Category: Romance

Dark Victory (1939)

Bette Davis almost single-handedly lifts another tear-jerker into something grander

Director: Edmund Goulding

Cast: Bette Davis (Judith Traherne), George Brent (Dr Frederick Steele), Humphrey Bogart (Michael O’Leary), Geraldine Fitzgerald (Ann King), Ronald Reagan (Alec Hamm), Henry Travers (Dr Parsons), Cora Witherspoon (Carrie Spottswood), Dorothy Peterson (Miss Wainwright)

Judith Traherne (Bette Davis) is vivacious and fun-loving. From her grand Long Island home, her days are taken up with racehorses and fast cars, her nights with parties and booze. No wonder she keeps having headaches and making those small falls, right? Pushed to check it out at the insistence of her best friend Ann (Geraldine Fitzgerald), it doesn’t take long for brain specialist Dr Frederick Steele (George Brent) to diagnose a brain tumour. An operation is a short-term success, but Judith’s condition is terminal. At best, she has a year to live. Steele and Ann decide to keep the news from Judith – but when she discovers the truth she decides to live life to the full with Frederick, the man she has grown to love.

Watching Dark Victory is a reminder of the sometimes-limited opportunities for women in Hollywood at the time. If an actor as radiantly talented as Bette Davis were a man, she would have been playing earth-shattering roles in stirring dramas. This was when Tracy, Muni and March were playing explorers, scientists, world leaders and campaigners. Davis, like other women, saw the vast majority of strong roles for women centred on screwball comedies or as loving wives and mothers. As such she made a career propping up effective, sentimental twaddle like Dark Victory.

Which is to be a little harsh, I will admit, on a fine if unambitious tear-jerker. Dark Victory had been a Broadway play – and a flop. The stage had exposed a little too clearly the blatant emotional manipulation of the story of a woman who falls in love in the final year of her life then facing death with self-sacrificing fortitude. On film though, it could be made to work, not least through the full-throated commitment and intelligence of Bette Davis’ acting.

Davis is too often button-holed into the “camp icon” bucket, but Dark Victory – much like Now Voyager – sees her real strong suit, turning ordinary women, tinged with sadness, into portraits of deep tragedy and emotional self-sacrifice. Davis evolves Judith from a shallow, fun-loving playgirl into someone thoughtful, caring and empathetic. Davis avoids almost completely the obvious histrionics you could resort to playing a woman dying of a terminal brain tumour.

Instead, she meets her diagnosis with a carefully studied casualness that hides her fear, confronts the realisation that she has been deceived with a betrayed disappointment rather than carpet-chewing fury, and faces death with an unselfish concern for others (a physical tour-de-force as Davis acts blind – the final stage of her condition – but hides this from her husband so as not to cause him to abandon a medical research conference he has postponed frequently for her sake).

It’s all, of course, very standard material for a tear-jerking “woman’s picture” of the 1930s. A flighty woman finds love, happiness and inevitable tragedy. Davis fizzes around much of the film’s first 30 minutes with a Hepburnesque energy and wit, jodhpurs and champagne glasses abounding. A great deal of sweet charm brilliantly adds to the poignancy as, in her first consultation with Steele, she fails to identify blindfolded the same object being placed in both hands (a dice, a pencil and a piece of silk, all instantly identified in her left are met with confused incomprehension in her right). This is highly skilled, emotionally committed acting that pays off in spades as the gentle, thoughtful, caring woman underneath is revealed.

It helps that Davis has a trusted director in Edmund Goulding. Never the finest visual stylist or most compelling technician, Goulding’s great strength was his finesse with actors. He worked especially well with Davis, his careful focus on performance over technical flair giving her an excellent showpiece for her skills. Davis paired again with George Brent, a solid but generous actor (with whom Davis started a long-running affair) never better than when breathing humanity and life into an on-paper stiff roll as a noble surgeon who falls in love with his patient.

Brent and Davis’ chemistry and comfort with each other squeeze out all other potential romantic sub-plots, despite the actors in the roles. Lord knows what the Irish Republican Brent made of Bogart’s bizarre Irish accent as Judith’s roguish horse trainer. Bogart looks hilariously uncomfortable, his accent coming and going and he lacks affinity for the role or the film. He still comes off better than the rather wet Ronald Reagan as Judith’s playboy friend. Instead, the film’s finest supporting performer is the wonderful Geraldine Fitzgerald, sparky, firm-jawed and endlessly loyal while torn up with grief for her friend.

Dark Victory, though, rises and falls on the success of Davis’ performance. It certainly makes no secret of the fact that we are heading towards a tragic ending. A parade of doctors emerge to confirm to Steele that, yes, the disease is terminal. When Judith uncovers her case notes, she flips through an army of letters from eminent surgeons repeating the phrase “Prognosis: negative” – she even then asks Steele’s secretary to explain the wording. We are building up constantly towards a show-stopping, three-hankie, climax of Judith’s inevitable decease.

And yet the film still manages to get you. Again, it’s the low-key but honest performance of Davis that makes this. The moment of tragic realisation that death is arriving, then the studied determination to carry on regardless and to spare her loved ones as much pain as possible. It’s the self-sacrificing decency and honour of the very best of the “women’s pictures”. Davis delivers on it so utterly successfully, it does make you wonder what triumphs she might have had if she could have played the sort of roles males stars played, as well as breathing such conviction-filled life into gentle weepies like this.

My Brilliant Career (1979)

Edgy and very good feminist film about a prickly and difficult woman struggling against a lack of choice

Director: Gillian Armstrong

Cast: Judy Davis (Sybylla Melvyn), Sam Neill (Harry Beecham), Wendy Hughes (Aunt Helen), Robert Grubb (Frank Hawdon), Max Cullen (Peter McSwatt), Pat Kennedy (Aunt Gussie), Aileen Britton (Grandma Bossier), Peter Whitford (Uncle Julius)

In turn of the century Australia, it’s fair to say women were not awash with choices as Sybylla Melvyn (Judy Davis) discovers. Growing up on a dust covered farm, she dreams of becoming something – an artist, a singer, a writer, a connoisseur of culture, anything rather than spending her life as a wife and mother. She is dispatched by her parents to her wealthy maternal grandmother (Aileen Britton), determined to scrub her up, shave off her rough edges and find her a good marriage. Sybylla resists, but much to her surprise finds herself attracted to old childhood friend, Harry Beecham (Sam Neill). But will Sybylla choose marriage over finding her own path in life?

Adapted from a semi-autobiographical novel by Miles Franklin (the pen name of Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin), My Brilliant Career was a feminist watershed in Australian cinema, also one of the first Australian films directed by a woman. Gillian Armstrong was fascinated by a story that, while a period piece, still spoke strongly to a time when women were moving out of stereotypical traditional roles they had been pigeon-holed into. My Brilliant Career is a costume drama that looks at the stark reality for women at the time (wife, mother or “spinster”). And while men could dream of lives of cultural and artistic fulfilment or economic ambition, women faced innumerable barriers.

The frustrations help explain why Sybylla is such a prickly, at times maddening, frustrated woman trapped in a constant stream of situations where her choices are narrow or she cannot decide what she wants. On her parents’ farm, her interest in art and classical music turns her into a sort of freakish bluestocking (or larrakin), her slow plonking of Schumann on the family’s out-of-tune piano sounding to them like sounds from the end of the world. Among the well-off hoi polloi of Australia, she seems scruffy and wild and her knowledge of working-class drinking songs and enjoyment of rough-and-tumble games and dancing lead to raised eyebrows (it’s telling she switches to playing the bawdy tunes of her parents’ local drinking hole on the grand piano of her grandmother’s house – she is an outsider everywhere she goes).

Sybylla is brought to life in a sensational, star-making performance by Judy Davis. Davis isn’t afraid to make Sybylla often difficult and even a little unlikeable. She’s capricious and often infuriatingly vague about what she wants. She has high-blown dreams of an artistic life, with no fixed idea about what that might mean. She is adamantly opposed to marriage, but flirts outrageously. She scorns the uncultured dirt of the poor but finds the fussy exactitude of the rich oppressive. She’s a mass of contradictory and confused impulses, all caught up in her limited opportunities: marry as everyone wants her to do and, even if she loves the man, say goodbye to the ability to make her own choices.

This is captured perfectly in Davis’ shabby impertinence. She makes Sybylla someone never afraid to speak her mind: smutty jokes at dinner tables, blunt refusals of “I’m-doing-you-a-favour” proposals. Davis makes her defiant and difficult, but also strangely vulnerable (she’s very sensitive about her appearance – not surprising considering barely a scene goes by without someone commenting on her plainness, freckles, messy hair or some combination of all three). Davis charges about the screen with a masculine tom-boyishness. She trudges through fields, clambers up trees, drives horse and carts with aggressive pace. She rarely looks comfortable in her clothes. She has a sharp, at times even cruel, sense of humour, never suffers fools and doesn’t allow anyone to talk down to her.

Armstrong’s film however makes clear this is all in the nature of the teething problems of a young woman still mystified about what she wants from life. And who can blame Sybylla at the unattractiveness of the various alternatives put to her (basically a range of glorified servant roles). She is even dispatched to serve as a governess to a group of scruffy farm children, again tellingly the only time she truly embraces the comfort of formal clothes, as if cementing her place as not among the mud. (This sequence does show Sybylla’s social flexibility as, much to her surprise, she forms a bond with these coarse workers.) It’s a situation made particularly difficult when she has two viable suitors thrust at her.

The first she can dismiss with ease – a pompous stuff-shirt played with smackable smugness by Frank Hawdon. The other is far more viable: a kindred-spirit of a sort played by an attractively charismatic Sam Neill. Harry and Sybylla capture in each other the exact qualities the other finds attractive but would cause long-term disaster in marriage. Sybylla is attracted to Harry’s humour and intelligence but would find his settled landowning life restrictive. Harry is drawn to Sybylla’s free-spirited independence but long-term would find it infuriating. Nevertheless, the temptation to marry is strong for both of them.

Armstrong’s film expertly builds the unspoken, awkward courtship between these two. They take it in turns to ignore and provoke jealousy in each other. When thrown together they go from surly silence into bawdy flirtation (including an epic outdoor pillow-fight across Harry’s farmland). The question always remains though whether marriage is the right choice for either of them. Not least as it would potentially end Sybylla’s dreams of exploring the world and her place in it.

My Brilliant Career is lusciously designed (by Luciana Arrighi) and beautifully shot (by Donald McAlpine). Gillian Armstrong brings a strong visual eye to the film – there are some superb compositions involving windows and walls creating visual barriers between characters and some terrific transitions (the finest being a cut that visually compares Sybylla’s beside her bed with her mother in her dining room at home). The film builds a wonderfully subtle feminist picture, with several women – Sybylla’s mother who has married for love and found poverty, her aunt (well played by Wendy Hughes) jilted by an unsuitable husband, her great aunt who chose freedom but is deeply lonely – presenting potential life paths that further illustrate the paucity of choice.

It makes for a prickly but eventually very involving film, with a sly wit, very well filmed that gradually makes us care deeply for a character who is initially as irritating and challenging for the viewer as she can be for the characters. With a brilliant performance by Judy Davis, My Brilliant Career is an important milestone in the Australian New Wave and a superb debut for Gillian Armstrong, that mixes strong thematic ideas and beautiful visuals.

Back to the Future Part III (1990)

The franchise closes on a high with a fun, romantic and exciting finale, tonnes better than Part II

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Cast: Michael J. Fox (Marty McFly/Seamus McFly), Christopher Lloyd (Emmett “Doc” Brown), Mary Steenburgen (Clara Clayton), Thomas F. Wilson (Biff Tannen/Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen), Lea Thompson (Lorraine McFly/Maggie McFly), James Tolkan (Marshal James Strickland), Elizabeth Shue (Jennifer), Matt Clark (Chester), Richard Dysart (Salesman), Flea (Needles)

And we’re back. After the frankly awful Back to the Future Part II – an onslaught of bad gags, terrible performances, clumsy call-backs and a lot of sound and fury – the trilogy ended on a high with Back to the Future Part III which, by going back to the past, managed to find more heart and originality than Part II ever had. Strangely, by looking backwards in time, the series managed to look forward to new ideas. Part III is, by many degrees, a huge improvement.

We left Part II with Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) stranded in 1885 and Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) equally stranded in1855. How are they going to get back to 1985? Well Doc is happy where he is, and has left the Delorean buried in 1885 for Marty to dig it up in 1955 and get back to the future with the help of the 1955 Doc. But, digging the Delorean up, Marty discovers Doc’s 1885 grave: turns out he will be murdered by gunslinger Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen (Thomas F Wilson). So, Marty travels back to 1885 to save him. But with the Delorean damaged on the way, how will they get back to 1985? Will Doc or Marty be killed in a fatal gunfight with Tannen? And what about the Doc and schoolteacher Clara Clayton (Mary Steenburgen) falling in love?

Back to the Future Part III juggles all these plot themes with real expertise, all based in a hugely affectionate portrait of the Old West that drips with Zemeckis and Gale’s childhood love for the genre. I’m going to guess that Part III is inexplicably not held in the same regard as Part II because my generation and onward simply has far less of a connection to the Western than they do crudely cheesy views of an 80s tinged future.

But the sense of fun here is on point. Galloping horses, street fights, open air dances, trains, cameos from old-school Western supporting actors, the majestic score… it’s all an on-point reconstruction of the tone and style of Ford. (In particular, the entire film feels like a fun recreation of many elements of My Darling Clementine). The film also has fun with later perceptions. Marty is dressed up for his journey back to 1885 in the sort of brightly coloured, skin-tight costumes 1950s TV and B-movie western stars wore. He adopts the alias “Clint Eastwood” (and doesn’t the film have fun with that). He even (eventually) dresses not dissimilarly from the Man with No Name himself.

It doesn’t stop with the Western re-build. Back to the Future Part III has the inevitable call-back gags to events we have seen throughout the last two movies. But here they are delivered with a far more freshness. Not least because Doc and Marty largely reverse roles here (leaning into this, they even swop their catchphrases at one point). While in the previous films Marty was the impulsive one, flying by the seat of his pants with instant decisions and being assisted by the eccentric Doc, here they settle into new roles.

Because Doc here is the one being rescued and the one tempted by an impulsive decision. Namely, staying in the past because he has fallen in love. Christopher Lloyd, a much better actor than he gets credit for, is allowed to broaden out and enrich his eccentric performance as Doc with a real emotional depth in a very sweetly drawn romance. Mary Steenburgen is equally good as the kindred spirit he falls in love with. Both actors play the romance dead straight and it allows Lloyd to show an emotional depth and shade his performance has lacked elsewhere. Steenburgen’s casting is also a nice tip-of-the-hat to Time After Time (where she also played a woman who inadvertently falls in love with a time traveller). Clara is also a neatly written character, integrated far more into the plot than poor Jennifer in Part II and another welcome shake-up the buddy formula.

As Doc takes on the romantic and paradox creating role, Marty becomes the driver, urging Doc to stop getting mixed up in influencing past events and focus instead on fixing the Delorean and getting back home. Fox embraces playing (largely) the secondary role in the film. He still gets moments of fun as an actor (not least playing Marty’s Irish great-grandfather – a performance immeasurably better than all his latex covered efforts in Part II) but he’s largely the voice of sense here.

Except of course concerning his fatal character flaw: don’t call him chicken. There is nowhere more dangerous to allow someone to pick a fight with you than the Wild West. And Marty swiftly inherits the clash with Tannen (played with gruff comic gusto and impenetrably density by Thomas F Wilson). This culminates – but of course – in a face-off in a dustbowl street, with a solution to the gunfight inspired by the real Eastwood and nicely signposted in Part II.

That leads into a genuinely edge-of-the-seat exciting race to hijack a train to push the Delorean up to the desired 88 miles an hour. Zemeckis shoots and cuts this sequence to perfection – and Alan Silvestri’s score does a lot of build and sustain the tension and excitement – and it seems appropriate that the only real opponent Marty, Doc and Clara have to deal with in this sequence is time itself. Crammed with sight gags, orchestrated to perfection and perfectly paced it’s a great way to cap the series.

Much as the film itself is a perfect ending to the franchise. Its imaginative and playful, riffing on the previous events without slavishly imitating them, approaching both its characters from new angles that helps us discover new things about them and crammed with great jokes, exciting set-pieces and genuine emotion. It’s easily the second-best film in the franchise. If you want to revisit a sequel for Back to the Future do yourself a favour and pick the one in the past.

A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

A pilot is stranded between Earth and…somewhere else in this brilliant romantic fantasy

Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Cast: David Niven (Peter David Carter), Roger Livesey (Dr Frank Reeves), Raymond Massey (Abraham Farlan), Kim Hunter (June), Marius Goring (Conductor 71), Robert Coote (Bob Trubshaw), Kathleen Byron (Officer Angel), Joan Maude (Chief Recorder), Abraham Sofaer (Judge/Surgeon), Richard Attenborough (Pilot)

In the final days of World War II, a plane glides across the Channel in flames. The crew has bailed out, leaving only their skipper behind. Unknown to them, he’s not got a parachute – and is facing a choice between jumping or crashing to certain death. With only moments left to live, when is there a better time to fall in love? Quoting poetry and embracing what life he can in his final moments, Peter Carter (David Niven) falls in love with American radio operator June (Kim Hunter), the last person he expects to talk to. It’s stirring, sweeping, hugely romantic – and then Peter jumps at 50,000 feet.

So that’s it, right? Wrong. Peter washes up on the shores of Britain, not dead and practically on June’s doorstep. Happy ending? Perhaps not: at the end of a huge escalator linking our world to another (maybe the next?) Peter was expected. His “conductor” (Marius Goring), a French fop executed during the Revolution, whose job it was to take his soul “up” lost him in the fog. Now a man who isn’t supposed to be alive is walking around on Earth falling in love. Can it be allowed? Or will Peter need to head up that staircase? Or is all of this in fact in Peter’s head, a product of a head injury diagnosed by Dr Frank Reeves (Roger Livesey)? Either way, Peter faces two trials: life-saving surgery on Earth and a tribunal in that other place to decide whether he stays on Earth or not.

When released in America, AMOLAD was renamed Stairway to Heaven – a title rightly hated by Michael Powell. Part of the magic – and there is a lot of magic realism here in the most beloved of all British filmic fables – is the film’s carefully measured ambiguity. The film superbly doesn’t give any answers. The two worlds are clearly, visually distinguished and when Goring’s Conductor and others descend to Earth to freeze time and converse with Peter, their appearance is always foreshadowed with the same symptoms (smells and headaches) Frank diagnoses as part of Peter’s condition.

The beauty of AMOLAD is how wonderfully gently it explores the struggle of two nations – here represented by Peter and June – to emerge from the trauma of war and return to everyday life. From a world where death lies around every corner – where your plane can plummet to fiery doom in moments – they must readjust to one of romantic picnics, amateur theatricals and games of table tennis. Peter’s struggle to survive his surgery is a beautiful metaphor for returning to a life full of hope, possibility and looking forward rather than backward.

It’s why the visual impact of the film is so important. “Heaven” is shot in crisp black-and-white. As the Conductor says when travelling down to Earth, “one is starved of Technicolor up there”. This Heaven is a place of peace, but also of bureaucratic efficiency. Arrival lounges are staffed with decent but practical Angels (Kathleen Bryon is marvellous as the first of these we meet – and there is a fabulous shot from Powell that frames her in front of a clock, making the edges of its face appear like a halo around her head). There are rules and paperwork – in fact a whole city of clerks and arrival lounges. What it doesn’t have is the warmth and passion – the colour – of Earth. Down here, everything is in luscious, gorgeous Technicolor. Up there life is restful, but monochrome.

Jack Cardiff’s photography of AMOLAD – combined with Powell’s astute visual eye – crafts one of the most ravishing films you’ll ever see. Blues, oranges and reds practically pour off the screen into your eyes. Filters add a golden hue to much of what we see. The ramshackle details of locations – Frank’s cluttered library with its piles of books, June’s country-house-base – see every single detail captured in painterly beauty, colours popping out. Only Peter’s surgery room feels like a bridge between ”Heaven” and Earth, cooler filters stressing their blues and cool icey whites.

This is what Peter is fighting to stay in. A world of colour, of joy and poetry. Perhaps “Heaven” is just his imagination of what the afterlife could be like. It resembles the military operations he has spent the last few years emersed in. It’s filled with the historical generations he taught at university. Familiar faces up there fight his corner and represent him at the great trial to decide his fate. His surgeon on Earth shares the face of his judge in “Heaven”. Powell and Pressburger don’t lean too far either way – it’s all gloriously left open to our imagination.

And who, in 1946, wouldn’t want to believe in a heaven as reassuringly welcoming as this. (On a side note it’s refreshing to see a film from the 40s that depicts such a racially diverse after life). One where all are equal and questions of colour and creed are left aside. “Heaven” is packed with soldiers from all across the world – and the sheer volume of uniforms up there reminds us of the trauma down here.

AMOLAD is all about the world we might decide to live in after the trauma of war. It’s also about forging lasting bonds between two nations bought together to fight. No one feels more English than David Niven: and AMOLAD is, arguably, his finest performance. He makes Peter a man of casual wit and lightly worn intelligence, but with hints of the burdens he has carried across years of war. He’s the best of us Brits – and now he has fallen in love with the best of America. June, wonderfully played by Kim Hunter, is practical, brave and grounded. Their love (and the life they could spend together) becomes the battleground at the heavenly trial.

On the one side: a prejudiced revolutionary American (played with gusto by Raymond Massey) – on the other the perfect embodiment of English decency. There could have been no better choice of actor for this than the glorious Roger Livesey. Livesey’s Frank Reeves becomes a mix of English eccentric, master surgeon and Prospero-like magus. It’s no coincidence that among his hobbies is a large camera obscura with which he observes events on his village streets with a protective, grandfatherly care. His study is lined with books, his knowledge is infinite and he is always open to Peter’s tales of heavenly staircases and visitations from mysterious conductors. Then as his advocate in “Heaven” it is he who has the clear sight and judgement to focus the jury not on what divides us, but what unites us – what makes us all human, not what drives us apart.

AMOLAD is about what brings us together. It’s open about the flaws of Britain – the first trial jury is awash with Boers, Indians and other victims of Empire – but also a celebration of its virtues. It celebrates the melting pot of America – the second trial jury is made-up of an incredibly diverse selection of American citizens – and is a hymn to personal freedoms. Farlan picks up on what divides Britain and America – cricket vs American dynamism – but what unites us is our desire for life. So what does it matter if Brits can be austere or Americans so brash they raid a coke dispenser on arrival in “Heaven”. We’re still cousins.

All this helps capture the film as a universal fable, of love being discovered in the magical boundaries between worlds (its no coincidence we see Midsummer Night’s Dream being rehearsed by an American cast under a British vicar). This is a quiet, decent struggle about emerging from the horrors of war into the chance of a new world of love. It’s a struggle for Peter and June that is both very personal and hugely universal. Powell and Pressburger’s film captures this perfectly in a film that’s sublimely directed and never-endingly rich in dialogue and visuals. It perfectly offers up a universal fable that speaks to the heart. It’s perhaps why this is their most beloved – and finest – hour.

The Quiet Man (1952)

Ford’s sweet and funny Irish fable is possibly his most purely enjoyable film

Director: John Ford

Cast: John Wayne (Sean Thornton), Maureen O’Hara (Mary Kate Danaher), Barry Fitzgerald (Michaleen Oge Flyyn), Ward Bond (Father Peter Lonergan), Victor McLaglen (Squire Will Danaher), Mildred Natwick (The Widow Sarah Tillane), Francis Ford (Dan Tobin), Eileen Crowe (Mrs Elizabeth Playfair), Arthur Shields (Reverend Cyril Playfair), Charles B Fitzsimmons (Hugh Forbes), James O’Hara (Father Paul), Jack MacGowran (Ignatius Feeney), Sean McClory (Owen Glynn)

John Ford wasn’t born in Ireland, but he loved the place in the way only the child of ex-pats could. The Quiet Man is a loving, romantic, almost fairy-tale view of Ireland, an affectionate feelgood fantasy that transcends any possibility of patronising its subject through its warmth and charm. It’s an unashamedly feel-good film, a delightful fable full of luscious scenery and tenderly sketched characters that plays out like a warm end-of-term treat where we are all invited to the party. It’s possibly Ford’s most purely enjoyable and heart-warming film.

Set in 1920s Ireland, Sean Thornton (John Wayne) returns to his childhood home of Inisfree after growing up and becoming a boxer in Pittsburgh. Sean loves his home country, but with his American upbringing is out-of-step with the customs and traditions of Ireland – something that becomes very clear when he falls in love with Mary Kate (Maureen O’Hara), sister of local squire Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen). Their rules-bound courtship – overseen by matchmaker Michaleen Oge Flynn (Barry Fitzgerald) – eventually leads to marriage, but via tricking Will, who withholds Mary Kate’s dowry, the sign of her independence. Mary Kate wants Sean to fight for it – but the former boxer is haunted by the accidental killing of an opponent in the ring and wants to live-and-let-live. Problem is everyone, from Mary Kate down, sees that as cowardice.

Ford was desperate to make The Quiet Man, the rights for which he had paid $10 for in 1933 when the short story was published by Maurice Walsh (Ford ensured Walsh received another $5k when the film was finally made). B-movie studio Republic Pictures was the only one willing to take a punt on it. But, alarmed by Ford’s insistence to shoot in colour and (even more expensively!) on location, they were convinced they had a box office bomb on their hands. They insisted Ford and his cast made a western first – the literally for-the-money Rio Grande – to cover the expected losses. They even demanded Ford couldn’t make it longer than 2 hours. Ford screened the final 2 hours and 9 minutes cut to them, stopping the film on exactly the two hour mark and asking them what they’d cut. They released the film unchanged. The film was an Oscar-nominated smash-hit.

It’s not a surprise why, because the film is a whimsical delight. Ford isn’t often remembered for his sense of fun, but The Quiet Man is unarguably funny. It’s crammed with sight gags – from sly double takes (there is a delightful one from the railway station workers, who watch first a determined Sean then a horse walk straight past them), to Sean and Will grimacing in pain but smiling as they exchange a brutal handshake, to Mary Kate jumping over obstacles as Sean drags her back to the village to have it out with her brother. It famously ends with an extended comic set-piece as Sean and Will launch a mano-a-mano “Queensbury Rules” fistfight that takes most of a day, moves across the whole village, and is interrupted only by a break for a pint.

All of this takes place in an Ireland that, while it never feels entirely real, is drawn with such loving affection and cast with such careful exactitude that it hardly matters. Ford’s insistence on shooting all the exteriors on location paid off in spades. The country has never looked more ravishing than through Winton C Hoch’s technicolour lens. Rolling vistas, gentle brooks, quaint villages, perfect beaches. You totally understand why Sean, on arrival, simply stands on a stone bridge and stares across the valley of Inisfree, lost in memories and his emotions.

Sure, it’s a romantic vision. And 1920s Ireland wasn’t the sort of haven depicted here, where Catholic and Protestant lived in perfect harmony, politics never reared its head and the local IRA man is a jolly joker in the pub. If The Quiet Man had not been so well-meaning, you can imagine people taking offence at a picture of the country full of roguish charm, horse-drawn carriages, drinking and fighting. (You could say The Quiet Man shaped many Americans’ perceptions of what the country is like.) But Ford never makes any of this a subject of humour. In fact, it’s a subject of love. The joke is never on the Irish. Inisfree is in fact a haven of community spirit, a supportive village where its people are wise, caring and decent, tradition is respected and what people say and do matters.

It’s why so many are shocked by Sean’s seeming cowardice at not raising his fists earlier. That’s not what “men” do. John Wayne is very effective as the easy-going Sean, a guy who just wants to settle down to marriage. It’s a decent playing-against-type by Wayne, that balances his quiet sense of dignity with the sort of manly determination we know will eventually come through. It’s easy to see why he and Mary Kate fall in love. Also, why she is both swept up in his masculinity and also enraged that he doesn’t behave enough like a man, by refusing to take a stand to defend her honour and secure that dowry that will make her a true wife.

O’Hara is marvellous in a challenging role as Mary Kate. This is a feisty and determined woman, who knows what she wants but denies to herself what that is. She and Wayne share a striking, windswept early kiss – her mood in it going form surprise, to fascination, to irritation, to surrendering to her own desires. While you could suggest the film’s comic set-piece of Sean dragging her (sometimes literally) back to the village so she can watch him fight her brother the way she’s demanded from the start feels uncomfortable today, but it’s also Sean not only delivering what she has wanted him to do from the start, but also strangely the thing that finally bonds them together.

A bond is what they have, both of them straining against the confines of the courtship rules of Ireland. Together they flee the chaperoned carriage ride Michaeleen (a delighful Barry Fitzgerald) takes them on to ride a tandem through the streets. Mary Kate constantly, bashfully, tries to go after what she wants – and a large part of that is the lurking “bad boy” tendency that she detects under the surface of the quiet Sean. Something her less-bright brother Will can’t see.

Victor McLaglen (Oscar-nominated) swaggers, slurs and puffs himself up as this rough-and-tough, punch-first-think-later bruiser, who constantly thinks he’s being cheated. He and Wayne throw themselves into the long dust-up that ends the film with the same comic energy and enthusiasm they did exchanging handshakes. Part of The Quiet Man’s success comes from the comfort and familiarity the cast felt for each other. The trip to Ireland was like a friends-and-family holiday: old mates like Ward Bond, Ford’s brother, O’Hara’s brother, Wayne’s children – they all round out the cast. It helps build even more the family and community feeling that makes the film a delight.

Above all, The Quiet Man leaves you with a smile on your face. With expertly filmed set-pieces – a horse race, Sean and Mary Kate’s long walk back to Inisfree and the epic punch-up – combined with luscious shooting (also done with wit – a sexually frustrated Sean pounds through the countryside, tossing heavily puffed cigarettes aside, after Mary Kate withdraws favours) – it’s also fast-paced, witty and warm. The cast even effectively take bows as Ward Bond’s (his finest hour) priest delivers a final voiceover. Full of affection and charm, it’s a delight and is perhaps the only foreign “Irish” film that has been embraced by the Irish.

Under Fire (1983)

Well-filmed but politically naive Nicaraguan revolution film that pulls its punches and settles for melodrama

Director: Roger Spottiswoode

Cast: Nick Nolte (Russell Price), Gene Hackman (Alex Grazier), Joanna Cassidy (Claire Stryder), Ed Harris (Oates), Jean-Louis Trintignant (Marcel Jazy), Richard Masur (Hub Kittle), René Enríquez (President Anastasio Somoza Debayle), Hamilton Camp (Regis)

In 1979 Nicaragua was torn apart by revolution as the regime of right-wing President Somaza was challenged – and eventually overthrown – by the Sandinata National Liberation Front (FSLN), a coalition of left-wing revolutionaries. The US largely threw in its lot with the Somaza government until its appalling human rights record – and the outrage at the murder of journalist Bill Stewart, which was caught on camera – led to it withdrawing aid and the collapse of the regime. Not that it led to peace in the country, as Raegan’s government promptly began supporting the right-wing Contra rebels (but that’s another story).

A version of this is bought to the screen in Roger Spottiswoode’s earnest but slightly naïve film which tries to walk the walk but largely pulls its punches. Here Bill Stewart is translated into Alex Grazier (Gene Hackman) whose journalist ex-wife Claire Stryder (Joanna Cassidy) is in love with his best friend war photographer Russell Price (Nick Nolte). Price and Stryder are embedded in Nicaragua and find their sympathies growing for the left-wing revolutionaries – and their hackles rising at some of the actions of their country.

That “some” is the key here. For all Under Fire would like to be a firebrand political film – a sort of Battle of Algiers by way of All the President’s Men – it’s a film that continually pulls its punches. When compared to the brutal honesty Missing (a year earlier) looked at America’s bungled, self-serving and short-sighted foreign policy in Latin America, bashing any communist leaning revolutionary, even if meant propping up blood-soaked dictators, Under Fire looks very tame indeed.

Only the barest information and context is given to American policy. The only two villainous representatives of American policy we see are carefully distanced from the government. Oates, played with empathy-free gusto by Ed Harris, is a mercenary as happy driving trucks as he is executing POWs. The CIA’s man-on-the-ground is not even American – instead he’s a supercilious, lecherous Frenchman played with awkwardness by Jean-Louis Trintignant. Trintignant gets the closest anyone gets to a political speech, pointing out today’s sympathetic left-wing revolutionaries are tomorrow’s Stalinist purgers. But he’s always a degree separate from official American policy.

Instead, America remains the innocent here. The implication is the true decision makers don’t realise what’s going on, on the ground. It’s only the murder of Alex – and the smuggling out of Russell’s photos showing his execution – that leads to America having its eyes opened and withdrawing its support. This neatly lets everyone off the hook. Neither does the film dare suggest the hypocrisy of a country pouring money and arms into the bloody Somaza regime for years, only stirring when one innocent American journalist is killed. Not once does the film challenge the unpleasant truths that lie behind a statement made by a Nicaraguan: “if we had killed an American journalist years ago perhaps you might have done something”.

Instead, the film settles for a slightly naïve romance of the largely decent, young and sympathetic rebels vs brutish Government soldiers. The rebels are all plucky kids – like the young man and would-be baseball player Russell and Claire follow through a street battle in Leon (naturally, he’s shot by Oates, in the back of all places). Either that or decent, wise figures who would never consider sullying their hands the way the government forces do. It all feels a long way from the mutual brutalities of Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers or the (admittedly spittle-mouthed) fury of Oliver Stone’s Salvador.

After a while you start to feel Nicaragua is really a backdrop for a half-hearted romance between two journalists who re-discover their idealism under fire. The sense that the film could be set anywhere really is backed up by it’s opening in the Chad civil war, which is explored in fifteen minutes in the same cursory depth as the Nicaragua revolution. It’s all exotic backdrop for a drama about whether Russell and Claire can get over the guilt of sort-of betraying Alex (although Claire and Alex are already separated by the time they get it-on) and convert their affair into something more meaningful.

Truth be told all three journalists are thin characters, invested with more depth than they deserve by three very strong actors. Nolte is at his gravelly best, scruffy but impassioned, righteous anger bubbling not far under the surface. Cassidy turns a character that could have easily been “the woman” into a dedicated, intelligent and inspiring professional. Hackman finds beats of self-doubt and sadness in an anchorman worried he’s left what he’s loved (personally and professionally) behind.

Spottiswoode films with sweep and energy – helped by a very good score by Jerry Goldsmith and some impressive recreations (sanitised as they are) of street clashes in Nicaragua. But the story never takes flight and its political edge gets far too blunted. Even the murder of Alex is turned into melodrama, the focus quickly shifting to a wild chase for Russell to smuggle his film out of the country to end the Somaza government claims that the killers were the rebels not his soldiers.

It’s where the film goes wrong, settling for melodrama and romance where it should be angry. In the end it’s a romantic film, where American policy is misguided for the right reason and good triumphs. The cheering crowds that end the film ring especially hollow considering the continued violence that plagued the country throughout most of the 80s. It’s a solid thriller, but a flawed film.

Decision to Leave (2022)

Obsession, murder and romance combine in this stunningly made inventive romantic film noir

Director: Park Chan-wook

Cast: Tang Wei (Song Seo-rae), Park Hae-il (Detective Jang Hae-jun), Lee Jung-hyun (Jung-an), Go Kyung-pyo (Soo-wan), Park Yong-woo (Im Ho-shin), Kim Shin-young (Yeon-su), Jung Yi-seo (Yoo Mi-ji), Jung Young-Sook (Granny Hae Dong), Yoo Seung-mok (Ki Do-soo), Park Jeong-min (San-oh), Seo Hyun-woo (Sa Cheol-seong “Slappy”)

Death from dizzying heights, a mysterious femme fatale and a detective who tips into unhealthy, romantic obsession. Sound familiar? Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave is an enticing spin on Vertigo, but also a beautifully made marriage of Park’s visually dynamic style with classic Hollywood film noir. Decision to Leave is soaked in the sort of atmosphere you’d find in Laura or Double Indemnity and is a breath-taking marriage of half-a-dozen genres, from noir to romance to tragedy. It rotates continuously, no matter how much we observe and watch people, on how little we understand them – and how little we understand ourselves. It’s a stunning piece of film-making.

Jang Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) is a high-flying Busan murder detective, the youngest senior investigator on the force. He’s also a reserved man, crippled with insomnia and weighed down with guilt over cases he failed to solve, conducting a long-distance marriage with Jung-an (Lee Jung-hyun) a scientist at the nuclear plant in distant Ipo. He’s called into investigate the death of a civil servant and keen climbing enthusiast, who fell to his death from his favourite climbing spot. His much younger Chinese wife Song Seo-rae (Tang Wei) is strangely unmoved by his death and becomes the investigation’s focus. She also becomes the focus of Hae-jun’s sleep-deprived obsession as he stakes out her home. Gradually Seo-rae and Hae-jun form an intimate but unromantic relationship as they discover a deep bond between them. But does that mean that Seo-rae isn’t a murderer?

Questions of motivation and the reasoning behind decisions is central to Park’s film. At its heart is Seo-rae, a woman constantly unreadable, as hard to distinguish as her turquoise-tinged clothes are between blue or green (depending on who you talk to). A Chinese woman in South Korea, her Korean is formal and perfectly phrased but she relies on Google Translate to render more emotive sentences into Korean. She nurses ageing women in their homes, showing them care and attention. She might also be a murderer several times over, for motives that are impossibly unreadable.

It must be particularly unreadable for a detective whose mind is clouded by lack of sleep. Hae-jun’s eyes in his lined, weary face are frequently blurred by eye drops (the same eye drops covering POV camera shots). As a detective he’s prepared for everything. He wears trainers, constantly prepared for sudden sprints after criminals (one of these sees him pounding up the side of Busan’s mountain – both he and the suspect collapsing, wheezing for breath, at the top), he has specially tailored coats filled with any object he might need, from tissues to aspirin to a knife glove for hand-to-hand combat. He is calm, unruffled and ready for anything. He’s also a man who struggles with knowing who or what he wants and has placed such pressure on himself that insomnia feels like his body telling him sleeping is irresponsible in a world where there is so much to fix.

Decision to Leave revolves around the fascinating dance between these two characters, a Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler, who recognise on some-level they are kindred spirits. Both are quiet, dedicated observers of people. Both have the ability to zero in on details – its telling that Seo-rae is the only one who can help Hae-jun begin to crack his old cases and that Hae-jun is the only one who delights in every detail of Seo-rae’s careful, formal Korean. Neither are exhibitionists, both quest obsessively because they feel they must for others: Hae-jun for the victims of crimes, Seo-rae to reclaim the Korean land her grandfather had been forced to leave behind when he fled to China.

But yet… these are also people seemingly determined to manipulate and entrap each other. Sae-jae’s growing closeness with Hae-jun is also a way to get closer to the case, to follow Hae-jun’s progress and to nudge (or outright shove) it in certain directions. Her motives and decisions remain unclear. When they go on a tenderly chaste date to a Buddhist temple, is their connection and intimacy genuine for her, or is she ruthlessly playing a lonely man for advantage?

Because Hae-jun defines himself as a detective – after all, he will chase cases to the end long-after his bosses have demanded he file it. Decision to Leave explores how far this will affect Hae-jun: how far will he go to protect someone he suspects might be a killer? If he helps Seo-rae, how much would he grow to hate himself for doing it? Or to put it another way – is there a greater expression of love that a Holmes is capable of, than to help his Irene Adler get away with it?

These dizzying themes interweave with fascinatingly oblique motivations in this endlessly rewarding puzzle-box of a movie. It’s also clear to see the Vertigo parallels, as manipulators fall in love and stalkers try to shape people and events to meet their desires. It’s second act, set in Ipo, as the characters come back together after a time-jump is a brilliantly engaging dance between two people who might be deeply in love and might be doing their very best to manipulate each other. Here acts of love include reading seized phone call transcripts or draining a swimming pool of bloody water.

It’s extraordinarily shot by Park chan-wook – this is the sort of film that makes you want to run out and see everything else he’s ever made straight away. Decision to Leave is more classical and reserved than his other ‘cinema of cruelty’ films. But that isn’t to say it’s not crammed with endless inventive flair. Camera angles plumb every depth of imagination – from vertigo-inducing heights to shots that seem to place the camera inside phones, their graphics superimposed across the screen.

As Hae-jun imagines Seo-rae’s actions or stakes out her home, he is visually inserted into her memories or placed in the scene as a witness as he deduces how she may have killed her husband. As this dedicated, obsessive watcher – who can’t leave his fascination with the case alone – watches her home, Park suddenly places Hae-jun inside Seo-rae’s home, sitting alongside her on a sofa. Scenes replay from multiple angles to show us new perspectives, and the characters blur and switch roles as Seo-rae stakes out Hae-jun in Ipo, noticing how his smart shoes (not suitable for running) are in fact a sign of his collapse in confidence.

Decision to Leave gains hugely from Tang Wei and Park Hae-il’s superb performances. Tang Wei is utterly unreadable, her motives and emotions discernible moment-by-moment only in micro-clues – but by the film’s conclusion you feel you finally have an understanding of her tortured, confused emotions. Park Hae-il drips crumpled loneliness and sadness under a professional demeanour, his emotional vulnerability becoming more and more apparent, his job a fig leaf to give his life definition. The chastely, strangely innocent, intimacy between the two of them has profound emotional impact – this is a classic romance, about two people far closer than sex could make them.

Park’s direction of all this is perfectly paced – for a slight plot and an extended run-time, this feels like a film where not a moment is wasted. Like Vertigo every moment fits together into a complete whole which might only be understandable when you step back and look at. Visually, it’s a treat – inventive but not flashy, unique but not overbearing. And it builds a carefully modulated and deeply moving spiritual romance at its heart. It’s a beautiful slice of film noir, rung through with poetry. It’s a marvellous film.

Cleopatra (1963)

The biggest epic of them all – and one of the most infamous – is a mess but at times entertaining

Director: Joseph L Mankiewicz

Cast: Elizabeth Taylor (Cleopatra), Richard Burton (Mark Antony), Rex Harrison (Julius Caesar), Roddy McDowell (Octavian), Pamela Brown (High Priestess), George Cole (Flavius), Hume Cronyn (Sosigenes), Cesare Danova (Apollodorus), Kenneth Haigh (Brutus), Andrew Keir (Agrippa), Martin Landau (Rufio), Robert Stephens (Germanicus), Francesca Annis (Eiras), Isabelle Cooley (Charmian), Jacqui Chan (Lotos), Andrew Faulds (Canidius)

One of the most legendary epics of all time – for all the wrong reasons. Cleopatra is the mega-budget extravaganza that nearly sunk a studio, years in its shambolic, crisis-hit making that turned its stars into a celebrity brand that changed their lives forever. Painfully long, it’s a rambling, confused film that feels like something that was filmed before anyone had the faintest idea what the story they were trying to tell was. Then, just when you consider giving up on it, it will throw in a striking scene or intelligent performance and you’ll sit up and be entertained. Just never quite enough.

In its four hours it covers eighteen years. Julius Caesar (Rex Harrison) arrives in Egypt after victory over his rival Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus. There he quickly becomes enamoured with Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor), the cunning, intelligent witty sister of bratty Pharoah Ptolemy XIII (Richard O‘Sullivan). Caesar takes Cleopatra’s side in the civil war for the Egyptian throne and takes her as a second wife, having a son (and potential heir) with her. Made dictator for life, he and Cleopatra return to Rome – where is assassinated. A friendless Cleopatra finds herself drawn towards Caesar’s deputy Mark Antony (Richard Burton), the two of them starting a passionate affair that will tear the Roman world apart and lead them into a civil war against Caesar’s politically astute but coldly realpolitik nephew (and official heir) Octavian (Roddy McDowell).

Cleopatra’s shoot – and the hullabaloo of press interest around it – is almost more famous (and perhaps more interesting) than the film itself. After a long gestation, filming started in London under the direction of veteran Rouben Mamoulian, with Taylor on board (for a bank-busting fee) with Peter Finch as Caesar and Stephen Boyd as Antony. Then it all fell apart. Taylor caught meningitis in the cold conditions, nearly died and the film nearly collapsed. The script was rewritten (again), Mamoulian, Finch and Boyd all left. Joseph L Mankiewicz came on board to write and direct, London filming (and all the sets) was junked and production moved to Rome. This all took a year.

In Rome, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton joined the cast as shooting began again practically from scratch. The planning however had been so laborious that Mankiewicz hadn’t been able to finish the script. So, instead, he decided to start shooting what he had and write the rest as he went. Sets were built for unwritten scenes and money continued to pour down the drain. This also meant a huge amount of hanging around for all concerned, spare time Burton and Taylor used to start a tabloid-filling affair which became the talk of the world. After nearly two years of filming, the studio ended up with millions of feet of film, a feud over whether to release two films or one long one and no-one with any real idea why they had made the film in the first place.

And God you can tell watching it. Cleopatra is an over-extended, rather unfocused mess that feels like the compromise product it is. What is this film trying to say? No one seems to know, least of all Mankiewicz. Is this an elegy to the loss of the Roman republic? Hardly when Caesar is presented as sympathetically as he is. Was the film looking to explore Antony and Cleopatra as tragic lovers or deluded would-be emperor builders? God alone knows. Is Cleopatra a temptress or a genius, a chancer or a political genius? No idea. Her infinite variety here is basically to be whatever the scene requires at the time, all wrapped up in Taylor’s effortless charisma.

Mankiewicz’s script – presumably written and then filmed almost immediately in many cases – falls back onto what he was comfortable with. Dialogue scenes are frequently over-written and over-long, so intricately constructed it was impossible to cut them down and still have them make sense. The man who rose to the height of his profession directing witty conversation pieces in rooms, tried to do the same with his three leads in these massive sets. Acres of screen time stretch out as combinations of three leads spout mountains of dialogue at each other, often to very little dramatic impact. To keep the pace up, the film is frequently forced to take huge time-jumps.

Empires rise and fall in the gaps between scenes, armies assemble and are defeated in the blink of an eye. At one point Caesar and Cleopatra find a murdered character in the garden – the impact rather lost on the audience as this character is never mentioned before or after this. Years fly by and characters swiftly report off-screen events of momentous import, from Antony’s marriage and peace with Octavian to Caesar’s victory over Ptolomy. Caesar himself is murdered – Kenneth Haigh leads a series of stalwart British character actors in glorified cameos – in a silent ‘vision’ witnessed by Cleopatra, that cuts to Antony’s briefly shouting (unheard) his funeral oration (this at least means we don’t need to hear cod-Shakespearean dialogue in either scene).

The other thing that couldn’t be cut was the film’s epic scale. Cleopatra’s entrance to Rome plays out nearly in real time, a never-ending procession of flights of fancy parading into the capital capped with Taylor’s cheeky grin at the end of it at Cleopatra’s panache. The battle of Actium looks impressive – with its boat clashes, flaming ships and colliding vessels – so much so that you almost regret we don’t get to see more of Pharsalus and Philippi than their aftermaths. The huge sets are striking, as are the legion of costumes Taylor has to change into virtually from scene to scene.

Of course, what people were – and always are – interested in is how much the fire off-stage between Burton and Taylor made it to the screen. I’ve honestly always felt, not much. Perhaps by this point both actors were too fed up and punch-drunk from the never-ending project. Perhaps they simply didn’t have any interest in the film. Burton falls back on grandstanding – he confessed he felt he only learned how to act on film from watching Taylor. Taylor is undeniably modern in every frame, but she somehow manages to hold a rather loosely defined character together, so much so that you forget she’s fundamentally miscast.

Of the leads Rex Harrison emerges best as an avuncular Caesar whose well-spoken wit hides an icy interior overflowing with ruthlessness and ambition. The film loses something when he departs just before the half-way mark. (It’s a mark, by the way, of the film’s confused structure that Burton only appears an hour into the film – and that for an inconsequential “plot update” chat with Caesar’s wife Calpurnia). There are decent turns from Cronyn as Cleopatra’ advisor, Pamela Brown as a Priestess, Andrew Faulds as a gruff Agrippa and even George Cole as Caesar’s trusted, mute servant. Best in show is probably Roddy McDowell’s ice cold Octavian – like a version of Harrison’s Caesar with all charm removed – who would have certainly been an Oscar nominated if the studio hadn’t screwed up his nomination papers.

Cleopatra still ended up with multiple Oscar nominations – even some wins – but took years to make back the money blown on it. At four hours, it bites off way more than it can chew and vey rarely comes together into a coherent shape. Scenes alternate between too short and way too long and three leads with very different acting styles struggle to make the best of it. You feel watching it actually sorry for Mankiewicz: it’s not really his fault, the scale of this thing would have sunk any director. Cleopatra has flashes of enjoyment, but much of it drags for the viewer as much as it did for those making it.

The Heiress (1949)

Is it love or is it avarice? Wyler’s sumptuous costume drama is a brilliant translation of Henry James to the screen

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Olivia de Havilland (Catherine Sloper), Montgomery Clift (Morris Townsend), Ralph Richardson (Dr Austin Sloper), Miriam Hopkins (Lavinia Penniman), Vanessa Brown (Maria), Betty Linley (Mrs Montgomery), Ray Collins (Jefferson Almond), Mona Freeman (Marian Almond), Selena Royle (Elizabeth Almond), Paul Lees (Arthur Townsend)

Pity poor Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland). She’s seems destined forever to be the spinster, the last person anyone glances at during a party. Her father Dr Sloper (Ralph Richardson) can’t so much as walk into a room without gently telling how infinitely inferior she is to her mother. And when a man finally seems keen to court her, her father tells her that of course handsome Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift) will only be interested in her inheritance. After all, there is nothing a young man could love in a forgettable, dull, second-rate woman like Catherine. He’s cruel, but is he right – is Morris a mercenary?

The Heiress was adapted from a play itself a version of Henry James’ Washington Square. It’s bought magnificently to the screen in a lush, sensational costume drama that comes closer than anyone else at capturing those uniquely Jamesian qualities of ambiguity and contradictory motives among the New American elites. Magnificently directed by William Wyler, it brilliantly turns a theatrical character piece into something that feels intensely cinematic, without once resorting to clumsy ‘opening up the play’ techniques. And it marshals brilliant performances at its heart.

Sumptuously costumed by Edith Head, whose costumes subtly change and develop along with its central character’s emotional state throughout the story, it’s largely set in a magnificently detailed Upper New York household, shot in deep focus perfection by Leo Tover, which soaks up both the reaction of every character and the rich, detailed perfection of decoration which may just be motivating some of the characters. Not that we can be sure about that, since the motives of Morris Townsend and his pursuit of Catherine remain cunningly unreadable: just as you convince yourself he’s genuine, he’ll show a flash of avarice – then he’ll seem so genuinely warm and loving, you’ll be sure he must be telling the truth or be the world’s greatest liar.

Catherine certainly wants it to be true – and believes it with a passion. The project was also a passion piece for de Havilland, and this is an extraordinary, Oscar-winning performance that delves deeply into the psyche of someone who has been (inadvertently perhaps) humiliated and belittled all her life and eventually reacts in ways you could not predict. Catherine is clumsy, naïve and lacking in any finesse. With her light, breathless voice and inability to find the right words, she’s a doormat for anyone. She even offers to carry the fishmonger’s wares into the house for him. At social functions, her empty dance card is studiously checked and her only skill seems to be cross-stitch.

She is an eternal disappointment to her father, who meets her every action and utterance with a weary smile and a throwaway, unthinking comment that cuts her to the quick. Richardson, funnelling his eccentric energy into tight control and casual cruelty, is magnificent here. In some ways he might be one of the biggest monsters in the movies. This is a man who has grown so accustomed to weighing his daughter against his deceased wife (and finding her wanting) that the implications of the impact of this on his daughter never crosses his mind.

Catherine is never allowed to forget that she is a dumpy dullard and a complete inadequate compared to the perfection of her mother. Richardson’s eyes glaze over with undying devotion when remembering this perfection of a woman, and mementoes of her around the house or places she visited (even a Parisian café table later in the film) are treated as Holy Relics. In case we are in any doubts, his words when she tries on a dress for a cousin’s engagement party sum it up. It’s red, her mother’s colour, and looks rather good on her although he sighs “your mother was fair: she dominated the colour”. Like Rebecca this paragon can never be lived up to.

So, it’s a life-changing event when handsome Morris Townsend enters her life. There was criticism at the time that Clift may have been too nice and too handsome to play a (possible) scoundrel. Quite the opposite: Clift’s earnestness, handsomeness and charm are perfect for the role, while his relaxed modernism as an actor translates neatly in this period setting into what could-be arrogant self-entitlement. Nevertheless, his attention and flirtation with Catherine at a party is a blast from the blue for this woman, caught mumbling her words, dropping her bag and fiddling nervously with her dance card (pretending its fuller than of course it is).

Her father, who sees no value in her, assumes it is not his tedious child Morris has his eyes on, but the $30k a year she stands to inherit. And maybe he knows because these two men have tastes in common, Morris even commenting “we like the same things” while starring round a house he all too clearly can imagine himself living in – by implication, they also have dislikes in common. (And who does Sloper dislike more, in a way, than Catherine?) Morris protests his affections so vehemently (and Sloper lays out his case with such matter-of-fact bluntness) that we want to believe him, even while we think someone who makes himself so at home in Sloper’s absence (helping himself to brandy and cigars) can’t be as genuine as he wants us to think.

As does Catherine. Part of the brilliance of de Havilland’s performance is how her performance physically alters and her mentality changes as events buffet her. A woman who starts the film mousey and barely able to look at herself in the mirror, ends it firm-backed and cold-eyed, her voice changing from a light, embarrassed breathlessness into something hard, deep and sharp. De Havilland in fact swallows Richardson’s characteristics, Sloper’s precision and inflexibility becoming her core characteristics. The wide-eyed woman at the ball is a memory by the film’s conclusion, Catherine becoming tough but making her own choices. As she says to her father, she has lived all her life with a man who doesn’t love her. If she spends the rest of it with another, at least that will be her choice.

Wyler assembles this superbly, with careful camera placement helping to draw out some gorgeous performances from the three leads – not to forgetting Miriam Hopkins as a spinster aunt, who seems as infatuated with Morris as Catherine is. The film is shaped, at key moments, around the house’s dominant staircase. Catherine runs up it in glee at the film’s start with her new dress, later sits on it watching eagerly as Morris asks (disastrously) for her hand. Later again, she will trudge up it in defeated misery and will end the film ascending it with unreadable certainty.

The Heiress is a magnificent family drama, faultlessly acted by the cast under pitch-perfect direction, that captures something subtly unreadable. We can believe that motives change, grow and even alter over time – and maybe that someone can love somebody and their money at the same time (perhaps). But we also understand the trauma of constant emotional pain and the hardening a lifetime of disappointment can have. It’s the best James adaption you’ll ever see.

Summer with Monika (1953)

Bergman’s early kitchen-sink drama, as idealism turns sour after a seemingly blissful Summer

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Harriet Andersson (Monika), Lars Ekborg (Harry), John Harrysone (Lelle), Georg Skarstedt (Harry’s father), Dagmar Ebbesen (Harry’s aunt), Åke Fridell (Monika’s father), Naemi Briese (Monika’s mother), Åke Grönberg (Harry’s friend)

Summer with Monika is, in many ways, the story of two shots. The first follows Monika (Harriet Andersson) as she strips down and runs across the rocks to the sea during her summer escape from the dullness of life with Harry (Lars Ekborg). It’s the shot that excited a generation of sweaty-palmed gentlemen watching the bizarre exploitation-cut of the film released in the US. The second made auteurs the world over swoon: returned from that summer and trapped in the cramped apartment, childcare life of her parents, Monika goes for an illicit drink with her lover, accepts a cigarette and then turns to stare straight down the camera at us, the shot held for a long minute as all light fades around her, as if challenging us to object to what she is obviously about to do.

Summer with Monika (largely thanks to the first shot) remains Bergman’s most watched film in America. In Stockholm, the children of two working-class families meet in a café and go on a date. Harry works joyless shifts, bullied by bosses and the other staff, in a glass shop. Monika sleeps in the living space of her tiny apartment, where her parents are frequently drunk and indifferent. The two of them chuck it all in to run away to the countryside in Harry’s father’s boat. At first its idyllic, but they can never quite escape the burdens of modern life. When they return, Monika’s pregnancy, a rushed marriage and a tiny apartment sees any dreams they had of youthful freedom drain away.

Bergman’s film feels like the advance guard of the British Kitchen Sink drama. Our two young heroes are full of dreams for a perfect, bohemian life totally different from their parents that neither of them really have the initiative to deliver on. Harry is, at heart, a timid individual – to timid to even smash a glass when he quits his job, instead pushing it as near as he dares to the edge of a shelf and glancing round in fear when it falls. Monika is full of desire for something but even she seems unsure what this is, other than knowing it’s not this.

Together they head into what they want to think – and desperately tell each other – is a perfect summer of utter freedom going where the water takes them in a boat. And at points it is perfect. They drift, relax in the sun, make love. Monika strips down and runs towards the water. The two have a sharp sexual longing for each other. It’s all wildly different from sitting in Harry’s house and hurriedly buttoning their clothes up when they hear his father arrive home early. They have no responsibilities, no requirements, nothing.

From their first meeting together, there is the feeling that they are trying too hard. Both of them wants to see the other as an escape from their own lives. On an early date they watch a classic Hollywood romance at the cinema, but while Monika stares rapt at the screen, Harry seems less engaged – she dreams of a romantic future, he’s basically happy with one where he has Monika. While she wants to plan no further than the next hour, Harry won’t let his mind move on from his long-term dream of becoming an engineer (and the years of study it will require).

They rush together in an impulsive summer, as if trying to hide the fact from themselves that deep down they are unsuited and incompatible. Monika wants to be a free spirit, Harry might enjoy a holiday but always sees himself as taking a place in the world at large. But for a few moments they can enjoy the freedom. Together they flee from a crowded pier to dance alone on a romantic abandoned one. Monika sunbathes on the small boat while Harry steers it. They vow to be together forever, but this romantic moment feels like what it is: a fantasy.

Bergman won’t let us wallow in this romantic fantasy. The drift along the coastline takes place in a tiny boat, with only two suitcases worth of possessions. A fellow tourist attacks their boat, forcing them to defend it (the aftermath is their last moment of passion – before this they were arguing over Harry’s bad dancing). They have very little money for food: they start running out, leading to arguments, scavenging and eventually Monika stealing a roast from a farmhouse after she is caught rifling through the outhouses. She eats this like a savage, tearing flesh from the joint with her teeth and berating Harry for failing to help her (he was off gathering wild fruit – a clear reminder that he is a dutiful but far from exciting hunter-gatherer).

When they return though, it is not to a freedom Monika imagined but the world of her parents. Oppressive, full of responsibility, lacking in joy, every hour spent responsible for a child. Harry starts his training and is rarely seen outside of a suit. Monika is ill-suited to domesticity and bemoans the fact it’s forced upon her. She’s young and she wants the freedom she thought she had been promised – and having her sleep disturbed by a baby in a one-room apartment ain’t it.

And so, we get that defiant stare down the camera. Harriet Andersson is quite extraordinary in this role. It’s arguably the challenging glare that really fired the sexual pistons of the American distributors who re-cut the film into a 60-minute exploitation film (with added insert boob shots of someone else). It’s the stare of a woman who is determined to get what she wants from life and challenges us to judge her. Andersson makes Monika both passionate and challenging, but also vulnerable. She wants tenderness and love, but not at the cost of being trapped in a world where decisions are forced upon her. She’s young and selfish, but also honest and strangely gentle.

Bergman’s work here explodes the simplicity of romantic narratives. Instead, it fits wonderfully with that Kitchen Sink realism, where hopes are worn down by the realities of life and people cling to moments of freedom hoping they will last forever and translate into eternal realities. As Harry (Lard Egbork is very good as this young man constantly trying his best) and Monika increasingly argue, they become more-and-more identical to her parents. Youth eventually gets crushed by the truth of life and dream-like cruises on small boats become long years of childcare and professional training. Heartfelt, challenging and very sad it’s a key early Bergman work.