Category: Relationship film

The Turning Point (1977)

Two women struggle to have it all in a film that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 1940s

Director: Herbert Ross

Cast: Shirley MacLaine (DeeDee Rodgers), Anne Bancroft (Emma Jacklin), Tom Skerritt (Wayne Rodgers), Leslie Browne (Emilia Rodgers), Mikhail Baryshnikov (Yuri Kopeikine), Martha Scott (Adelaide), James Mitchell (Michael Cooke), Alexandra Danilova (Madame Dakharova), Anthony Zerbe (Joe “Rosie” Rosenberg), Lisa Lucas (Janina Rodgers), Antoinette Sibley (Sevilla Haslem)

The demands of ballet are unlike any other artform there is. Complete physical and emotional commitment is needed to master it – so that means you got to make choices. The Turning Point is all about those choices. You might even call them ‘turning points’. DeeDee (Shirley MacLaine) and Emma (Anne Bancroft) were two young ballerinas who took radically different paths: DeeDee had a child with fellow dancer Wayne (Tom Skerritt) and left the profession behind; Emma remained with the company to become its prima ballerina. Now DeeDee’s teenage daughter Emilia (Leslie Browne) has joined the company: will she become the new prima ballerina? Or will she decide to focus on a relationship with playboy dancer Yuri (Mikhail Baryshnikov)? Will Emma and DeeDee resolve the tensions between them – and the conflict from their shared parental interest in Emilia?

The Turning Point was a big hit in 1977. That, and the fact that it was about (and featured a lot of) an artform as graceful as ballet seems to have convinced the Academy it merited a haul of eleven Oscar nominations. Come awards night, the film set a record for most unsuccessful nominations, converting none of them into Oscars. Perhaps that’s because, on closer inspection, The Turning Point is a fairly run-of-the-mill soap opera, that mixes in various clichés from backstage, traditional ‘women’s pictures’ and family drama to come up with a plotline that’s eventually very familiar.

For all its positioning as a female-led drama, it essentially boils down to the same old patterns that for decades such films have circled. Turns out women can’t have it all: you can have that successful career, but forever sacrifice the joy of being a mother or you can settle down and have the family but face a life of career unfulfillment. Twas ever thus, ‘tis one or t’other. Essentially the film boils down into a soapy drama about resentments and illicit backstage affairs and little more than that. It doesn’t even really double down on the fun this sort of set-up could provide, instead framing the whole thing as a very serious drama.

But then, the film was an autobiographical affair for those involved. Emma is based on Nora Kaye, who was married to the director Herbert Ross. DeeDee is based on Kaye’s childhood friend Isabel Mirrow Brown, who made the exact same choice as DeeDee, marrying a fellow dancer (just like Tom Skerritt’s character). Her daughter (and Kaye’s goddaughter) was Leslie Browne, who here plays a fictionalised version of herself based on her own experience of starting her ballet career. Characters based on Jerome Robbins, Lucia Chase and other leading figures from ballet and theatre appear. Only Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Yuri is purely fictional (although the character has more than few similarities with Baryshnikov himself, being a Soviet defector).

It does give an additional layer of interest to the film. Ross also mixes in a host of extended ballet sequences which showcase actual professional ballet dancers, with snippets from Swan Lake, Cinderella and The Nutcracker among others. The dancing is breath-takingly good. Not least from Baryshnikov and Browne, who are given multiple opportunities to showcase their skills. Baryshnikov in particular is at the height of his powers, a graceful artiste who moves with an astonishing finesse. Both landed Oscar nominations, one suspects largely on the basis of their dancing.

The acting is left to MacLaine and Bancroft as the leading ladies. There is something a little perverse that MacLaine, the former dancer, doesn’t so much as trot a step, while Bancroft (totally unexperienced) struts parts of Anna Karenina. However, the two actresses rip into these thinly written parts, giving them a lot more force than the film deserves. MacLaine balances motherly pride with bubbling feelings of something uncomfortably close to envy for her daughter’s success, spending time in New York trying to recapture some of her past (including a brief fling with Anthony Zerbe’s lecherous choreographer). Bancroft balances coming to terms with the end of her career as a ballerina with a growing regret that she has been left without a family. She becomes increasingly close to Emilia, mentoring her, dressing her and coaching her through a performance after relationship problems lead to Emilia getting roundly pissed in a bar before the show.

Needless to say, this unspoken squabble for ownership over Emilia – not helped by Emilia’s fury over her mother’s infidelity – only exacerbates tensions between the two women. It builds towards the film’s true climax (but unfortunately not its actual climax, as fifteen minutes remain for Emilia to be coached for her star-making performance) as the two women down drinks and exchange angry words and slaps, leading to a full blown cat fight outside the theatre. The fight later descends into cathartic giggling – and pity the two actresses who filmed it in ballroom dresses in what looks like a gale – but is acted with a great deal of attack by both, who bounce off each other (literally) hugely effectively.

But the scene is also a further confirmation that what we are really watching is a sort of high-brow family soap, that uses ballet as a backdrop for family feuds, scuffles, sexual escapades and tear-filled reunions. And it boils down to that struggle between career and family, the sort of struggle Bette Davis and Joan Crawford films were dealing with in the 1940s. Which is possibly another reason so many took to The Turning Point: even in 1977 it was an old-fashioned piece of entertainment, that did very little new.

That carries across to its whole execution: Ross competently directs the film (this was his annus mirabilis as he directed two Best Picture nominees, this and The Goodbye Girl) but really it gets all the force it has (and more than it perhaps deserves) from the two leads and a fine supporting cast (Tom Skerritt is very good as DeeDee’s laid-back, understanding father who perhaps masks secrets of his own). It’s a soap opera, solid but not spectacular, that really outside its showcase of ballet, doesn’t stand out from several other films of the same genre.

Licorice Pizza (2021)

Young romance in a changing time in Paul Thomas Anderson’s unconventional love story

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Alana Haim (Alana Kane), Cooper Hoffman (Gary Valentine), Sean Penn (Jack Holden), Tom Waits (Rex Blau), Bradley Cooper (Jon Peters), Benny Safdie (Joel Wachs), Skyler Gisondo (Lance), Mary Elizabeth Ellis (Momma Anita), John Michael Higgins (Jerry Frick), Christine Ebersole (Lucy Doolittle), Harriet Sansom Harris (Mary Grady)

Is there a force harder to understand than love? That’s basically the theme of Paul Thomas Anderson’s delightfully whimsical film, which explores an unlikely relationship in Los Angeles in 1973, played out to a backdrop of the OPEC gas crisis. Told with a dreamlike grace and overflowing with affection and warmth for its characters, it’s a deceptively simple film that is a masterpiece of heartfelt craft.

Standing in line to have his photo taken for his High School picture, 15-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) is instantly smitten with cynical photography assistant, 25-year-old Alana Kane (Alana Haim). Much to her surprise, his claim to be a child actor in the movies is actually true – he’s co-starring with Lucille Doolittle (Christine Ebersole, in a thinly veiled spoof of Lucille Ball) in a movie. He’s also a budding entrepreneur, setting up a business selling water beds in LA. Alana still doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life, but finds herself drawn to Gary, despite her acute awareness of their age difference. The two of them become business partners and drift in and out of friendship, never quite sure exactly how they feel about each other.

Now I guess you might well have checked yourself there at the thought of a romance between a teenager and a 25-year-old. But there is no prurience here, no masturbatory coming-of-age fantasy with an older woman or sleazy grooming. This is instead a very genuine, sweet and moving romance between two people who only really have numbers keeping them apart. It particularly works because Gary in many ways feels about 5 years older than he actually is and Alana often feels about 5 years younger than she is. In many ways they are both twenty-year-olds – and it’s only the fact that they are not which puts a barrier between them being together. As such it becomes very easy to accept their potential relationship, and even root for it.

That’s massively helped by the fact that these two characters are marvellously embodied by two first-time actors. Anderson specifically wrote the role for Alana Haim, member of family rock group Haim (Anderson has directed several of their music videos, and was taught by Haim’s mother). She’s stunning: prickly, quick-witted, cynical but also vulnerable and sensitive. She’s desperate to find some sort of purpose in her life: exploring the role of trophy girlfriend, businesswoman and political campaigner, but always seems like she’s slightly lost, for all her defiance. Haim is also wonderfully exasperated and befuddled by the interest she feels for this younger guy, barely able to acknowledge she might have feelings for him. Haim is superb.

Gary, played by the son of regular Anderson collaborator the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, is equally well bought to life by Cooper Hoffman. Gary’s career as a child actor is coming to an end: as we see through a disastrously over enthusiastic audition, which the casting directors watch out of a polite respect. But Gary has the go-getting hustling skills of someone much older. He’s got an eye for business opportunities – water beds, film productions, pinball machines – that would be the envy of others. He’s smart, confident, frequently cocky, assured – but at times also staggeringly immature (like a teenage boy he’s obsessed with boobs and Alana watches with frustrated despair as he and some friends drag out miming a wanking gag for what seems forever). He’s also still sometimes just a kid: mistakenly arrested at one point, he sits in terror in a police station and, even when uncuffed and released, is too scared to leave the station without Alana’s encouragement.

That arrest scene is yet another moment that reaffirms the deep bond and love between these two people. Wrongly arrested for nominally fitting the description of a suspected killer – “Look forward to Attica!” the police taunt him – he’s hauled from an Expo. Alana follows, running full pelt after the squad car – even though at this point they’ve not spoken for weeks – and then holds him for what feels like forever when he is released (before, of course, slapping him and saying “What did you do?”). Later, when Alana falls while taking part in an ill-advised late-night motorbike stunt, Gary will run the length of a golf course to make sure she is alright (despite, again, the two of them having cut ties before this). Moments like this sing with a real romantic force.

Particularly as this is such a love-hate film. Alana and Gary constantly hurt each other, finding ways to get into perfect sync only to screw it up. Gary is heartbroken when Alana starts to date his older co-star (a smug atheist, played wonderfully by Skyler Gisondo). Alana is overcome with jealousy and pain when Gary flirts and kisses a school crush his own age at the launch of their water-bed business. After auditioning for a movie role, Alana delights in making Gary uncomfortable when he walks into the bar where she is enjoying a drink with the movie’s male star. Through it all, these two are drawn back to each other time and again – and when the chips are down their loyalty and love to each other is absolute, even if they can’t always admit it to either themselves or each other.

Around the two outstanding central performances, Anderson constructs a series of scenes and skits that drift from one to the other. The whole film has a curiously dreamlike transition structure: it’s frequently hard to tell how much time has passed and the narrative omits overly functional scenes, so we frequently see a situation has changed but only an implication of why (example: Gary’s mother tells him she can’t chaperone him to New York for a TV appearance – next shot Alana and Gary are on a plane. How was this agreed? Who cares!). Each of the sequences plays out with a shaggy-dog story charm, directed with the confidence and brilliance of a director who is happy to make it look easy. And let me tell you, very few could pull off something as light and charming.

The film is stocked with delightful cameos. John Michael Higgins is very funny as the owner of a Japanese restaurant, with two successive Japanese wives who he “translates” for by repeating in ludicrously Japanese accented loud English whatever has just been said. Harriet Sansom Harris is very funny as a plugged-in agent. Ebersole is a monstrous attention-hungry star. Sean Penn is funnier than he’s ever been playing a version of William Holden, pissed and barely able to distinguish between his film roles and real life, cajoled by an equally pissed director (Tom Waits on top form as a sort of Peckinpah-Huston combo) to perform a motorbike stunt late at night. Best of all is Bradley Cooper, who burns through his brief scenes as an unhinged Jon Peters, a whipper-cracker of unpredictability and insatiable horn.

But it’s the two leads that give this heart, and Licorice Pizza is an amazingly sweet, tender, endearing and deeply charming love story about a couple who can’t quite understand why they want to be together and spend most of the movie making sure they’re not. Anderson brings it altogether with immense homespun charm – this is almost a home movie, Haim’s family play he character’s family, the cast is stuffed with Anderson’ family and friends – and Licorice Pizza is the sort of delight that shouldn’t work, but very triumphantly does.

Lady Macbeth (2016)

Florence Pugh is either a feminist icon or a ruthless monster in this Gothic drama

Director: William Oldroyd

Cast: Florence Pugh (Katherine Lester), Cosmo Jarvis (Sebastian), Naomi Ackie (Anna), Christopher Fairbank (Boris Lester), Paul Hilton (Alexander Lester), Golda Rosheuvel (Agnes), Anton Palmer (Teddy)

On a rural estate in Northumberland in 1865, Katherine (Florence Pugh) enters a loveless marriage with Alexander (Paul Hilton), son of landowner Boris (Christopher Fairbank). The marriage is a disaster, with the couple incompatible and Katherine bored and trapped with no friends or allies. When Alexander and Boris travel for business, she finally gets the chance to explore her surroundings and enters into a passionate sexual relationship with estate worker Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis). When Boris – but not Alexander – returns, Katherine begins a chain of events that will see her commit a series of increasingly shocking crimes to hold onto the things she wants.

Oldroyd’s film is adapted by Alice Birch from a Russian short story, and is told with an icy, observatory coldness that doesn’t flinch from the increasingly sociopathic ruthlessness of its lead character. The film at first seems like it will set out a feminist fable, of a trophy wife struggling against the neglect and imprisonment of forced marriage. But, as it progresses, any pretence that Katherine is a feminist hero is stripped away: she is modern only in the most dreadful sense – a woman who will willingly commit almost any act of ruthlessness to safeguard her interests.

Playing Katherine, the film is blessed with a star-making turn from Florence Pugh. Only 19, Pugh gives a performance of such stunning depth and intelligence from a young actress that possibly hasn’t been seen since Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures. She’s a master of outward stillness and inscrutability, while always communicating the raging whirlpool of emotions underneath the surface. She’s fiercely intelligent, viciously ruthless, frequently observes other characters silently and can twist her face into a mocking defiance. Pugh also communicates the desperate emotional need for connection that motivates this woman, her willingness to go to such shocking lengths motivated by that yearning for a love that she has never known.

Oldroyd is careful not to present her a Gothic monster (would certainly be easy to do so!). The film is careful to outline how unwanted and ill-treated she is by Alexander and his father. Boris (a bullying Christopher Fairbank) ignores and talks down to this person-as-a-piece-of-property, basically just an unlooked-for freebie with some land, who is failing to get on with the production of an heir. Alexander (Paul Hilton, superbly weak and dripping with contemptuous bitterness) has no interest in his wife, his sexual interest restricted to ordering her to strip and face the wall while he pleasures himself. Neither of these characters ever have anything like a conversation with her, instead speaking to her like a dog or malfunctioning appliance.

So, you can see why she is so drawn to the passion of Sebastian – and also, perhaps, why she might find this cocky but not-exactly-sharpest-tool man an attractive chance for her to wear the trousers for once. Their couplings have a sexual urgency and passion to them that is lacking for anything else in the film. But we never see them as emotional or intellectual equals. There is no scene of romance, bonding or conversational or unsexual emotional connection with them. Katherine becomes obsessed with Sebastian – but it seems to be at least as much an obsession with the sex and the sense of control he brings her, as much as it is Sebastian himself.

As Sebastian, Cosmo Jarvis is initial bluster and wide-boy charm that strips away to reveal a man far more timid, scared and increasingly out-of-his-depth with what he’s got caught up in. For all his Lady Chatterley’s Lover physicality, Jarvis has a real vulnerability in his eyes and a certain little-boy lost quality. His panic and shock as event balloon become increasingly tragic.

Equally affecting is the terror of Naomi Ackie’s maid, torn between different sides. Like Pugh, Ackie is superb at suggesting emotional torment under a still surface and her character Anna frequently finds herself the mute observer of increasingly dangerous events, unable to influence them.

The film is shot with a coolness that at times makes it hard to connect with emotionally. In many ways this is a horror film, with a creeping intimidation, scoreless backdrop and a chilly aesthetic of empty rooms and muted colours. There are some bravura scenes: a life-changing breakfast scene is shot with a terrifying but suggestive stillness, just as it is played by Pugh with a chilling unreadability. Oldroyd’s film masterfully uses a number of simple and unflashy camera set-ups that build up to an overwhelming feeling of dread.

And some of this stuff is hard to watch. Two killings are shown in disturbing detail, enough to haunt your dreams. But the film wisely just presents the facts and avoids judgement – however implied that might be. It also makes for an intriguing condemnation of avarice – everyone in the film seems to be longing for something, but none of them find that struggle was worth it. And at its centre is a intriguingly unknowable and unreadable woman, who only becomes more alarming the more we find out about her.

Lady Macbeth is sometimes a little cold and distant for its own good. But its hauntingly grim and has a stunning, career-making performance from Florence Pugh. Filmed with creeping dread, it’s a cold, disturbing film that will linger with you.

Being the Ricardos (2021)

I Love Lucy is bought to life in this behind-the-scenes drama that bites off more than it can chew

Director: Aaron Sorkin

Cast: Nicole Kidman (Lucille Ball), Javier Bardem (Desi Arnaz), JK Simmons (William Frawley), Nina Arianda (Vivian Vance), Tony Hale (Jess Oppenheimer), Alia Shawkat (Madelyn Pugh), Jake Lacy (Bob Carroll), Clark Gregg (Howard Wenke), John Rubenstein (Older Jess Oppenheimer), Linda Lavin (Older Madelyn Pugh), Ronny Cox (Older Bob Carroll)

A film about I Love Lucy is always going to lack cultural cache outside of the US: it would be the same if a British film about Dad’s Army or Hancock’s Half Hour played there. Without a legacy of growing up on endless re-runs, I think a lot of British audiences (like me) will be left playing catch-up working out who the stars are and what the show is about.

Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos follows one week in the making of I Love Lucy in 1952. It’s a big week. There are rumours of infidelity (from him) in the lives of the married co-stars Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem). On top of that, the media is running stories that Ball is a card-carrying communist (not completely true). And finally, she’s pregnant, something the network can’t imagine would be acceptable to include in a family show. All these problems come to a head as that week’s show is finalised, rehearsed and shot.

Sorkin’s film is by far and away at its best when dealing with the backstage mechanics behind bringing a TV show to the screen. Which perhaps isn’t a surprise, as that is obviously material he’s very familiar with. The film is fascinating at showing the technical side of things like rehearsals, and it’s very illuminating on the dedicated perfectionism Ball bought to making the comedy work. We see every single gag being worked on over and over to mine the maximum number of laughs from it. There are long back and forth conversations on timing, positioning and nuances of line delivery.

There are similarly fascinating ideas during scenes in the writers’ room. A huge board maps out the details of future episodes. The writers – a neatly squabbling but fundamentally loyal Alia Shawkat and Jake Lacy, headed up by executive producer Tony Hale – are constantly pushed to fine-tune their ideas, while passionately defending many of their own jokes to the sceptical stars.

A sequence essentially showing Ball and the writers spit-balling ideas that will develop into future set-pieces is particularly well done. Sorkin also comes up with a neat visual concept showing how Ball considers the impact of the gags: events from the show play out in black-and-white then switch to colour as the action pauses and Ball considers what to do next to get the most laughs. It’s all part of the film’s primary strength: a fascinating look at the energy and passion required to produce a half-hour sitcom, be it arguing over camera placement to a sleepless and worried Ball calling her co-stars to the studio in the wee small hours to fine-tune a pratfall.

Where the film is less certain is all the other stuff it tries to cover. Being the Ricardos is almost the dictionary definition of a film biting off more than it can chew. It tries to cover: the making of a TV show, McCarthyism, a biography of the marriage of the two stars, the sexism of network TV, racial unease at the Cuban Arnaz playing Ball’s husband, the sexual prudishness of the 1950s, and expectations around gender roles. On top of which, Sorkin’s film trumpets continuously that this was the “most difficult week ever”. It’s an onslaught of stakes the film finds hard to deliver on.

For starters, most of the action focuses on the mechanics of making the show – mechanics that surely would be the same every week. The communist plotline is introduced then largely dropped for most of the film until the final rousing hurrah. McCarthyism is barely tackled, other than a new perspective from Arnaz, who remembers being forcibly driven from Cuba by Communists. Awkward flashbacks fill in some of the backstory around Lucille and Desi’s meeting but end up feeling like superfluous additional information that adds nothing to anything other than the runtime.

Tensions in their marriage bubble away before finally coming to a head, as if Sorkin didn’t want to spoil the rat-a-tat dialogue with some deeper content. The film is very good at showing what a great team they made: Ball’s creativity and comic genius matched with Arnaz’s business-sense and ability to plan every aspect of the show’s technical and financial set-up. But again, more could have been made of this – too often it’s an idea crowded in amongst others, with a tone that can’t decide how it feels about Arnaz’s possible betrayal or Ball’s fixation on it.

More could have been made about the prudish and sexist struggles Ball and Arnaz went through to get her pregnancy integrated in the show. It’s a fascinating realisation that the implication that a happily married couple must have had sex to produce a baby was anathema to TV networks in the 50s. A film that focused on the battle to get this integrated into the show – and the impact that doing so had on America and television – would not only have been more focused, it would also have played into the film’s real strengths: the mechanics of actually making television. As it is, this sense of the struggle Ball had to get due recognition in a male-dominated industry is lost.

As the two stars Nicole Kidman (under layers of latex to transform her facial features into Ball’s) and Bardem are very good, Kidman in particular brilliantly conveying Ball’s comedic genius as well as her self-doubt and insecurity, expressing itself in worries about her marriage to making sure her female co-star looks less attractive than her on the screen. Kidman pounces on Sorkin’s fast-paced dialogue and provides much of the film’s drive and focus. There are also neat supporting turns by JK Simmons and especially Nina Arianda as their co-stars.

In the end though, yet again, it feels like Sorkin the writer is ill-served by Sorkin the director. While the film is more sharply directed than his others, it lacks focus, discipline and drive, like Sorkin can’t bear the idea of cutting some of his own words and ideas so tries to include them all. It ends up meaning nearly all of them lack the impact they should have.

Another Year (2010)

Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent are either a blissfully happy and kind or rather smug couple in Another Year

Director: Mike Leigh

Cast: Jim Broadbent (Tom Hepple), Ruth Sheen (Gerri Hepple), Lesley Manville (Mary Smith), Peter Wight (Ken), Oliver Maltman (Joe Hepple), David Bradley (Ronnie Hepple), Karina Fernandez (Katie), Martin Savage (Carl Hepple), Michele Austin (Tanya), Phil Davis (Jack), Imelda Staunton (Janet)

Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) are a blissfully content middle-class London couple. He’s a successful geologist, she’s an attentive NHS counsellor. They divide their time between work, their allotment and socialising with friends. But many of their friends are disaster zones. Gerri’s work colleague Mary (Lesley Manville) is a divorcee who falls over herself to tell people how happy she is, but is clearly depressed with a drink problem. Similarly, Tom’s old uni friend Ken (Peter Wight) is a lonely alcoholic, seriously overweight and equally depressed.

The fascinating question at the heart of Mike Leigh’s heart-felt and beautiful film is: are Tom and Gerri a sweetly loving couple who go out of their way to support friends – or are they a desperately smug pair, facilitating those around them in self-destructive patterns? It’s hard to say either way: and that’s the beauty of Leigh’s honest, subtle character study which presents a single year in the lives of these characters.

It’s also, of course, superbly acted by the cast – all of them regulars in the work of Leigh. Broadbent and Sheen are brilliant as a couple completely content and happy in themselves and confident that they essentially have life sussed. They are kind, considerate and supportive of everyone. But how much is this genuine and how much is it performative? They fuss and smile to each other around the depressed and fragile Mary – but do nothing to help her change and improve her life, and merrily continue to fill the glasses of both her and the even more alcohol ravaged Ken.

When Tom’s sister-in-law dies, they rush to support his quiet, reserved brother Ronnie (David Bradley). They arrange every detail of the funeral and do everything they can to remove any burden from him. Tom is furious at the selfish and uncaring attitude of Ronnie’s son Carl (a grimly chippy Martin Savage) who seems convinced he is somehow being cheated by them. They bring Ronnie back to stay with them for a few weeks – but frequently leave him alone or allow him to sit watching their own insular conversations. Sure, they give him a home and support, but do they really care or are they going through the motions of people who want to believe they really care?

Wouldn’t a real friend of Ken, tell the obviously over-weight, permanently drunk, desperately self-loathing man that he has serious problems and help him change his life, rather than refill his glass at every opportunity? Or is it a sign of Tom and Gerri’s decency that they don’t see it as their place to tell other people to live their lives? In addition, Tom sticks loyally by Ken in a way very few people would – its clear during a golf game with Ken, Tom, son Joe (Oliver Maltman) and pal Jack (Phil Davis) no-one else wants Ken there – and gives him more warmth and attention than you suspect anyone else ever has. Does it just not occur to him a real friend would help Ken change his life?

Above all, we see the frantic desperation and all-consuming anxiety, fear and neediness of Mary, played with a heartfelt and deeply moving frankness by a never-better Lesley Manville. Mary is a very sweet woman, who has lost her place in the world and clings to the idea – now long since departed from reality – that she is a young glamour puss, rather than a desperate, divorcee in her fifties. Tom and Gerri support Mary, making her a part of their lives. She is a frequent overnight guest in their house, has known Joe since he was little and relies on Gerri utterly for friendship.

But there is also a slight air of judgement with their treatment of Mary. Does having this all-too-obviously tragic case, this failure who is utterly emotionally dependent on them, make them feel better about themselves? What have they done over the years, for all those sympathetic ears and shoulders to cry on, to help Mary deal with the root cause of problems? While they are willing to listen at great length to her (often tedious and repetitive) conversation, they never once really step into help her effect real change.

Events bubble up as the lonely Mary begins to fixate on a fantasy of her forming a relationship with Joe. It’s implied everyone is aware of this, but politely do their best to hope the situation will go away. Manville is of course brilliant in playing the tragically self-deluded hope under this longing for a never-will-be relationship – particularly as she never once looks down on Mary, but plays with a real empathetic warmth, that helps us feel an immense sorrow for this woman, while still acknowledging she can be deeply frustrating.

And Mary perhaps has more warmth, and ability to connect naturally with people, than Tom and Gerri. This is suggested during a wonderful late scene with Ronnie (a brilliantly quiet David Bradley), where in a long conversation she forms more of a bond of him than we’ve seen Tom and Gerri, for all their patience, ever form. It’s impossible not to relate to Mary as she’s so clearly such a vulnerable person, desperate for love and human connection. Seeing her slow-motion collapse across the film is heart-rending. For all her flaws, she’s someone you are desperate to see happy.

Mike Leigh is able to capture all this in his beautifully observant film, perfectly placed, low-key but deeply affecting. There are never obvious beats and he is willing to show the positives as well as the flaws in every character. He never tips the deck either for or against Tom and Gerri, allowing us to judge them by their actions: they could be warm, friendly, open-house people who stick loyally to troubled friends most people would drop immediately; or they could be subconsciously using these tragic cases to feel even more blissfully happy with their own perfect lives. Leigh never tips it either way, and the breathtakingly emotional performances and beautifully played and written scenes mean that, even though the film is short on plot, it feels rich in character and emotion. It ends with a beautiful held long shot on Mary that, like the rest of this film, is deeply moving but also leaves you with more questions than answers. A triumph.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand are the Macbeths in this brilliant, noirish, superb Shakespeare film

Cast: Joel Coen

Director: Denzel Washington (Lord Macbeth), Frances McDormand (Lady Macbeth), Corey Hawkins (Macduff), Brendan Gleeson (King Duncan), Harry Melling (Malcolm), Bertie Carvel (Banquo), Alex Hassell (Ross), Kathryn Hunter (The Witches), Moses Ingram (Lady Macduff), Ralph Ineson (Captain), Stephen Root (Porter), Miles Anderson (Lennox), Jefferson Mays (Doctor)

Shakespeare on screen is difficult to pull off. Focus too much on the language and you end up with something more theatrical than cinematic. Zero in on the visuals and you lose what makes Shakespeare great in the first place. That’s not even to mention that films – with their huge audiences – tend to focus on simple, more traditional interpretations of a play that add little to interpreting it afresh. These are all problems avoided by Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth which is bloody, bold and resolute and jumps straight into the upper tier of great Shakespeare films. Inventive, dynamic, gripping and excellently acted it succeeds in being both a creative production of the play and something truly cinematic.

Shot in a crisply clean black-and-white, the 4:3 frame frequently filled with rolling mist and stark white light (it’s superbly shot by Bruno Delbonnel), this is a Macbeth set in a Jan Kott inspired Samuel-Beckett-tinged wasteland, with Scotland a bleak, blasted country, its characters leading lives full of sound and fury that signify nothing. The Macbeth’s castle is an Esher like construction of perfectly formed empty rooms, towering walls and arches casting grim shadows and open ceilinged rooms allowing onlookers to observe everything. There are brilliant images: not least the handle to Duncan’s door which is strikingly lit to resemble a knife. Characters frequently emerge from the mist or the darkness to walk towards us and confess their darkest thoughts.

No Shakespeare film has better used set and location since Orson Welles’ Othello – a film this is sharply reminiscent of, with its brilliant use of angles and shade that constantly disconcerts the viewer (even leaving us confused at points on whether we are looking down or up). Coen also seems to have been inspired by Peter Brook’s grimly nihilistic King Lear film, with this Scotland being trapped firmly in a circle of destruction powered by the witches. All three are played by Kathryn Hunter, whose contortionist twisting and ability to switch her vocals on a sixpence from sing-song to a Gollumesque growl make them truly feel of the earth and yet not. Hunter is inspired casting – sometimes representing all three witches in a single schizophrenic body, at others playing all three at once. A brilliant image at one point shows her double reflection in a watery pool, turning her body immediately into a trinity.

Hunter’s movement is birdlike and agile – fitting since it’s suggested the witches can transform themselves into carrion crows, flying over Scotland picking bones clean of fresh. The first image is the three birds circling the Captain as he walks slowly across a beach to report to Duncan. Later Hunter perches on a crossbeam in another opened-ceiling room, subtly poking Macbeth on to greater monstrosities. There is a cycle of destruction here – and the film’s ending implies all this chaos is bound to start again.

Crucial to this is Ross. Following Polanski’s Macbeth – and again heavily inspired by Jan Kott – Alex Hassell’s unctuous Ross, ingratiates himself with all while happily engaging in acts of brutality. He personally executes Cawdor (by beheading), joins Banquo’s murderers, shows the way to the sacking of Macduff house and hands Malcolm both the crown and Macbeth’s severed head. But Coen takes it further again: rather than a cruel opportunist, this Ross seems to be an agent of the witches – or maybe even a witch himself. Hassell’s costume, with its curiously feminine robe and wing-like arms, echoes the witches and Ross moves smoothly from side-to-side even in the final acts, planting seeds of further destruction (including further implied murders) and collaborating directly with the witches to restart the cycle at the end.

All this makes Macbeth and Lady Macbeth at times feel like rather tragic puppets at the heart of a terrible cycle of events they cannot control. It certainly fits with Denzel Washington’s balanced and intelligent performance in the lead. While Washington doesn’t mine as much weight and meaning from the text as the great stage Macbeths, he gives his line readings an unstudied naturalism and a dynamic and thoughtful rhythm (even if he is prone a little too much to the “soft-slow/fast” approach). His Macbeth is a weak, indecisive man, happy only when he is in action. Clearly ambitious from the start, he binds himself in knots thinking but, once a decision has been made, has no hesitation. Violence is an instinctive tool – he kills several people with no hesitation and a lightening aggression – but he’s lost without direction. He clings to the crown as if it will somehow give the things he has done meaning.

Washington’s performance shifts gears once Macbeth has decided to fully commit himself to those scorpions that fill his mind, becoming an unbalanced mixture of fatalistic and recklessly impulsive. No wonder he has less need for his wife. Frances McDormand is perhaps even better as a Lady Macbeth who sees the crown as her last chance for legacy in a world that has left her behind. McDormand really understands the way to mine nuance from the language. Frequently inpatient with her husband, she is decisive where he is not, but squeamish around violence in a way he isn’t. Both Washington and McDormand manage to suggest a great deal of unfulfilled sadness in the Macbeths, two people in the twilight of their years who pounce on a chance for a last hurrah but find themselves psychologically unsuited for the consequences.

The two leads are at the head of a uniformly strong cast. Hunter and Hassell are both superb. Bertie Carvel is a brooding but honest Banquo. Corey Hawkins a forceful but thoughtful Macduff, played with guilt and wise from the start on Macbeth’s villainy. Moses Ingram brings a lot of warmth to a striking scene as Lady MacDuff. Ralph Ineson’s delivery of the Captain’s speech is spot on. Harry Melling is an immature, stubborn Malcolm.

But the real star here might just be Coen’s direction. The brooding, overbearing beauty of the film is all part of its atmosphere of creeping intimidation and danger. There are some truly striking, haunting images: the flame lit murder of Banquo, a deranged Macbeth fighting a spectral hallucination of Banquo, water pouring down into the flagstones after Macbeth’s final visions of the future, the smoke and mist filled murder of Macduff’s children (a shot of Wellesian brilliance), Lady Macbeth standing before a sheer drop, the imaginative arrival of Birnam wood, Macduff and Macbeth’s final duel in a narrow battlements. This is a punchy, brilliant, beautiful, intelligent and unique reimagining of the play that mixes Shakespeare, visual and has something clear and unique to say about staging the play. Comfortably one of the greatest Shakespeare films ever made.

The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)

Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons play star-crossed lovers (twice!) in The French Lieutenant’s Woman

Director: Karel Reisz

Cast: Meryl Streep (Sarah/Anna), Jeremy Irons (Charles/Mike), Leo McKern (Dr Grogan), Hilton McRae (Sam), Emily Morgan (Mary), Lynsey Baxter (Ernestina), Patience Collier (Mrs Poulteney), Penelope Wilton (Sonia), Peter Vaughan (Mr Freeman), Michael Elwyn (Montague), Richard Griffiths (Sir Tom), David Warner (Murphy), Gerard Falconetti (Davide), Colin Jeavons (Vicar)

Many books have been considered unfilmable. John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman is a key member of that list. Part pastiche, part commentary on Victorian novels, Fowles not only has a narrator who acts as an ironic commentator on events, but also offers up three possible endings to its central romance, each radically different from the one before. Not easy to bring that to film! Adapting it, Reisz and Harold Pinter came up with the concept of mirroring the novel’s central relationship with a relationship between two actors playing those characters in a film being made of the novel. Got that?

So, Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons play both the novel’s romantically entwined couple Sarah and Charles AND also Anna and Mike, two actors playing those very roles in a film of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, also engaged in a love affair. Both affairs end in radically different ways, mirroring two of the alternative endings in Fowles’ novel. Most of the films runtime sticks with the novels’ plot, where Charles – an ambitious young scientist – is drawn away from his promising engagement to a potential business partners daughter (Lynsey Baxter), by his romantic fascination with Sarah, a woman of ill-repute in Lyme Regis, the former mistress of a French Lieutenant.

Pinter and Reisz’s adaptation is a smart idea. But I feel it misses a trick. If they really wanted to adapt the book – with its intrusive narrator and alternative endings – then the real character to focus on from a film set is not the actors but the director and producers. If our framing device had been watching the rushes in the screening room, seeing differently edited scenes play out in contrasting ways, with producers and director commenting on the action and making decisions about which ending (Happy? Sad? Open-ended?) they stick on the end of the film. Sure, that would have opened itself up to potentially on-the-nose dialogue, but it would be a better representation of the novel and its ideas, and truly translate some of the books real strength (its unique narrative style) to film.

But that’s talking about something the film doesn’t do. What it does do is offer something that is basically a 80% adaptation of the novel’s plot, mixed with 20% short interjections of the modern-day storyline. Deliberately, the film contrasts the intense romance and deeply-felt passions of the Victorian storyline – where acting on desire carries with it a huge, life-shattering cost in disgrace and social expulsion – with the shallow, off-hand flirtations of the modern era, where the stigma of a sexual affair has ceased to exist.

While this is effective in making the Victorian sections carry even more weight, it does mean the modern sections (by design) are slighter and less engaging. Their semi-regular appearance – it isn’t until the final half hour that we get anything approaching a proper sequence set in the present day, with a beautifully played garden party hosted by Mike and his wife (a magnificent putting-on-a-brave-face performance from Penelope Wilton), which is a feast of stolen glances, averted eyes and strained conversation.

But in some places the split narrative works a treat, particularly in allowing flashes of the real life, more unrestrained passion of the ‘real’ people drop into the Victorian characters. In particular, a meeting between Charles and Sarah in the woods (highly reserved), cuts to Anna and Mike rehearsing the same scene (playful and flirtatious). When the rehearsal reaches a key point – Anna/Sarah falling and being caught by Charles/Mike, the film cuts so that Anna falls but then Charles catches Sarah falling. And the scene continues. Suddenly, the Victorian couple has a burst of the same sexual freedom the modern couple has. It’s a beautiful cut. Later, Sarah falls to the ground (pushed by Charles), and suddenly bursts out laughing – and it feels like she falls as Sarah, reacts as Anna, then rises again as Sarah – either way it gives a wonderful, modern energy to the moment.

The film is wonderfully shot by Freddie Francis, with luscious forest vegetation and whipping winds and seas on the Cobb at Lyme Regis. Simmering sexual tensions are caught in lingering gazes, gestures that carry things words cannot, careful reaction shots captured by Reisz, the trapping of several characters within the ephemera of over-decorated rooms (at one point Ernestina literally can’t escape a room because of the all the knick-knacks within it).

A lot of the mood comes from the two lead actors, who give masterful performances. It’s very easy to see Streep’s performance here as overly mannered: her accent is oddly toned and highly studied, and much of her performance as Sarah is wilfully artificial and arch. But that’s deliberate: the genius here is that Streep is playing Anna playing Sarah who is in turn constructing her own fictional Sarah. With her pre-Raphaelite looks and artistic leanings, Sarah is a woman out-of-time, yearning for the sort of choices and freedom Anna takes for granted, constantly pushed into roles society can accept her in (Governess, eccentric, ‘whore’ etc.). Does she use Charles or not? Streep brilliantly captures her enigmatic, unreadable spirit, the sort of person who interjects a retelling of a possibly invented backstory, with a playful twirl around a tree. Who sometimes despises herself, at others everyone else. In contrast, Streep makes Anna assured, quiet and confident, with the power to choose risks.

Just as good is Jeremy Irons, in only his second film role and here cementing the start of a career that would see him play a parade of restrained and very British men struggling with passions they can hardly understand. Charles’ fascination with Sarah is rooted in feelings both sexual and romantic that both fascinate and terrify him. His final surrendering to being true to himself, rather than what is expected of him, carries with it both a power and strange desperate bitterness. By contrast, Mike is a far more flighty, shallow-figure – an actor who perhaps is more in love with the feelings he is playing (and the character that inspires them in his character) than he is with Anna.

Reisz pulls all this together highly effectively, and the film is at its strongest when exploring feminism and the opportunities for women in Victorian England. Those are few and far between. Women have defined roles and expectations and someone who deviates from these – like Sarah – have no place. In addition, women are held responsible for provoking dangerous erotic feelings in men (from women of poor reputation like Sarah, to the prostitutes in a London street). The ability of Sarah to make her own choices and lead the life she wants to lead is the underlying theme of her story – and her motivations. Does she want, however she might feel, a relationship that would define her again as “wife” rather than being truly herself?

These are fascinating ideas in a film full of beautiful images – their first meeting on the Cobb in particular is beautiful – scored expertly by Colin Davis (with just a tinge of suspense in the music). The framing device gives little moments of insight and reflection – even if it is only an approximation of the novel’s effect – but the Victorian set story, and it’s buried passions and social commentary is what really compels, in a way that the slighter modern story (almost deliberately) doesn’t. Either way, it has two brilliant performances, an intelligent script and handsome direction by Reisz.

The Last Duel (2021)

Adam Driver and Matt Damon fight The Last Duel in medieval France

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Matt Damon (Sir Jean de Carrouges), Adam Driver (Jacques Le Gris), Jodie Comer (Marguerite de Carrouges), Ben Affleck (Count Pierre d’Alencon), Harriet Walter (Nicole de Buchard), Alex Lawther (King Charles VI), Marton Csorkas (Crespin), Željko Ivanek (Le Coq), Tallulah Haddon (Marie), Bryony Hannah (Alice), Nathaniel Parker (Sir Robert de Thibouville), Adam Nagaitis (Adam Louvel)

The medieval era had its own solution for “He said, She said”. Let God decide via a fight to the death. After all, He would never let the injured party lose, would he? Scott’s The Last Duel is a dramatisation of one of the last French judicial duels, in December 1386, between Sir Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) and his former friend Jacques le Gris (Adam Driver), after Le Gris is accused of raping Carrouge’s wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer). Scott’s Rashomon-inspired film shows the events leading up to the duel from all three characters’ perspectives.

The three different stories we see are not radically different. Unlike Rashomon – which presented totally different versions of the same events, according to the prejudices or agendas of the storytellers – The Last Duel’s versions stress subtly different reactions or presents different fragments of an overall story. So, for instance, Le Gris and Carrouges remember different elements of a battle. Carrouges recalls the noble charge to save the innocent, saving Le Gris’ life in the final stages of combat. To Le Gris it’s a suicidal charge, in which he saves an unhorsed Carrouge’s life. After the rape, Carrouge remembers offering his wife sympathy; she remembers his anger and demand they have sex at once to “cleanse her” of the stain.

These mixed recollections work best when we see each of them remember a fateful reconciliation meeting between Le Gris and Carrouges (where Le Gris and Marguerite first meet). A wedge has been driven between them ever since Carrouges believed Le Gris cheated him out of both land and his father’s former position. When the two agree to try and put the past behind them, Carrouge asks Marguerite to give Le Gris a kiss of peace. He remembers her surprise and timidity. Le Gris remembers her as being quietly excited with a kiss that lingers. Marguerite remembers a kiss from Le Gris that lingers too long. Small moments like this are where the film is at its strongest, making its concept feel very relevant today in our world of accusation and counter accusation.

But these moments are few and far between. Most of the time there isn’t this subtle variation. Where the film is weakest is when we (frequently) see the same events, presented the same way, three times. While our perception of Carrouges changes – from the ill-treated noble he sees himself to the sullen, self-entitled whiner everyone else sees – our idea of Le Gris is fundamentally the same (blissfully self-entitled). Fundamentally, when we see events the first time, later versions only really tweak our perception of them rather than challenge it.

You can see this in the rape itself, which we first see from Le Gris’ perspective. The film shows Le Gris’ understanding of consent has been twisted by most of his sexual experience being court orgies with playfully protesting prostitutes. His pursuit of a genuinely unwilling Margeurite around her room echoes exactly the pretend-chases and “chat up lines” he’s used in those earlier scenes, so we understand it’s possible he doesn’t actually understand he’s raped her. But no viewer can see Le Gris’ version as anything other than rape. In fact, the only tangible difference when we see the event from her perspective is that her screams of “No” and “Stop” are louder and the camera focuses more on her anguished face. If the film is presenting any tension about whether this is a consensual encounter or rape, it ends the second we see Le Gris’ story.

This negatively effects the drama – and actually makes Marguerite’s version seem strangely superfluous. You start to feel we might as well see all three perspectives at the same time, as the narrative trick ends up adding little to the film – especially since the film categorically states Marguerite’s version is the truth. Why not just tell the whole film from her perspective in that case? It also doesn’t help that Marguerite goes last – which means until an hour into the film, the character we should be most engaged with and sympathetic towards has stood on the side-lines.

This is particularly unfortunate as the film is striving for a feminist message. The men are callous and self-obsessed, treating women as sex toys or assets – and are praised for it. Marguerite though is intelligent and principled, marginalised by her husband and condemned as a whore when she protests her rape. She pushes her case with determination, despite discovering she will be condemned to burn if Carrouge loses (he of course is only in his own honour). Her word is only good if backed a man, and she is powerless to defend her innocence.

It’s the lot of medieval women. Harriet Walter (rocking a bizarre appearance, straight out of David Lynch’s Dune) as Carrouge’s mother tells Marguerite the same thing happened to her, but she considered it pointless (and dangerous) to press charges. What we see of the judicial system is ruthlessly unjust and misanthropic, with women harangued to confess their guild for tempting men.

But it doesn’t quite click together. It’s a shame, as many scenes are highly effective. The rape – both times we see it – is alarming. The final duel is brilliantly shot and hugely tense, not least because Marguerite stands literally on the top of an unlit bonfire watching every blow. Scott’s shoots the film with the same blue-filtered beauty he gave to the early scenes of Kingdom of Heaven.

There is of course an oddness in seeing such American actors as Damon, Affleck and Driver in period setting. The accents are an odd mix: Comer basically uses her regular (non-Scouse) performance voice, Damon does a gravelly version of his own, Walter an American twang to match Damon, Affleck is halfway to plummy Brit, Driver flattens his Californian tones. Damon is pretty good as the sulky, surly Carrouge who gets less sympathetic the more we see him, Driver is suitably charming on the surface but selfish. Comer plays wounded injustice extremely well and brings a lot of emotion to a difficult role. Affleck has the most fun, flouncing around in a blonde wig as a lordly, hedonistic pervert who likes nothing more than belittling Carrouge.

The Last Duel is part way to a decent film, but it just lacks that little bit extra to make it really come to life. Its alternative versions of the truth don’t illuminate as much as they need to – even if they are at points pleasingly subtle in their differences. It has an admirable feminist message, but defers most of it to the second half of the film (were they worried about sidelining the famous male actors?) and it’s concern that we should not doubt Marguerite at any point does undermine its drama. Handsomely filmed, it doesn’t make the impact it should. Perhaps that’s why it was one of the leading box office disasters of the Covid Pandemic?

The Devil is a Woman (1935)

Lionel Atwill and of course Marlene Dietrich play out the final chapter of von Sternberg’s psycho-sexual fantasies in The Devil is a Woman

Director: Josef von Sternberg

Cast: Marlene Dietrich (Concha Perez), Lionel Atwill (Captain Don Pasqual Costelar), Edward Everett Horton (Governor Don Paquito), Cesar Romero (Antonio Galvan), Alison Skipworth (Senora Perez), Don Avarado (Morenito)

The Devil is a Woman has more than a whiff of being made after the Lord Mayor’s Show. It’s an impression not helped by the fact that it takes place in the aftermath of a town carnival, with Sternberg having apparently emptied the Paramount props cupboard of paper streamers. The Devil is a Woman is the final film made by Sternberg and Dietrich, a piece of contractual obligation for all concerned. Sternberg’s career deflated swiftly after it and the entire film has an autumnal sadness about it. No one seems particularly interested in what they are making, and it finds nothing new to say or do that Sternberg and Dietrich haven’t already done, other than set it in Spain (a decision that did not delight the Spanish government).

Dietrich is Concha Perez, a beyond ruthless, heartless, scheming, femme fatale who teases and uses men for her own ends with nary a second of guilt. Her web is starting to form around revolutionary Antonio Galvan (Cesar Romero). He’s warned off though by her former beau (victim?) Don Pasqual (Lionel Atwill), a middle-aged aristocrat who Concha effortlessly made dance to her tune and fund her many affairs, all while giving him just enough affection to keep him on board. Pasqual recounts his relationship with Concha in flashback – but will Antonio give a damn? Or is a duel on the cards between the two? Watch out Pasqual is an expert marksman…

For decades The Devil is a Woman was considered a lost film, until Sternberg provided one of the few copies of the film to the Venice Film Festival in 1959. This copy however did not contain the 17 minutes of footage cut from the film by Paramount (it’s a very short film, less than 80 minutes). Even found though, it’s a minor work, a little coda to seven collaborations between director and star, some of them iconic classics.

The film has all the foibles of Sternberg – and is a final indicator why this visual stylist found himself so hideously out of step in the era of the talkies. Dialogue and story are so secondary that you can’t help but notice their crudeness. When Sternberg has longer dialogue scenes, he shoots them with a cursory flatness that suggests he them over and done with as soon as possible. The passion of the film – what passion there is – goes into the visuals, whether it’s the streamer filled carnivals, the thundering rain that powers down on the duel or (of course) the sultry, painterly shots of Dietrich in luscious black-and-white.

The problem is that there isn’t really a truly striking visual in the film: perhaps Sternberg had used all his fire on The Scarlet Empress or maybe, after the disaster of that film, he was worried (or had been firmly told) that his final Paramount film had to have at least some semblance of the conventional to it. So, The Devil is a Woman is a conventional film with little flashes of imagination and visual skill – like the balloon that bursts to reveal Dietrich’s face (marksman to burst the balloon none other than Sternberg himself). It all adds to the end-of-an-era feeling that permeates the film.

The most interesting beat in the film is the feeling that we are watching yet-another on-screen playing out of Sternberg’s own psycho-sexual drama. Surely, he saw more than a bit of himself in Pasqual? The older, refined man, hopelessly infatuated with the beautiful, younger woman who drains him dry of money and prestige, but won’t commit herself to loving him? Pasqual the masochist who keeps coming back for more and more humiliation and sexual rejection? Hard not to think that there was more than a bit of Sternberg in Atwill’s performance – or that Concha’s late abandonment of Antonio to return to Pasqual was Sternberg’s own fantasy. Of course, it’s all Sternberg’s view, where he was very much the Henry Higgins. Dietrich would very well disagree.

The Devil is a Woman has its moments. Although often (despite being very short) rather slow – the long flashback-structure back story takes it time and then some – Sternberg can still find moments of beauty. Cesar Romero brings a lot more charisma and interest to the sort of handsome beefcake role John Lodge played in The Scarlett Empress. (In a bizarre advance in-joke Romero wears something very close to a Batman style mask at one point). Dietrich is given little to do other than be as cold as possible, but she manages to add depth and shade to her character. Atwill is rather good as the masochist Pasqual and the rain-soaked duel between him and Romero is worth the price of admission.

It can’t change the fact though that this is rather a sad coda to a great collaboration, an after-thought where it’s not clear that anyone was really interested in the content itself. It’s final shot is fitting: a chariot rides away into the sunset. It fits for this partnership – and effectively for Sternberg’s career which never achieved these heights again.

The Big Country (1958)

Gregory Peck rides into town in The Big Country

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Gregory Peck (James McKay), Jean Simmons (Julie Maragon), Carroll Baker (Patricia Terrill), Charlton Heston (Steve Leech), Burl Ives (Rufus Hannassey), Charles Bickford (Major Henry Terrill), Alfonso Bedoya (Ramon Gutierrez), Chuck Connors (Buck Hannassey), Chuck Hayward (Rafe Hannassey)

From the very first frame when that score kicks in, you know you are in safe hands. The Big Country is a big film, and big entertainment. When I re-watched it I hadn’t seen it for years. I loved it. It’s a slab of prime Hollywood entertainment, not perfect, but it’s one of those films that always delivers.

It’s the American West, and James McKay (Gregory Peck) arrives in town to marry Patricia Terrill (Carroll Baker), daughter of local landowner Major Henry Terrill (Charles Bickford) who is in the middle of a turf feud with patriarch of a cowboy clan, Rufus Hannassey (Burl Ives). This is a town where men-are-men and a harsh word is met with a sock to the mouth. It’s a world where McKay is out of step: a seasoned naval captain, with more experience than anyone, he couldn’t care less what people think of him and won’t be goaded into doing something foolish. His self-assurance and strength of character are interpreted as wimpy yellow-belly-ness by nearly everyone, including Patricia and Terrill’s macho foreman Steve (Charlton Heston). Only local schoolteacher Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons) understands him. But as events come to a head, only McKay has the strength of character to step up and try resolve things without mass bloodshed.

The Big Country is the classic set-up: a stranger in town, who has the guts to stand up. The only difference here, is that McKay has the guts to stand up and not conform to the macho bullshit being driven by the two feuding patriarchs. Both of these men are, of course, far more similar than they would admit, being perfectly contrasting personalities. Charles Bickford plays a genteel man with the principles of a thug, while Burl Ives plays a thug with the principles of a genteel man. No wonder they can’t get on, both see in each other qualities they most likely despise in themselves.

Compared to them, McKay looks like the very model of twentieth century liberal coalition building. Or at least McKay is a liberal who packs a punch, since it’s pretty clear Peck is probably the toughest son-of-a-bitch in the town. What’s glorious in McKay – and Peck’s sensational performance of reserved warmth and wry amusement, mixed with world-weary sufferance – is that you get a definite sense he’s seen way worse than this before. A man who has sailed around the world for decades, in the hardiest conditions, who has been keelhauled and saved men from sharks, recognises this for the slightly pathetic parochial dust-up it really is, and has no interest – or need – to put his life or the lives of others at risk to make crude points about his manliness.

If only, the film argues, we could all be as confident in our own skin. McKay keeps his cool in a way no-one in film, except perhaps Tracy in Bad Day at Black Rock, has managed so successfully. He laughs off his irritation at a hazing from the Hannassey’s – and makes clear, as the Terrill’s saddle up to fight back, that in doing so they are not acting in his name. He won’t make a fool of himself by trying to ride a wild horse in front of a crowd. He won’t rise to Steve’s provocation for a punch-up in front of the entire Terrill gang. McKay is a man who only needs to prove things to himself: so he’ll tame that horse in front of no crowd and swear the only witness to secrecy. He’s not one to brag.

And if it’s a fight that Steve wants, he’ll give him one on his own time and his own terms – those being a dusky morning in private. Wyler shoots one of the greatest fights of all time, an exhausting slugging match between Peck and Heston, played out mostly in long shot that soaks up the dawn Western atmosphere, as the two men fight themselves to an exhausted score-draw, with each punch landing with a punishing wallop. There is something very compelling about this unflashy, in-the-dust, clash of two alpha males, and the strange sense of respect that grows between them (as well as the dry wit of the script – “You certainly take your time to say goodbye”, Heston deadpans after this exhausting ‘I’m leaving but first this’ fight).

It also showcases how well Wyler uses sound (or the lack of it), the fight taking place often in a longshot silence that somehow makes the dusty scuffle even more effective. Silence also comes into play brilliantly to stress McKay’s isolation when first the Terrill men ride away to extract vengeance and then the disgusted Patricia closes the front door on him, leaving him standing in magnificent isolation on the porch. Silence will also come effectively into play during the late act ride of various characters through a white chalk lined gorge and to stress the danger that the kidnapped Julie is under when being held by the Hannassey’s.

The final act brings all the threats of danger and threat together into a brilliantly tense final confrontation. This sequence showcases, not only Peck’s granite principles and nobility, but also gives excellent opportunities for Ives to explore hidden depths in Old Hannassey (it surely helped him win the Oscar for Supporting Actor) and his dumb son Buck (excellently played with a swaggering arrogance by Chuck Connors) who is all mouth and no trousers.

Sure, at times the film overplays the anti-violence card. It’s particularly noticeable as it sometimes wants to have its cake and eat it, favouring probably a sort of gun-toting liberalism, of the “I could kill you but I want to make it so I don’t have to” variety. But then the film would be a heck of a less effective if we weren’t so convinced that Peck was as tough as they come and that his unwillingness to throw himself into events thoughtlessly is a mark of his unparalleled strength. Again, Wyler uses silence as effectively as sweeping camera movements and that brilliant score, to suggest moral strength.

There is probably very little tension about where the romantic plotlines are going, but both Carroll Baker and Jean Simmons are very good as two very different, but equally strong, women (although both women allegedly found Wyler’s perfectionist Kubrickian retakes on set extremely trying). But it still works a treat because of the strength of the acting, and its strongly scripted characterisation.

That and I’ve hardly mentioned the score, by Jerome Moross, which is powerful and famous you’ll instantly know it even if you’ve never seen the film. The Big Country is a Western where the hero has the strength to stick to his principles while still getting the job done. It’s superbly acted by Peck, with Simmons, Baker, Heston, Ives, Bickford and Connors all excellent in support. Wyler combines visual and a compelling story into a film that, while at points a little long, is still a bona fide classic. Again I’ll say: I loved it.