Category: Historical epic

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)

Sumptuous silent-epic, full of exciting set pieces that was basically the model for the more famous version

Director: Fred Niblo

Cast: Ramon Novarro (Ben-Hur), Francis X Bushman (Messala), May McAvoy (Esther), Betty Bronson (Mary), Claire McDowell (Miriam), Kathleen Key (Tizah), Carmel Myers (Iras), Nigel de Brulier (Simonides), Mitchell Lewis (Sheik Ilderim), Leo White (Sanballat), Frank Currier (Arrius), Charles Belcher (Balthazar)

Of course, General Lew Wallace’s tombstone historical novel is now best known as the Heston-led, Oscar-winning behemoth Ben-Hur, the self-proclaimed most epic epic ever to arrive on the screens. But it was not the first time this novel had made its way to the screen. Wyler’s film owed a vast amount to this 1925 epic, which inspired so many of its key sequences you’d have to call his version a re-make. This gigantic silent film was itself the second attempt to screen Ben-Hur, but with all the strengths of the 1959 film (namely the set-pieces like that chariot riot) but without some of its weaknesses (its crushing length and heavy-handed self-importance) it’s the better film.

Opening with the birth of Christ, the story is, as always, that of wealthy Jewish noble Judah Ben-Hur (Ramon Novarro) whose old friendship with Roman Messala (Francis X Bushman) collapses into life-long loathing when Messala has Ben-Hur arrested on trumped-up charges and, for good measure, chucks his mother Miriam (Claire McDowell) and sister Tizah (Kathleen Key) into a dungeon. Judah becomes a galley slave until he saves the life of Roman General Arrius (Frank Currier). Adopted as Arrius’ son, Judah returns to Jerusalem for revenge against Messala and to find his missing family. With the best revenge possible being defeating Messala in a deadly chariot race.

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is gargantuan in a way only the great silent epics could be. It features huge reconstructions of ancient Jerusalem, crowded with armies of extras – in its opening shots alone, elephants ride through the gigantic gates of the city. Sprawling sets, shot with perfect wide scale to hammer home their size, run throughout the whole film, with the chariot race set a towering grandstand further increased by a skilfully used matte painting. Its set pieces – the naval battle and the chariot race – are both awe-inspiring in their scale, the match of anything in the 1959 film. It’s impossible not to be slightly taken aback by the weight of what it thrown up on screen here.

In this grand-scale, the expressive pose-striking of Ramon Novarro actually feels rather fitting. Particularly as his moments of distraught guilt and fear feels earned, considering the misery of the galleys and the emotion-packed struggle of his family to try and escape unjust arrest. But also, because Novarro has the handsome, matinee-idol looks of a guy you can root for (he replaced George Walsh, who was deemed insufficiently heroic looking). It works because Ben-Hur, for all its ‘Tale of the Christ!’ background, is basically a great big Roman-era soap, an entertainingly, rollicking tale through the turn of the millennium ups-and-downs of a handsome prince who always lands on his feet.

He does so via some truly excellent set-pieces. The naval battle, where Judah wins his freedom, is set on a truly impressive scale. Naval ships crash into each other, soldiers and pirates flood the deck of the flagship. During the battle limbs are hacked off, bodies are skewered and crushed (including one poor soul, tied to the head of the pirate’s ship batting ram, as it ploughs into the Roman flagship) and a newly released Judah escapes the watery doom of the galleys to spray pirate-defying death left, right and centre. It’s a gripping sequence, told on a huge scale.

Even more impressive though is the marvellous chariot race, a sequence so compellingly edited and assembled it not only was essentially used as a shot-for-shot reference in the remake, but its arguably inspired countless race sequences since. From its camera tracking alongside and in front of the racing chariots, low angles that see the chariots racing above, the frantic cutting that keeps momentum flying without ever losing narrative clarity, and the skilful way it keeps returning to Judah and Messala’s very personal battle, its masterfully done. In a nice touch, Judah drives the only white horses meaning we can always spot him. As chariots rip round bends, leaving dust spraying, crash into terrifying pile-ons or leaves competitors mangled and crushed on the track, it’s impossible not to feel impacted by the relentless momentum (certainly Willaim Wyler was – he was one of the assistants working on the sequence).

Away from these dramatic highlights, Ben-Hur remains a soapy, melodramatic tale. The tragic force is dialled up, with Judah’s family suffering for years in a blue-lens-tinged prison, succumbing to leprosy. Bushman’s Messala is devoid of complexity, embracing his role as pantomime villain with relish. Iras (Carmel Myers) bats her eye-lids to seduce both Judah and Messala, playing the two off each other. Its one of two soft-focus romances, that the film frames with unabashed sentimentality. Judah throws himself into a passionate advocacy of the coming of the Lord, the film frequently throwing him into military garb (at the head of a self-funded army to fight the Good Fight) that looks bizarrely like he’s stepped out of Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen.

What makes this nonsense work is the film doesn’t take it too seriously and, unlike the 1959 version, doesn’t dwell on it all at great length. However, what it does share with the remake is the reverence for the story of Jesus. Some things never change, and Hollywood worked out an action epic could seem far loftier if it was marketed as “truly the film ever Christian should see!” The Messiah is a frequent just-off-camera figure (just as he would be in 1959), his hand heading into shot to heal the sick or pass a dying Judah some water. The final sequence plays out with the crucifixion front-and-centre and a grieving but rapturous Judah telling us all He will rise again.

Many of the recreations of the Bible – starting with its nativity opening – are filmed in a post-production painted early colour, with the references for the colour clearly being the very best religious art of the Renaissance, most clearly in its beatific Mary complete with halo-like effect. The film returns to these time-and-time again, taking a break from the soap opera to give us worthy shots of the history of Jesus, that look rather like reverent stained-glass windows. It’s all part of adding an important spiritual purpose to the film, to cement it as more important than just sword-and-sandals epic.

In that it’s not dissimilar from the remake. What it does though is manage to wear this slightly lighter and slightly less of an air of bumptious self-importance. Match that with the film’s compelling action highlights and truly stunning scale and you might have a leaner, faster and perhaps just as entertaining version of the story – even if it is in silent and black-and-white. It can certainly claim to be the finest version of Lew Wallace.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

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

Director: David Lean

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972)

Herzog’s visionary epic remains one of the most impactful, haunting films in history

Director: Werner Herzog

Cast: Klaus Kinski (Don Lupe de Aguirre), Cecilia Rivera (Flores de Aguirre), Ruy Guerra (Don Pedro de Ursua), Helena Rojo (Inés de Atienza), Del Negro (Brother Gaspar de Carvajal), Peter Berling (Don Fernando de Guzman), Daniel Ades (Perucho), Armando Polanah (Armando), Edward Roland (Okello)

I first saw Aguirre, Wrath of God when I was young, a late night BBC2 showing. I’d never seen anything like it – and, to be honest, I’m not sure I have since. But then I am not sure anyone has. Aguirre was Herzog’s calling card and its haunting bizarreness, unsettling intensity and its mixture of extremity and simplicity is echoed in almost everything the eccentric German has made since. It seeps inside you and is almost impossible to forget, offering unparallelled oddness and lingering new nightmares every time.

It’s based on a heavily fictionalised piece of history, a rambling, possibly invented (and certainly over-elaborated) event: the mutiny of Don Lupe de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) during the Conquistador campaign in the Amazonian remains of the Incan Empire. Pizarro has led an overburdened expedition into the depths of the rainforest searching for the untold (and fictional) riches of El Dorado. Don Pedro du Ursua (Ray Guerra) is sent with a party to explore down the river, with Aguirre as second-in-command. Further disaster occurs, as Aguirre launches a coup, installs puppet ‘emperor’ Don Guzman (Peter Berling), decides to seize El Dorado for himself and descends into a megalomaniacal madness, dreaming of building grandiose castles in the sky and toppling the Spanish monarchy.

Herzog filmed this fever dream of exhausted, starving and lost characters (and, indeed actors!) struggling to tell truth from mirage. The stunning visuals and locations are matched with the immediacy of water-splashed, mud-splatted lenses capturing the action. Aguirre is one of the most immersive films ever made, not least because as we watch cannons being dragged through rainforest, actors trudge down the side of mountains in the rain or cling to barely submerged rafts through rapids, we seem to sharing the experience of people doing all this for real.

Aguirre is book-ended by two of the most haunting shots in cinema history. Herzog’s opening flourish pans down the side of a mountain – one side of the shot showing the mountain, the other the mist – its disconcerting orientation (it’s easy to think you are seeing a birds-eye view, until you spot the actors climbing down the narrow path) made even more unsettling by the electronic mysticism of Popol Vuh’s music. This shot’s beauty and subtle terror is topped only by the final shots, of Aguirre prowling alone on a ruined raft surrounded by the dead and a ‘wilderness’ of monkeys (bringing to mind Shakespeare vision of a land not worth the cost in love). Between these bookends unfolds a film that will long live in the memory.

Aguirre is about obsession and madness but also failure. It’s so steeped in failure and hubris, it practically starts there. What else are we to think as we watch the conquistadors flog through the forest, dressed in hideously unsuitable clothes (armour for the men, dresses for the ladies), dragging cannons, relics and luckless horses behind chained Incan slaves? From the moment Pizarro calls a halt, it’s clear the search has failed. What the rest of the film demonstrates is how this failure only grows under the burden of relentless greed and vaulting ambition.

Greed powers everyone down this river: greed for the El Dorado’s gold and the power it might bring. It’s leads men to follow Aguirre’s mutiny and sustains them as their journey becomes ever more wild-eyed. No one is exempt: certainly not the Church, represented by hypocritical yes-man Brother Gaspar (Del Negro) who responds to mutiny by muttering that, regretfully, the Church must be ‘on the side of the strong’ – but doesn’t let that regret get in the way of serving as prosecutor, judge and jury in a kangaroo court for Don Ursua or happily stabbing to death an indigenous fisherman (who he gives the last rites) for blasphemy after the poor man confusedly drops a Bible on the floor.

But Aguirre’s hungers seems purely for power, with gold almost an after-thought. He’s far different from the mission’s newly elected ‘Emperor’, bloated glutton Guzman, who veers between stuffing his mouth with the limited rations or passing ludicrously high-handed regal pronouncements. Aguirre wants something more: complete and utter willpower over his surroundings. He doesn’t need to be commander for this: knowing he holds the power is enough, the ability to control life and death for his men.

Much of Aguirre’s magnetic, horrifying dread comes from the qualities in the man who plays him. Kinski’s performance is strikingly terrifying, his stiff-framed walk (based on Aguirre’s real-life limp) as judderingly disturbing as the retina-burning glare of his stare, the bubbles of incipient madness and the relentless determination to do anything (from blowing up a raft of his own men to beheading a potential mutineer) that will keep his will predominant. Aguirre’s perverse desire for control extends to an unhealthy interest in his daughter (something very unsettling today, with our knowledge of Kinski’s own appalling actions) and curls himself into the frame like a hungry tiger waiting to pounce, unleashing himself for demonic rants to cement his power and ambitious plans.

As with so many Herzog films, the longer the journey, the more fraught it becomes with perils, greed and madness. The film invites us to watch an expedition that started teetering on the edge of sanity, topple into violence, death and despair. Perhaps that’s why Ursua is spared, to join us in watching in stubborn, appalled silence the rafts drift aimlessly down river, men picked off one-by-one by unseen forces while their minds slowly fracture. Herzog uses the mute Ursua as a horrified surrogate for us, his blank incomprehension mirroring our shock at how far men can slump.

The worst elements of many of them emerge. The monk who preaches the word while complacently doing nothing and dreaming of a golden cross. Guzman’s obese Emperor, guzzling food while his desperate men starve. Aguirre’s psychopathic sidekick Perucho, who whistles casually when taking on Aguirre’s dirty work. Others collapse into shocked stupor: Aguirre’s daughter, who can’t seem to process what’s happening around her; Ursua’s lover Ines (Helena Rojo) whose hopes to reverse the mutiny tip into suicidal defiance and the stunned, tragic, imprisoned Incan prince re-named Raphael, forced to witness the self-destruction of men who looted his country and are never satisfied.

Aguirre’s Conrad-istic vision reeks of colonial criticism. As these arrogant ‘civilised’ men, charge downriver into madness and death, they remain convinced they can control the environment around them. The people of the Amazon to them are savages or slaves in waiting, any gold they find theirs by right. Aguirre himself is like some nightmare collection of every single rapacious European ruler who wanted to tear a chunk off a map and claim it as his own: even in failure and death, he still sees no reason to stop, only to press on, claiming more land, wealth and power. It’s this terrible truth that give Aguirre such continued power and relevance.

Herzog’s film builds beautifully to inevitable destruction, but it matters not a jot to Aguirre, content with his complete control over a raft of dead men. Herzog films it unfold in a haunting mixture of static shots, carefully framed compositions inspired by Spanish paintings (including a bizarrely formal coronation shot of Guzman), accompanied by a chilling silence or the unsettlingly eerie sounds of Vuh’s music or the pipes of an Incan bearer. Aguirre, perhaps more than any other film, exposes the horrific hubris of empire building, the pride and greed that lies behind it and the piles of unsettling bodies (guilty and innocent) left in its wake.

It’s a film that deserves to be famous for more than just the crazed stories of its making. The clashes between Kinski – an impossible, wicked, man but a celluloid-burning presence – and Herzog are legendary (it was the film where Herzog threatened to shoot the ferocious star and then himself if Kinski followed through on walking out mid-shoot). But just as stunning is the film’s haunting, lyrical mysticism and the fierceness of its savagery. It can have a vision of a ship in the heights of the trees and a head that finishes its countdown separated from its body. It can leave you so deeply unsettled, so hauntingly present that it will stick with you as it has stuck with me for over twenty years, giving new remarkable visions every time I re-watch it.

The Brutalist (2024)

Stunningly filmed, ambitious epic brilliantly unpacks patronage, immigrant experience and the American dream

Director: Brady Corbet

Cast: Adrien Brody (László Tóth), Felicity Jones (Erzsébet Tóth), Guy Pearce (Harrison Van Buren), Joe Alwyn (Harry Lee Van Buren), Raffey Cassidy (Zsófia), Stacy Martin (Maggie Van Buren), Alessandro Nivola (Attila Miller), Emma Laird (Audrey Miller), Isaach de Bankolé (Gordon), Ariane Labed (Adult Zsófia), Michael Epp (Jim Simpson), Jonathan Hyde (Leslie Woodrow), Peter Polycarpou (Michael Hoffman), Maria Sand (Michelle Hoffman)

As long as there have been artists, there have been patrons: wealthy men who provide the finance for the artist to create. The relationship between them has quietly defined our cultural history, the legacies of famed artists whose work fills galleries and public spaces coming about due to the wealth and ego of those behind them. It’s one of many themes explored in Brady Corbet’s epic The Brutalist, the mix spiced by placing its powerless, traumatised artist as a friendless stranger in a strange land, escaping a lifetime of persecution: a Holocaust survivor making a new start in the Land of the Free.

László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a famed Jewish Hungarian architect who narrowly survived the inhumanity of Buchenwald, arrives in America in 1947. Greeted with exploitative warmth by his wife Erzsébet’s (Felicity Jones) cousin Atilla (Alessandro Nivola), an Americanised furniture salesman, László’s skills are poorly exploited until Atilla is commissioned to build a library for billionaire Harrison van Buren (Guy Peace) by his son Harry (Joe Alwyn) as a surprise birthday present.

Van Buren, who loathes surprises, reacts with rage until, years later, an architectural magazine commends László’s library as a work of genius. László, thrown out by Atilla (who blamed him for losing the van Buren’s as clients) is hired by van Buren to build a gigantic community centre: a concrete cathedral on a hill. Van Buren helps arrange the immigration of Erzsébet in the country, but both Tóth’s discover van Buren’s darkly sinister passion is control, the two struggling against constant obstructions and László’s self-destructive qualities in a country where they are always strangers.

Corbet’s epic film partly becomes an exploration of the struggles of an outsider in a new land. It’s made abundantly clear that, far from a land of equality, America is a country of fierce hierarchies where those with money and power have almost complete autonomy to do whatever they want, and those at the bottom can be bought and sold. And few are as low and unwanted as the immigrant (it’s striking László’s closest friend is Gordon, a unemployed Black single father, another walking symbol of the underclass).

Corbet signals all in America will not be plain sailing on László’s arrival at New York – after a virtuoso tracking shot (one of many in this lusciously filmed epic) – László stumbles out to the deck of the boat and cranes upward, the camera following him to see an upside-down vision of the Empire State Building. This is not an image of hope and expectation. The immigrant, even the Holocaust survivor, is an unwelcome figure. Alessandro Nivola’s Attila has bent over backwards to hide his roots – changing his name and accent and pouring all his self-loathing into the thin charity he offers László (a poorly furnished room at the back of his shop, a blasé offer of an invite to the odd meal). Flashes of generosity don’t hide the fact László is first for any blame.

It’s just a warm-up though for László’s life as architect-in-residence for Harrison van Buren. Played with a smarmy grandiosity with a streak of reptilian cruelty, Guy Pearce makes Harrison a true monster, a Medici for the modern ages with László as a Michaelangelo, whose flourishes are tolerated only while his artistry reflects glory onto Harrison. Harrison, with his studied references to art, understands he has no legacy of his own (other than money) and demands one created for him by László. It’s his name that will be on the van Buren centre, his glory that will be embodied by it.

Van Buren, like many powerful businessmen, talks art but his real interests are control and power. Asserting his control over László, as if wanting to absorb his creativity into himself, is crucial to him. This sees him set up László in a poorly furnished house on his estate like a pet, interjecting tiny modifications and his own controlling placemen into the project, revelling in his control over every element of László’s life. He takes a sadistic pleasure in alternating praise (his constant refrain of the greatness of László feels incredibly self-aggrandising, as if László was just another one of his bottles of fine wine) and casually cruel jibes at his accent, dress sense and lack of drive.

These are qualities instantly recognised by Erzsébet, played with a fiercely restrained passion by Felicity Jones. Open-eyed at the restrictive oppression of van Buren over her husband – after decades of first the camps and then the brutal oppression of Soviet Hungary – it is she who has more overt fight then the naturally quiet, oppressed László brings. But even she knows they are dependent on van Buren’s patronage to exist (especially after her husband’s offer to sacrifice his salary to maintain crucial elements of his design is gladly accepted), urging her husband that he must do everything possible to maintain van Buren’s passion and interest. She knows to the tasteless van Buren this cathedralic construction is little more than a kitchen renovation.

The building itself is an intriguing concrete monolith, that slowly takes shape over the course of the many years the film covers, like a medieval cathedral. Imposing pillars, and vast ceilinged rooms tower above the skyline. It’s hard to shake the feeling that, for all the passion and fire László pours into its building, it feels a dark, punishing place. Its structures reflect the concrete towers of death camps. This committed Jew might be pouring years of his life into a building crowned by a colossal cross. Its bowels fill like the water sewers so many of his people were forced to try and escape through. Its rooms feel less inviting and more like prisons with the hope of skylights and vast upward spaces. It feels at times that the building itself is a tribute to the psychological damage László has had inflicted on him by his experiences.

Experiences he cannot bring himself to speak about. His scars are less visibly clear than the wheelchair Erzsébet has been confined to, or the wordless dumbness his niece Zsófia, wonderfully played by Raffey Cassidy, suffers. But it’s there in every inch of Adrien Brody’s tortured face. Few actors are more perfectly suited to embody tortured, long-suffering perseverance than Brody (his famously broken nose is even worked into the script), and László is a tour-de-force, an austere, proud man who will not beg but also will not fight, who on some level accepts repression.

Brody’s Oscar-winning performance is a portrait of a mix of unacknowledged PTSD, self-destructive impulses (he remains a heroin addict for much of his life), survivor’s guilt and a quiet willingness to accept abuse that makes him a life-long victim. From the chaos of his own life, full of trauma, his art is all about clear, clean, ordered lines. His genius is also his curse, lifting him to the attention of monsters who exploit and take advantage of his talents for their own ends and offer him no loyalty in return. While The Brutalist could suggest László has his own secret intentions with his grand construction, the film could just as well close in its epilogue that László is trapped, wordlessly and powerlessly, within the giant edifices he has built, doomed to continuously relive in different ways the horrors of his experiences during the war.

László’s whole life feels like a quiet inversion of the American Dream. The idea that anyone can come to the country and make a future for themselves is for the birds. It’s all a roll of a dice and depends on entirely on chance and whim: without a magazine taking an interest in van Buren’s library, László could have just as easily died as an obscure docks worker. America is shown as no land of opportunity, but one where those in power control everything, get away with anything they please and pass their power and influence on to their children. Where László and his like are tolerated as exotic points of interest at the dinner table, but are never really equals. Van Buren exploits and uses László for as long as his interest holds and humiliates him (and much worse) at any point when the architect starts to forget that he is not just an extra in van Buren’s American dream.

These complex and fascinating ideas and interpretations line the walls of Corbet’s own grand edifice: The Brutalist is a film of powerful epic sweep, stunning VistaVision images and looming, ominous intensity. Stuffed with wonderful performances, it’s the sort of ambitious, epic film-making that the cinema sorely needs to hold its place as an art-form. And in its sweep and Hopper-esque artistry, it’s a superb advert for American film-making.

Senso (1954)

Visconti’s grand tale of romantic obsession is an engrossing film to lose yourself in

Director: Luchino Visconti

Cast: Alida Valli (Livia Serpieri), Farley Granger (Franz Mahler), Massimo Girotti (Roberto Ussoni), Heinz Moog (Court Serpieri), Rina Morelli (Laura), Christian Marquand (Bohemian official), Sergio Fantoni (Luca)

It probably felt like a real shock when Visconti made a sharp turn from neorealism into luscious costume drama. But, in a way, isn’t it all the same thing? After all, if you wanted to get every detail of a peasant’s shack just so, wouldn’t you feel exactly the same about the Risorgimento grand palaces? So, it shouldn’t feel a surprise that Visconti moved into such stylistic triumphs as Senso – or that an accomplished Opera director made a film of such heightened, melodramatic emotion as this. Chuck in Senso’s political engagement with the radicals fighting for Italian independence, and you’ve got a film that’s really a logical continuation of Ossessione.

Set in 1866, the rumblings of unification roll around the streets of Venice – the city still under the control of the Austrian empire, despite the city’s Garabaldi-inspired radicals. In this heated environment, Countess Livia Serpieri (Alida Valli), cousin of radical Roberto (Massimo Girotti) finds herself falling into a deep love (or lust?) for imperiously selfish Austrian officer Franz Mahler (Farley Granger). It’s an emotion that will lead her to betray everything she believes she holds most dear and lead to catastrophe.

It’s fitting Senso opens at a grand recreation of La Traviata at the Venetian Opera. Not only was Visconti an accomplished director of the genre, but as Senso winds its way towards its bleakly melodramatic ending, it resembles more and more a grand costume-drama opera, with our heroine as a tragic opera diva left despairing and alone, screaming an aria of tormented grief on Verona’s streets. You’ll understand her pain after the parade of shabby, two-faced treatment the hopelessly devoted Livia receives at the hands of rake’s-rake Franz, a guy who allows little flashes of honesty where he’ll confess his bounder-ness between taking every chance he can get.

What Senso does very well is make this tragic-tinged romance so gorgeously compelling, that you almost don’t notice how cleverly it parallels the political plotlines Visconti has introduced into the source material. Because Franz’s greedy exploiting of Livia for all the money he can get out of her, the callous way he’ll leave her in dire straits or the appallingly complacent teenage rage where he shows up and inserts himself into her country palace (with her husband only a few rooms away) is exactly like how Austria is treating the Italians, stripping out their options, helping themselves to what they like and imposing themselves in their homes.

Livia’s besotted fascination with Franz kicks off at the same opera where the Garabaldi inspired revolutionaries disrupt events by chucking gallons of red, white and green paper down from the Gods onto the Austrian hoi-polloi. And their destructive relationship will play out against an outburst of armed revolutionary fervour, both of them stumbling towards a dark night of death and oppression in the occupied streets of Verona. Livia’s obsession will damage not only herself, but these same revolutionaries who be left high-and-dry when Livia prioritises Franz’s well-being over the revolution’s survival, by funnelling the gold she’s concealed for the purchase of arms into Franz’s wastrel pockets.

But it’s impossible to not feel immensely sorry for Livia, because her desperation and self-delusion is so abundantly clear. Alida Valli is wonderful as this woman who only realises how lonely she is when she finds someone who can provide the erotic fire her detached, self-obsessed husband never has. It’s a brilliantly exposed performance: Valli actually seems to become older as time goes on, as if collapsing into the role of wealthy sugar-mummy to an uncaring toy boy.

Before she knows it, she will be wailing that she doesn’t care who knows of her feelings, before dashing across town to where she believes Franz is staying (it turns out instead to her revolutionary cousin, her husband assuming her feelings are revolutionary sympathies not infidelity). She knows – God she clearly knows! – Franz is not worth the love she is desperately piling onto him, but her need for him is so intense, that we can see in her eyes how desperate she is to persuade herself otherwise. Valli sells the increasingly raw emotion as she can no longer close her eyes to Franz’s selfishness and cruelty and her final moments of raging against the dying of her light are riveting.

Opposite her, Farley Granger (dubbed) may not have enjoyed the experience (he refused to come back and film his final scene, which was shot instead with a partially concealed extra) but his selfish youth and cold-eyed blankness is perfect for a man who cares only for himself. There are parts of him that need to be mothered, and he’s not above throwing himself on her covered in gratitude. Sometimes he’ll advise her he’s not worth it, or sulk like a petulant kid if he feels he isn’t getting enough attention. But he’ll always come back for more wealth.

His shallow greed is appalling. His eyes light up when Livia gives him a locket with a lock of her hair in it. Sure enough, she’ll find that hair discarded in his apartment when she searches him, the locket sold. His fellow soldiers know all about his roving, careless eye – he’s “hard to pin down” one knowingly says, so clearly indicating Franz’s lothario roaming that it’s hard not to feel desperately sad for Livia. The vast risks she takes for him, he’ll chuck away on the next shiny thing (or woman) to catch his eye. But he can also be charming or vulnerable – or at least fake these qualities – so well that Livia continues to persuade herself he is someone she can ‘save’ from his flaws.

It leads to disaster for all, a personal tragedy swarming and soaking up thousands of others. Her revolutionary cousin Roberto will be collateral damage, Visconti capturing this in two exquisitely staged battle sequences (one utilising a stunning near 360 camera turn to take in the catastrophic after-effects of a failed advance by the revolutionaries). This is the grand destruction that wraps around the Operatic failed romance at the height of Senso: it’s a sign that the all-consuming lust that consumes its lead has reached out and crushed almost everything around it.

It makes sense then that the luscious colour and gorgeous design of Visconti’s film comes to its conclusion in dreary streets, nighttime confrontations and a final mood that feels nihilistic and destructive. Senso is a wonderful exploration not only of the senseless destruction of romantic obsession, but also of the wider damage where this negative energy shatters a host of high-flown, optimistic political ideals leaving only ruins and disaster behind. Visconti’s masterful balancing of all of this makes Senso a shining example of both gorgeous film-making and a wonderful mix of compassion and the high-blown. A wonderfully engrossing film to soak in.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

Chaney establishes his own legend in this crowd-pleasing epic, shot on the grandest scale

Director: Wallace Worsley

Cast: Lon Chaney (Quasimodo), Patsy Ruth Miller (Esmeralda), Norman Kerry (Phoebus de Chateaupers), Kate Lester (Madame de Gondelaurier), Winifred Bryson (Fleur de Lys), Nigel de Brulier (Dom Claud), Brandon Hurst (Jehan), Ernest Torrance (Clopin), Tully Marshall (Louis XI), Harry van Meter (Mons. Neufchantel)

If any film cemented Lon Chaney’s reputation as ‘Man of a Thousand Faces’ it was this. Chaney knew Quasimodo was a gift for him, securing the rights for himself and shipping them around the major studios until Universal Studios bit. Setting up the project as a ‘Super Jewel’ (with Chaney taking a handsome pay cheque), a near full scale reproduction of the exterior (and many of the interiors) of Notre Dame was built on the Universal set and the film became a smash hit.

Quasimodo (Lon Chaney) is the frightful bellringer of Notre Dame cathedral, a lonely hunchbacked man, mocked and scorned by Parisians. Half-deaf after years of bellringing, he is in thrall to his master Jehan (Brandon Hurst), brother of the saintly Dom Claud (Nigel de Brulier). Jehan tasks Quasimodo to kidnap the beautiful Roma girl Esmeralda (Patsy Ruth Miller), adopted daughter of Clopin (Ernest Torrance), ‘king’ of the beggars. It fails, but the arrested Quasimodo is treated with kindness by Esmeralda and falls in love with her. Esmeralda though is in love with roguish captain Phoebus (Norman Kerry), only to be accused of attempted murder after the jealous Jehan stabs him. Quasimodo rescues Esmeralda as the city collapses into revolt.

Brilliantly assembled by producer Carl Laemmle, Hunchback looks amazingly impressive. The reconstruction of Notre Dame (and the square around it) is genuinely stunning in its scale and detail. (Surely thousands of viewers believed it’s the real thing!) The sets inside the cathedral skilfully use depth perception to create cloisters that seem to go on forever. Crowd scenes fill the film with vibrancy: from the off, with its medieval feast of fools, it’s a dynamic explosion of energy, with everything from men dressed as bears to dancing skeletons, full of raucous naughtiness. Later battle scenes (including a cavalry charge) before Notre Dame’s doors brilliantly use the sets striking height.

The film’s finest effect though is Chaney’s Quasimodo, a portrait of sadness and timidity under an aggressive frame. Chaney’s physical dexterity and ability to bend and twist his body is put to astonishingly good effect, as a he swings on bells, clambers up and down the set and contorts his body into a series of twisted shapes that drip of pathos. He finds a childlike innocence in this man who knows virtually nothing of the real world and latches onto those who show him affection with a puppy-like adoration.

The film’s finest sequences show-case Chaney: whether that’s following his graceful descent down the walls of Notre Dame or seeing his fear and vulnerability exposed in front of the crowd. In a film of such vastness, perhaps its most striking moment is one of genuine intimacy. Tied to a wheel for a public lashing (taking the rap for Jehan’s misdeeds), Chaney retreats into shame and fear and recoils in terror when Esmeralda approaches him – only to soften and almost collapse into a pool of gratitude when she tenderly offers him water rather than the abuse the crowd gives him.

It’s a striking testament to Chaney’s mastery of physical transformation, but also his ability to humanise those who appear as monsters. Quasimodo’s genuine love for Esmeralda is very sweet, as his bubbly excitement at experiencing such feelings for the first time. Chaney’s determination to protect Esmeralda at all costs (including misguidedly defending Notre Dame from a gang of beggars as bent on protecting her as he is) is very touching. It’s a genuinely great performance.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame cemented the public image of the novel – most of the (many) later versions that followed used it as an inspiration. For starters, it moved Quasimodo into the most prominent role. Forever more, the public image of the novel was a lonely, tragic man, swinging on bell ropes and shouting sanctuary. Not just that: this film started a trend of splitting the novel’s hypocritical churchman Frollo into two characters (here a noble priest and his villainous brother) to avoid making a man of the cloth a villain. It also started the ball rolling on re-interpretating the selfish Phoebus as more of a matinee-idol romantic figure. Not to mention seeing the film as a gothic-laden, semi-romance with Hugo’s social and political commentary utterly shorn off.

Today we only have a reduced road-show cut of the film. This does mean Hunchback sometimes rushes or abandons plot points, or swiftly cuts off scenes with an occasional abruptness. An entire plot strand of Eulalie Jensen’s deranged old woman (secretly the mother of Esmeralda) is utterly abandoned without any emotional conclusion. Tully Marshall’s Louis XI pops up for a few brief scenes only to be ditched with brutal abruptness. Phoebus’ initial fiancée Fleur du Lys and her mother emerge for a few key scenes to be all but forgotten by the close.

Hunchback ditches many of the novel’s complexities. As mentioned, Phoebus – in the book a creepy semi-rapist – becomes a conventional romantic leading man. Hunchback has echoes of his novel’s more ambiguous original: his first scene flirting with Esmeralda features a cut to a spider spinning a web and Louis XI openly calls him a rogue. But his affection for Esmeralda is treated as genuine, allowing the film to excuse his shabby treatment of Fleur de Lys. Norman Kerry does his best with all this, although the audience is far more invested in Quasimodo’s unrequited love for Esmeralda.

Similarly, the social commentary around the beggar’s, led by a charismatic Ernest Torrence as Clopin, gets shaved back. Hunchback throws in a snide comment about ‘justice’ under Louis in its title cards as Quasimodo is thrashed for Jehan’s crimes and Esmeralda’s receives a farcical trial for murder (despite her ‘victim’ Phoebus still being alive) concluding with an iron boot being screwed onto her foot to extract a confession. But the beggar’s campaign for justice gets short-changed in the cut, and it’s just as easy to see them as a gang of troublemakers (who need to be restrained from a lynching at one point by Esmeralda).

Hunchback was directed by Wallace Worsley after other options, including Erich von Stroheim, Tod Browning, Raoul Walsh and Frank Borzage were rejected over concerns about their lack of budget control (an odd concern, seeing as they built a 225-foot replica of the lower front of Notre Dame, including each individual carving and gargoyle). Worsley brings professionalism, marshalling the vast crowd with great skill – promotional material made huge play of him casting aside his megaphone in favour of a radio to control the huge cast. There are few moments of genuine visual originality or inspiration in Hunchback, but Worsley captures the scale with some fine camerawork (especially striking images looking down from the top of Notre Dame).

Hunchback is an epic drama, a grand melodrama with a brilliant performance by Chaney. However, you can argue its focus is on entertainment rather than cinematic skill. There are genuinely very few truly memorable shots. It feels like a producer’s film, where resources are expertly managed and the money spent is all up on screen. But when its’ put up there as entertainingly as this, who can complain about that?

In Old Chicago (1937)

Entertaining melodrama leads into a very well-staged disaster epic that burns a city

Director: Henry King

Cast: Tyrone Power (Dion O’Leary), Alice Faye (Belle Fawcett), Don Ameche (Jack O’Leary), Alice Brady (Molly O’Leary), Phyllis Brooks (Ann Colby), Andy Devine (Pickle Bixby), Brian Donlevy (Gil Warren), Tom Brown (Bob O’Leary), Berton Churchill (Senator Colby), Sidney Blackmer (General Phil Sheridan)

San Francisco showed Hollywood the way: spice up a melodrama with a disaster-laden ending. The first took the San Francisco earthquake: In Old Chicago takes the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 which burnt down over three-square miles of the city, destroyed over 17,000 buildings and killed over 300 peoples. Despite a rather earnest message that research was scrupulously carried out with the Chicago Historical Society – other than the fire itself, the entire film is a great big fictionalised soapy melodrama, building towards a grandly staged recreation of the great conflagration itself.

The melodrama is built around the O’Leary family. In legend Mrs Catherine O’Leary, of the city’s large Irish community, was the fire’s unwitting cause after her cow knocked over a barn lamp. Here she is reimagined as Molly (Alice Brady), mother to a flock of sons. In the way of these melodramas one, Dion (Tyone Power), is a cheeky rogue with criminal links the other, Jack (Don Ameche), is a legal straight-shooter determined to clean this town up. Club owner Dion controls a stack of corrupt votes to get Jack elected Mayor – screwing over kingpin rival Gil Warren (Brian Donlevy) in the process – under the mistaken impression he can control his brother (dead wrong). Meantime, Dion bounces through a heated love-hate relationship with glamourous bar-singer Belle (Alice Faye), who knows a little too much about his corrupt dealings.

These elements are expertly melodramatically mixed together with very few narrative surprises to establish some recognisable faces for when the city-burning destruction kicks in, with its punishments and redemptions. King directs all this with a glitzy, big-budget flair while the shallow characters go through familiar motions. Truth be told, there isn’t much especially new about In Old Chicago, which follows the San Francisco model to a tee with soapy personal rivalries (skimming the surface of Chicago’s corruption) beefed up with (fairly forgettable) songs from Alice Faye. There’s even a literally soap-sud filled transition at the start to take us into a superbly re-constructed nineteenth century Chicago, in a film full of impressive production design. But yet, don’t get me wrong, it’s all done with such energy it’s consistently enjoyable.

The two brothers are, of course, studies in contrast (third brother, Tom Brown’s Bob is so decently dull he barely makes any impression). As the ‘bad’ brother, Tyrone Power enjoys himself as a lip-smacking cad obsessed with power. Smirking and full of self-satisfaction at his own cleverness (not as clever as he thinks), he’s a ruthless liar and manipulator who deceives everyone around him: his brothers, the woman he loves, his political allies and rivals. It’s one of Power’s most engaging performances, successfully making Dion the sort of bastard you love to hate without ever making him utterly deplorable. In fact, he feels like a big kid (and a mummy’s boy at that), literally leaning back in his chair and expecting praise for his cleverness.

Opposite him, Don Ameche is saddled with the impossibly noble Jack, a crusading lawyer (who wouldn’t think of charging low-earning clients) and who wants to become Mayor to change the town for the better. His straitlaced decency is constantly thrown off by his brother’s dastardly lack of principle (their relationship eventually culminates in an entertainingly well-staged, no holds-barred fisticuff scuffle). Ameche does a good job of investing depth in this on-paper rather dull character.

The film presents an entertainingly straight-forward picture of machine politics, with votes controlled by bosses, various voters encouraged to register (and vote) multiple times and bosses controlling vast teams of followers. Brian Donlevy brings a very fine sense of arrogant domination to would-be boss Gill Warren (the sort of guy who casually mentions a rival’s bar looks rather flammable during a shake-down). It’s all very much presented as bad apples spoiling the whole barrel (rather than the whole system being a bucket of corrupt snakes), but fun nevertheless.

The romance comes between Dion and Belle, played with a decent mix of rascally bad-girl and misunderstood decency be Alice Faye. Faye (taking over the role at short notice from the late Jean Harlow) gets a few decent songs but the meat of the role is her love-struck switching between adoring and loathing Dion, who (with his flirtation with Senator’s daughter Ann Colby, played by Phyllis Brooks) barely deserves her. Some of Dion’s initial courting – consisting of sneaking into her carriage, pinning her down and kissing her – hardly feels comfortable now, but it supports a neat running joke of Belle’s maid running for help only to return to find the two locked in a passionate embrace.

But all of this is just build-up for the main event: an impressively staged reconstruction of the Great Fire. Shot with a mix of real sets and models – you can see where the money was spent on (briefly) the most expensive film ever made. It throws at us buildings aflame, crashing to the ground, huge crowds of extras charging past the camera in tracking shots, a panicked army of bulls fleeing (and crushing those unlucky enough to get in the way). This sequence is genuinely grippingly put-together and impressively epic, utilising some very effective aerial model shots of the city to establish the scale of the fire and the devastation. It balances culminating its plot threads at the same time as embracing the disaster excitement.

This end sequence makes the slightly patchy, familiar soap beforehand retrospectively work even better. It certainly helped deliver a box office bonanza for the film – just as Alice Brady’s closing speech about the unbeatable spirit of Chicago probably helped her to an Oscar (it’s a part Brady clearly enjoys, cementing a stereotype of the domineering Irish mother). After San Francisco, In Old Chicago proved entertaining disaster epics could thrill audiences with destruction for years to come.

San Francisco (1936)

Charismatic stars and a well-oiled Hollywood plot lead into an highly effective disaster movie

Director: W.S. Van Dyke

Cast: Clark Gable (“Blackie” Norton) Jeanette MacDonald (Mary Blake), Spencer Tracy (Father Tim Mullin), Jack Holt (Jack Burley), Jessie Ralph (Mrs Burley), Ted Healy (Mat), Shirley Ross (Trixie), Margaret Irving (Della Bailey), Harold Huber (Babe)

With San Francisco, Hollywood stumbled on a formula that was a sure-fire success: a romantic triangle comes to head in the face of a natural disaster with buildings tumbling. Love and disasters – who doesn’t love that? San Francisco is set in the build up to the 1906 earthquake that left over two thirds of the city in ruins and over 3,000 people dead. How’s that for focusing minds onto what really matters: who you really love and, of course, faith in a higher power.

“Blackie” Norton (Clark Gable) is a lovable rogue, a saloon owner on San Francisco’s rough-and-ready Barbary Coast. His love for a good time doesn’t stop him being best friends with Father Tim Mullin (Spencer Tracy), a man’s man whose heart is with the Church. Blackie hires knock-out soprano singer Mary Blake (Jeanette MacDonald) for his saloon, but can’t wrap his head around the fact that she’s meant for classier things (like San Francisco’s opera house) than a life singing for his rowdy crowds. Of course they fall in love. Blackie is holding Mary back (without fully realising it) and she finds a new patron (and suitor) in stuffed-shirt rich-man Jack Burley (Jack Holt). All these romantic problems are suddenly dwarfed by that earthquake.

Like all disaster films, San Francisco starts with a high-blown melodrama before becoming a special effects laden epic. Much of the first 90 minutes revolves around an engagingly played familiar pair of formulas. We have a story of two old rough-and-tumble childhood friends – inevitably one who chose a life of the cloth, the other of rowdy pleasure – whose friendship struggles under the weight of conflicting principles. And we also get a love triangle where a woman is torn between two suitors – one a rogueish chancer who doesn’t understand her dreams, the other a selfish dull rich guy who offers her those dreams at a price. This is classic Hollywood stuff.

To deliver it, three popular stars go through their paces to audience pleasing effect. Clark Gable brings his customary suave charm and naughty grin to make Blackie (who in other hands could come across as a myopic, selfish sleazeball) into someone fairly endearing. Of course, it’s helped that the plot makes clear Blackie may appear to be a boozy saloon owner, but actually he has a heart of pure gold: he buys an organ for the local church, gives money to orphans and is running for office to improve the city’s fire safety. He’s easily the most polite, decent and upstanding bad boy you’ll see – and he’s even completely faithful to the woman he loves. He may say God is for ‘suckers’, but it’s not going to be a long journey to reform him into someone worthy of a good woman.

And he’s also honest in his love for Jeanette MacDonald’s Mary, trying to give her what he thinks she wants. Blinded by his three ‘Chicken Ball’ trophies for ‘artistic achievement’, he genuinely can’t see the difference between Mary performing Faust and dressing her up in the shortest skirt imaginable (as he tells her, good legs sell) to sing for hundreds of drunken punters. Poor Mary feels obliged to give up her dream to return for this nonsense, until good old Father Tim points out Blackie is accidentally behaving like a cad. Enter Jack Burley as alternative: just to make sure we know it’s the wrong choice, he’s played as un-charismatically as possible by Jack Holt and uses his money to get everyone to follow his orders, exactly the sort of ‘Nob Hill’ crook Blackie rails against.

With Jeanette MacDonald – who is perhaps a little too coy and bashful for today’s taste – we also get an awful lot of singing, from opera to hymns to several renditions of ‘San Francisco’. This went down like a storm at the time, but is probably a bit too much to take now. MacDonald actually has the duller, less engaging role, constantly changing her mind between her various career and romantic options, although she does a nice line in awkward uncomfortableness when accommodating herself to Blackie’s wishes rather than her own (not least in her body language when dressed up in that slutty showgirl costume that Blackie thinks is a compliment).

Surprisingly Spencer Tracy then landed an Oscar nomination (the shortest ever leading performance nominated), but he nails the muscular Christianity of Tim, the boxing priest. Tracy’s main role is dispensing advice and guidance to Gable and MacDonald, full of shrewd wisdom mixed with firm stares of moral judgement. Tracy plays the role very lightly, never making Tim priggish even at his most righteous. A confrontation which sees a frustrated Gable smack him in the mouth, is a classic Tracy moment: a steely eyed glare dripping with disappointment, but still he refuses to react (the film throws in an early boxing scene between the two, where Tracy easily bests Gable, to confirm he certainly ain’t scared of his co-lead!)

The various smoothly handled formula leads perfectly into the earthquake. You can’t deny this is hugely impressive sequence. The scale, using super-imposition and enormous sets, is truly stunning: buildings topple in flames, fires rip through houses, crowds run in panic through debris-packed streets. A ballroom crumbles before our eyes: the roof cracking, the wall falling down (Gable is nearly crushed by a wall), a staircase balcony collapsing.

Clearly someone on the MGM lot spent a bit of time watching Battleship Potemkin. The first wave takes Soviet cinematic montage inspiration to the max. Tight reaction cuts to horrified faces are intermixed with tumbling walls and buildings. A statue is seen, seemingly starring down in horror, before a cut to it cracking and then a shot of the head roiling downwards on the floor. A carriage wheel spins in the streets in close-up as debris falls around it. This sequence feels visceral and intense, a real stand-out moment. A second wave picks up the baton with a street literally tearing itself in two, flames licking up from a burst gas main. Buildings are dynamited as fire breaks. And through the aftermath, Gable stumbles blooded and torn and genuinely looking lost and afraid, terrified that he has lost the woman he loves in the conflagration.

It brings a real energy and punch to an entertaining plot-boiler relying on the chemistry and charisma of its stars. San Francisco ends with a tribute to the endurance of the American Spirit (not to mention, of course, Gable completing his reformation into a man of God), as all races and creeds are bought together with the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ as they march towards a city reborn in superimposed imagery. With all that is it any wonder it was a box office smash?

Alexander the Great (1956)

An odd epic, which both loathes its subject and also presents him as a golden-boy

Director: Robert Rossen

Cast: Richard Burton (Alexander the Great), Fredric March (Philip II), Claire Bloom (Barsine), Danielle Darrieux (Olympias), Barry Jones (Aristotle), Harry Andrews (Darius), Stanley Baker (Attalus), Niall MacGinnis (Parmenion), Peter Cushing (Memnon), Michael Hordern (Demosthenes), Marisa de Leza (Eurydice), Gustavo Rojo (Cleitus the Black), Peter Wyngarde (Pausanias), William Squire (Aeschenes)

No one in history achieved so much, so young as Alexander the Great. He conquered most of the known world before he was thirty and left a legend that generations of would-be emperors found almost impossible to live up to. He did all this, while remaining a fascinatingly enigmatic figure: either a visionary nation-builder or a drunken man of violence, depending on who you talk to. Alexander the Great, in its truncated two hours and twenty minutes (sliced down from Robert Rossen’s original three-hour plus) can only scratch the surface of his story and that’s all it does.

As the great man, Richard Burton flexes his mighty voice in a film that splits its focus roughly equally between the early days of Alexander and his troubled relationship with both his father Philip II (Fredric March) and his mother Olympias (Danielle Darrieux) and his own kingship and conquest of the known world until his early death. Surprisingly, perhaps because the world is so vast, it’s the first half of the film that’s the most interesting – perhaps because showing up the internecine dynastic squabbles between petulant royals are more up director and writer Rossen’s alley than global dominance.

Perhaps as well because it feels pretty clear Rossen doesn’t particularly seem to like Alexander. Over the course of the film, the pouting monarch will prove to have a monstrous ego (even as a teenager fighting Philip’s wars, he cockily re-names a sacked city after himself), ruthlessly slaughters opponents after battles, is prone to fits of rage, informs his followers with wild-eyes that he’s God himself, leads his army into the dried out hell of the deserts of the Middle East and turns (at best) a blind eye to his mother’s plans to assassinate his father and then murder his father’s second wife and baby son.

The film culminates in a shamed Alexander kicking the bucket more concerned with maintaining his legend for future generations than assuring any kind of future for his kingdom. But the sense of hubris destroying the great man is never quite captured. This is partly because the grand figure we are watching lacks any personal feelings or fear. He can’t seem to experience loss or grief and only understands negative events in terms of their impact on his reputation. And he never seems to truly learn from this – even when he harms friends, his regrets are based around the impact such action will have on how those around him see him. At the same time, Rossen can’t quite follow his heart and make a real iconoclastic epic meaning he instead leaves titbits here and there for the cinema-goer to hopefully pick up among the spectacle.

As such, Alexander is still pretty persistently framed as we expect a hero to be, with a rousing score backdropping Burton’s speeches and poses, even while the film seems deeply divided about whether this guy who conquered most of the known world and lay waste to Babylon was a good or bad thing. While acting half the time like a egomaniac tyrant, the film still carefully partially shifts blame for his character flaws onto his mother’s Lady Macbethesque influence (Darrieux does a good line in whispering insinuation) or Philip’s bombastic egotism (March, growling with impressive vigour).

Rossen has far more admiration for people like the fiercely principled Memnon (a fine Peter Cushing) who refuses to compromise only to be rewarded by a post-battle one-sided butchering from Alexander after his offer to surrender and spare the lives of his men is turned down. Even Michael Hordern’s Demosthenes comes across as a man of principle, certainly when compared to Alexander’s Athenian-of-choice Aristotle, interpretated here as a pompous windbag cheer-leader for dictators. Oddly even Harry Andrews (possibly, along with Niall MacGinnis’ wily Parmenion, the films finest performance) as Darius comes across as a man of surprising human doubt under his regal exterior. But, perhaps because of choppy-editing cutting down a complex story into just over two hours, Alexander the Great can’t resist framing its hero as a sun-kissed golden-boy, towering above everyone else in the film.

Watching Alexander the Great you get the feeling the film has effectively entombed him as a marble statue, so devoid is he of fundamental humanity. Perhaps this was Rossen’s solution to shooting a film about someone he seemed so devoid of human interest and sympathy for. There is a reason why Charlton Heston – the first choice for the role (can you imagine!) – called Alexander the Great “the easiest kind of picture to make badly”. Frequently Alexander the Great tips into a sort of sword-and-sandles camp made worse by how highly serious it takes itself. Not helped by Burton’s all-too-clear boredom with the part and contempt for the material, Alexander strikes poses and delivers speeches as if he’s been ripped straight out of Plutarch or a bust display in a museum.

Apart from rare moments – usually in the first half as he processes his complex feelings of love and loathing for his overbearing father – he is almost never allowed to be human. His friends – most notably his famed best-friend (and lover) Hephaestion – are reduced to a gang of largely wordless extras and only Claire Bloom’s Barsine is given any scope to talk to him as if he’s a man rather than just a myth. It gets a bit wearing after a while as you long for something human about the man you can cling onto.

It’s also a shame that Rossen seems uncomfortable with shooting the battle sequences. The battles of Granicus and a combined Issus-Gaugamela look rather like damp scuffles over shallow streams than some of the mightiest clashes of the Ancient world. Rossen communicates no visual sense of either strategy or scale (despite the bumper budget). Similarly, the grand sets look too theatrical and never quite as impressive as they should do, despite some fine painterly compositions. Rossen can never quite find a way to make his hundreds of extra seem like thousands and he falls back in the second half to communicating Alexander’s success through a tired combination of map montages, voiceover and repeated shots of men marching left to right and burning cities.

Alexander the Great is a deeply flawed epic. It’s neither swashbuckling fun that bowls you along, or a breath-taking piece of historical spectacle. Nor is it psychologically adept or insightful enough to show you something truly different about its hero. Instead, it tries to straddle both ways of thinking and ends up collapsing in the middle. If only Rossen had found his own Alexanderian solution to cutting this Gordian knot. Instead, the film just ends up a cut-about mess that fades from memory all too soon.

The Alamo (1960)

Wayne’s historical epic is a mediocre labour-of-love that takes a very, very long time to get to its moments of interest

Director: John Wayne

Cast: John Wayne (Col Davy Crockett), Richard Widmark (Col. Jim Bowie), Laurence Harvey (Col. William Barrett Travis), Richard Boone (General Sam Houston), Frankie Avalon (Smitty), Patrick Wayne (Captain James Butler Bohham), Linda Cristal (Graciela), Joan O’Brien (Sue Dickinson), Chill Wills (Beekeeper), Joseph Calleira (Juan Seguin), Ken Curtis (Captain Almaron Dickinson), Carlos Arruza (Lt Reyes), Hank Worden (Parson)

John Wayne believed in America as a Shining City on a Hill and he wanted films that celebrated truth, justice and rugged perseverance. To him, what better story of fighting against all odds and to the bitter end for liberty, than the Battle of the Alamo? There, in 1836, a few hundred soldiers and volunteers from the Republic of Texas bravely stood before an army of over two thousand Mexicans to defend the Texas Revolution’s independence from Mexico. Wayne put his money where his mouth was, pouring millions of his own dollars into bringing the story to the screen. Furthermore, he’d direct and produce himself, convinced only he could protect his vision.

The end result isn’t quite the disaster the film has gained a reputation for being – nor is Wayne’s directorial efforts as useless as his detractors would like. But The Alamo is a long, long slog (almost three hours) towards about fifteen minutes of stirring action, filled with pages and pages of awkward speechifying, hammy acting and painfully unfunny comedy. While a bigger hit than people remember, Wayne lost almost every dime he put in (he said it was a fine investment) and even a muscular series of favour-call-ins that netted it seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture!) couldn’t disguise that The Alamo is a thoroughly mediocre film that far outstays its welcome.

Wayne collaborated closely with his favourite writer, James Edward Grant. Both had a weakness for overwritten speeches and there is an awful lot of them in The Alamo’s opening half as we await the arrival of the Mexicans. Wayne gets several speeches about the glories of the American way such as (and this is cut down) “Republic. I like the sound of the word…Some words can give a feeling that makes your heart warm. Republic is one of those words” or a musing on duty that takes up a solid five minutes (it’s ironic Widmark’s Bowie refers to Harvey’s Travis as a long-winded jackanapes, since Wayne’s Crockett has them both beat).

There is only so much portentous, middle-distance-starring talk one can take before you start twitching in your seat, even for the most pro-Republican viewer. With complete creative control, there was no one to tell Wayne to pick up the pace and trim down these scenes. So enamoured was Wayne with Grant’s dialogue, whole scenes are taken up with the Cinemascope camera sitting gently in rooms watching the actors pontificate about politics, strategy and duty at such inordinate length you long for the Mexicans to damn well hurry up.

For a film as long as this, there is an awful lot of padding. The first hour shoe-horns in an immensely tedious romantic sub-plot for the increasingly-long-in-the-tooth Wayne (who had been playing veterans for almost 15 years by now) with Linda Cristal’s flamenco-dancing Mexican. We know she’s a hell of a dancer, since we get several showcases for her toe-tapping skills as Crockett’s Tennessee volunteers wile away the evenings. There is a sexless lack of chemistry between Wayne and Cristel, re-enforced by Crockett’s gentleman-like rescuing of Cristel from a lecherous officer, and the whole presence of this sub-plot feels as like a box-ticking exercise to appeal to as many viewers as possible as does the casting of young heart-throb Frankie Avalon in a key supporting role.

This is still preferable to the rather lamentable comic relief from a host of Wayne’s old muckers, playing a collection of Good Old Boy Tennesse volunteers. These jokers swop wise-cracks, prat-falls, good-natured fisticuffs, but (inevitably) also drip with honour and decency. Chief among them is Chill Wills as Beekeeper, a scenery-chewing performance of competent comic timing that inexplicably garnered Wills an Oscar nomination. Wills made real history with an outrageously tacky campaign for the golden man, shamelessly publicly pleading for votes and including a full-page Variety advert (‘The cast of The Alamo are praying harder than the real Texans prayed for their lives in the Alamo for Chill Wills to win!’) that even Wayne denounced as tasteless.

Wayne believed the real Oscar nominee should have been Laurence Harvey as ram-rod stickler-for-form Colonel Travis, commander of The Alamo. He’s probably right (if you were going to honour anyone here), as Harvey’s abrasive style and stiff formality was a good fit for the role and he turns the brave-but-hard-to-like Travis into the most interesting character. He’s more interesting than Widmark’s rough-and-ready Bowie, who looks uncomfortable: he would have been better casting as Crockett. That role went to Wayne, after investors said his presence in a lead role was essential for the box office (reluctant as Wayne was, he still cast himself in the most dynamic, largest role).

There are qualities in The Alamo – and they are largely squeezed into the final thirty minutes as the siege begins in earnest. This sequence is very well done, full of well-cut action and shot on an impressive scale. The money is certainly up-on-the-screen – The Alamo built a set only marginally smaller than the actual Alamo and recruited a cast of actors not too dissimilar from the size of the actual Mexican army. (The only nominations The Alamo deserved were related to production and sound design, both of which are impressive). The relentless final stand is undeniably exciting – whether it’s worth the long wait to get there is another question.

The Alamo largely avoids vilifying the Mexicans. Their commanders may be little more than extras, but Wayne’s was aware that in the Cold War, allies were crucial so the film is littered with praise for the bravery, courage and honour of the Mexicans as battle rages (‘Even as I killed ‘em, I was proud of ‘em’ one volunteer muses). However, in many ways, The Alamo is incredibly simplistic and naïve about American history – especially the ‘original sin’ of slavery, the banning of which in Mexico was one of the main reasons for the Texans revolt. It’s hard not to feel it’s a bit rich for Wayne to make a big speech about freedom, when Crockett and co were literally laying down their lives for the Texan Republic’s right to keep slaves. The only slave in the film is so overwhelmingly happy with Bowie, he literally refuses his freedom and lays down his life to protect his master.

But then that’s because The Alamo is a proud piece of propaganda, celebrating a rose-tinted view of American History that avoids complexity and celebrates everyone as heroes. It’s not the disaster you might have heard about. It has its moments. But its still a dull, tedious trek.