colleague Keyes. These two share a deeply close and personal bond. Theirs is a friendship that skirts around a platonic romance – made sharper of course as Keyes is the only man who stands a chance of working out what exactly is going on. There is a fine visual motif throughout of Neff lighting matches (with his thumb!) for Keyes – a gesture that feels both manly and intimate.

Keyes is played by a career-best Edward G. Robinson. Robinson blazes through the big speeches – but with a confident skill that never makes them feel like showboating moments. He gives Keyes an eccentric brilliance, mixed with a delicate humanism. To be that good at sniffing out wrongdoing and deceit from his fellow men, you can’t help feeling that he must have a pretty good idea about what human fallibility feels like. It’s this warm human understanding that Robinson does so brilliantly. It’s also what helps to make this relationship so moving. It’s hard not to share the obvious awkward discomfort MacMurray gives to Neff when he feels as if he is letting down his friend, and betraying the trust between them.

It’s this that makes Double Indemnity stand out. It’s a film that’s actually about the relationship between two men – part friendship, part father-and-son, part romantic – their love for each other, which happens to have an irresistible femme fatale thrown into the middle. It feels like a very unique and different approach – a touch of Wilder magic if you will – that makes the film stand out. It’s also what lies behind the link it has with audiences, the human interest that makes you come back again and again to this film about two ruthless killers.

This is a film in which everyone was at their best. MacMurray never did anything again to match it, Stanwyck seized the part with such commitment that she spawned countless imitators, Robinson is just magnificent. Wilder’s direction is perfect, the film looks ravishing, the script is to die for. Double Indemnity may not only be the most influential film noir ever. It might also be the best.