Category: Romantic comedy

I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)


Roger Livesey and Wendy Hiller prove opposites can attract in Powell and Pressburger’s marvellous I Know Where I’m Going!

Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Cast: Wendy Hiller (Joan Webster), Roger Livesey (Torquil MacNeil), Pamela Brown (Catriona), Finlay Currie (Ruairidh Mhor), George Craney (Mr Webster), Nancy Price (Mrs Crozier), Catherine Lacey (Mrs Robinson), Jean Cadall (Postmistress), John Laurie (John Campbell), Valentine Dyall (Mr Robinson)

Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) is a young middle-class woman with ambitious aims who has worked to secure a marriage to a wealthy, much older, industrialist. En route to the wedding in Scotland, she gets stranded on the Isle of Mull by a storm. There, she finds a world of very different values and principles than her own. She also finds herself thrown together with naval officer Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey) a man trying to return home for leave. Trapped on the island for days, Joan and Torquil find themselves romantically drawn together – however much Joan tries to avoid it.

Powell and Pressburger’s films all have a sense of filmic magic to them. They are the sort of films it’s very easy to fall in love with, and swear by. I Know Where I’m Going falls into that model extremely well – a dreamy romance in a stunning looking Scottish island, full of engaging characters and beautifully filmed. It’s a seemingly simple romance story, but it feels like a deep and engaging fable – it’s a film that shows how throwing a little uncertainty into a life can be a good thing.

Because Joan Webster categorically knows where she is going. The film’s entire build-up centres around her ambition and overwhelming focus. She literally dreams about marrying the engineering firm (yup that’s right, the firm itself not the man). She pushes her father into putting together a detailed itinerary for her entire journey. She seems to have no self-doubt whatsoever. So the magic of the film is that, deep down, it’s a about a woman realising that the place she has spent her whole life going, isn’t in fact where she wants to go. And the audience can see right away that she wants something else – much quicker than her!

This works because Powell and Pressburger get the romantic feeling of the island and its people so spot on. It’s very easy to get this Monarch of the Glen style Scottish idyll stuff feeling wearing and tedious. But somehow, it just sort of clicks. We don’t get the islanders’ charm and love of the simple life rammed down our throats, we just see how they behave and their simple contentment – and of course we have it compared all the time with Joan’s ruthless ambition. This combines really well with Powell and Pressburger’s lyrical style, their semi-magical romantic camera shots making the island seem hugely attractive (even when it is lashed with wind and rain).

By contrast our brief impression of the world outside Scotland seems cold and mechanical. It’s all offices, impersonal train booths, and besuited chaps giving stiff-collared responses. In a neat piece of cross cutting, one businessman even appears as if he has train steam puffing out of his top hat, like some human train. But we have hints that Joan has more romance under her skin than she would like to admit: as the train moves into Scotland (the film makes no real attempt at realism for its train shots) Joan dreams of the landscape they move through like some sort of tartan vision, with hills made of patchwork quilts. It’s one lovely image.

Then we have the arrival on the island – it’s got a charming, breezy openness about it. Out first introduction to Pamela Brown’s radiant Catriona is on a rainy hill with a pair of wolf hounds, before she bursts into a room (low angle cameras make her look even more romantic). Could the contrast with the mechanism of the rest of the world be more precisely made? There is a charming lack of interest in worldly affairs – the people are “not poor, they just haven’t got any money” – and what could be tiresome scenes set in ceilidhs and the like actually carry a lot of charm with them. Compare the vibrancy the islanders greet life with with the distant coldness of the wedding guests staying there – which group looks like the people you would like to spend time with?

The other thing that really works is the romantic relationship between Joan and Torquil doesn’t feel forced, or jump through too many clichéd hoops and feels organic and natural. The actors have fantastic chemistry, and the film playfully places them in a number of situations that drives this unspoken interest. It’s got more than a touch of screwball comedy about it – two people trapped together, one of them with mounting frustration – despite not really, as such, having a plot. 

Wendy Hiller is superb as Joan Webster – she brings a Katherine Hepburnish quality to the role: a determined, modern woman, a control freak in a situation where she has no power at all and hating every minute of it. What really works though is her own lack of self-knowledge. It’s clear to the viewer (and most of the characters) she is developing a deep attraction to Torquil, but Hiller makes it clear that Joan is completely unaware consciously of this. It’s a marvellous performance, totally relatable and hugely endearing, despite Joan’s ruthless certainty, because it’s always subtly puncturing that certainty with doubt.

Roger Livesey makes a perfect countpoint as Torquil. It’s a perfect role for him – a twinkly people-person, old-fashioned but not a stiff-upper lip cold-fish, who has dedicated his life to service, but can still enjoy himself. He also, in a way that many men in films of the time don’t, wears his feelings close to the surface. It’s clear he is in love with Joan from an early point, and every beat of his body language indicates this. At the ceilidh he can barely take his eyes from her – while his body language subtly (but not possessively) indicates his interest. He has an old-fashioned, casual, scruffy charm to him that never gets wearing. He’s also superb.

You’ve got a beautiful romance at the centre, with two characters it’s very difficult not to end up caring a great deal for. Beautifully acted – Pamela Brown is marvellous and Finlay Currie suitably gruff – it’s a film that feels distinctive, that makes charm and playfulness never feel wearing. Not much happens, but it’s beautiful, very sweet and extremely charming. You warm to these characters, and Powell and Pressburger create a world that feels incredibly attractive. There is some fine film-making here – from imaginative dream sequences, to intelligent visual choices that quietly influenced anyone making a film about the romance of the simple life. A little known treat.

Their Finest (2016)


Gemma Arterton and Bill Nighy do their bit for the war effort by making movies in Their Finest

Director: Lone Scherfig

Cast: Gemma Arterton (Catrin Cole), Sam Claflin (Tom Buckley), Bill Nighy (Ambrose Hilliard), Jack Huston (Ellis Cole), Helen McCrory (Sophie Smith), Eddie Marsan (Sammy Smith), Jack Lacy (Carl Lundbeck), Rachael Stirling (Phyl Moore), Richard E Grant (Roger Swain), Paul Ritter (Raymond Parfitt), Henry Goodman (Gabriel Baker), Jeremy Irons (Secretary of War)

During World War Two, Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) is hired by the Ministry of Information to write dialogue for propaganda films – to be specific “the slop” (the women’s dialogue). She pitches the semi-true story of two young women who take a boat to Dunkirk to rescue soldiers, and is hired to work with Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) to write a screenplay. Among the cast of this film is Ambrose Hillaird (Bill Nighy), an ageing matinee idol having trouble accepting his days of playing young heroes are behind him. Together they overcome initial difficulties to create a film that moves the nation.

Their Finest is a gently amiable piece of film-making, totally predictable but still rather entertaining for all that. You won’t exactly be gripped or compelled by it, but you certainly won’t feel cheated out of your time watching it. It doesn’t have much in the way of originality about it – and you can see most of its jokes and events coming a mile off – but it’s still got a certain charm and warmth about it. And it’s crammed full of some very fun “film-within-a-film” scenes, both seeing the film the team create and the work (and backstage politics) that go into making it. There are also some neat gags (and wry comments) about the casual sexism of the day – and the film (without dwelling on the issue) makes a number of heartwarming moments out of its lead character succeeding against the odds on her own merits.

It also has a couple of fine performances, not least from an engaging and bright Gemma Arterton, who brings a great deal of quiet depth and dignity to Catrin. Catrin has a sweet lack of self-confidence about her – a gentle doubt, that she must learn to overcome over the film. She makes an affecting and empathetic lead. It also helps that she has a great screwball comedy chemistry with Sam Claflin. Claflin’s part is far more conventional – the gruff man with the heart of gold – but he nails the part’s humanity and its comic grumpiness.

The film’s main weapon of entertainment is Bill Nighy, in a part almost certainly written for him so well does it match his strengths. Hilliard is just the sort of vain, pompous, arrogant preener that Nighy can play in his sleep – a man who needs to be flattered and praised into doing anything, who assumes when he first reads the script he’s being offered the role of the young hero not the drunk uncle. What Nighy does so well with parts like this, though, is bring them depth and pathos. Hilliard may be an egotist, but he’s gently comforting in tragedy and has a profound sadness and insecurity behind him about where his career and life is going. So, while he brings a lot of the film’s comedy, he’s also a large part of its heart, elements that emerge increasingly as the film progresses.

The sequences that follow the making of the film are very funny. Jack Lacy is wonderfully sweet and genuine as an actual war-hero, an American serving in the RAF, parachuted in by the Ministry of War to send a propaganda message to the USA. Lacy’s Carl is well-meaning and loves films (not least his hero worship of Hilliard) but a hopeless actor, who can’t help smiling at the camera after every line. It’s a neat indication of the film’s well-judged tone that he is never a butt: the crew work hard to improve him, he’s eager to learn, he’s completely lovely – and when a character does complain about the extra work he is causing, Henry Goodman’s Alexander Korda-ish producer simply states “he has done things none of us would be brave enough to do”.

Because there is a harder realism about this film. It doesn’t shy away from the dangers and brutality of war – there are bombings and people die. Some deaths are characters we know, others are on the edges of the story. “I’m a bit emotional today. My landlady was killed last night” one character states. Each of our lead characters encounters a dead body, or knows someone who has been killed. There is a genuine danger of obliteration or invasion just on the edges of the comedy. It’s a neat balance that the film keeps, between pathos and light comedy.

The film-within-a-film, The Nancy Starling, is a brilliant pastiche of 1940s British war films, instantly recognisable and affectionately amusing. But it’s also, when we finally see parts of the film, rather moving. It has a real emotional force to it – the film-makers achieve the difficult balance of giving us a pastiche we can chuckle at it, but also a pastiche that feels like it would genuinely move the people watching it in the film. 

Their Finest’s main problem might be that partly because it’s so quietly unassuming and gentle, it is almost completely bogged down in predictability. Most of the character arcs can be seen coming a pile off – my wife and I were able to practically write the scenes ourselves as they happened. There is very little original here. Even the stories of actors’ pretensions and film-making disasters have a breezy air of familiarity about them – the sort of stuff we’ve seen in films about film-making hundreds of times before. In fact, what’s striking is that a film so predictable and familiar remains entertaining and endearing – which is surely some sort of testament to the acting and direction.

Their Finest is perfect for what it is: an entertaining, weekend-afternoon film that will pop a gentle smile on your face. There is nothing particularly deep or memorable about it beyond that. It has some fine performances, some good jokes and it will make you laugh. But will you remember much about it within a few hours? Probably not. Is it a film that you can imagine revisiting to discover new gems in it? Again probably not. Is it a film that will entertain you on a Sunday afternoon? Absolutely.

Day for Night (1973)


Jean-Pierre Léau and Jacqueline Bisset are the leading actors in FrançoisTruffaut’s film making masterpiece Day for Night

Director: François Truffaut

Cast: Jacqueline Bisset (Julie Baker), Jean-Pierre Aumont (Alexandre), Valentine Cortese (Séverine), Jean-Pierre Léaud (Alphonse), Dani (Lilane), François Truffaut (Ferrand), Alexandra Stewart (Stacey), Jean Champion (Bertrand), Nathalie Baye (Joëlle), David Markham (Dr Nelson), Nike Arrighi (Odile), Bernard Ménaz (Bernard)

François Truffaut is perhaps the greatest example of a critic turned film maker. A noted French film expert, he made a splash when he turned to film directing and became one of the leading figures of the French New Wave. This movement was seen as a rejection of old-school, literary melodramas of French cinema, instead embracing social issues and using the techniques of cinema in new and imaginative ways. Truffaut later stated though he was not a revolutionary, but a man who wanted to make stories that were important to him, using all the tools of cinema available. And as a man who loved cinema – and worshipped the great directors of yesteryear – what story could be more important to him than the making of films themselves?

Day for Night (the term means to place a filter on the camera in order to shoot scenes set at night, during the day) is set during the production of Meet Pamela, a melodrama starring gentlemanly screen icon Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Aumont), increasingly fragile screen diva Séverine (Valentine Cortese), neurotic young star Alphone (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and British film star Julie Baker (Jacqueline Bisset) recovering from a nervous breakdown. The film is directed by Ferrand (Truffaut himself), working in close collaboration with the crew (many of them played by the real life crew of Day for Night) not least passionate cinephile script-editor Joëlle (Nathalie Baye). The film is plagued by compromise, reshoots and actor-induced difficulties, with Ferrand and his crew constantly forced to rewrite and adjust the story to compensate.

Day for Night is partly a gentle, satirical farce on movie-making (it even has a documentary camera crew, following events around), but really it’s a deeply romantic, wonderfully engaging, desperately sweet homage to cinema and movie making itself. In fact, I can’t imagine anyone who loves movies not loving this film. It’s a charming warts-and-all, behind-the-scenes look at how a movie is made, and what motivates the people who make it. The fact that it’s really funny, and has some wonderfully engaging characters in it, is the icing on the cake.

 

Truffaut places himself at the centre of the film in more ways than one. Obviously he’s playing the director – the still-centre of the film, who constantly must address and overcome a string of practical problems, from actors disappearing to malfunctioning props and (in one stand-out moment) a cat who refuses to lick milk from a saucer. But the film also places Truffaut the man at its heart: Ferrand’s love of cinema is Truffaut’s own. Three times we see Ferrand dreaming at night (it’s possible it’s even the same night – each set-up is the same). We see snippets of the dream before its full content is revealed: it’s a memory of the boy Ferrand (based on Truffaut’s own childhood) going to cinemas at night to steal still photos of Hollywood masterpieces (in this case Citizen Kane). Cinema is such a powerful, all-embracing part of Truffaut’s life that even as a child he had to worship at its alter, and commit theft to take a small part of it home with him.

This love of cinema runs through the whole film. Joëlle (a truly wonderful performance from Nathalie Baye: smart, sweet, engaging and sexy) can imagine leaving a man for a film but never vice-versa. The props man, Bernard, loves the tricksy solution search to overcome filming problems – and clearly carries a yearning to be on screen himself. The film is packed with longing stories of the golden age of Hollywood: at one point Ferrand drives around his set, bemoaning the loss of the era of studio-made films. It’s a film that celebrates the artisans of film, perhaps even more than artists. It’s an insight into what all those little jobs on the credits actually are, and the heroes are frequently carpenters, script editors, assistants, soundmen, extras directors… In fact all the problems of the film are caused by the actors themselves, the self-absorbed public face of an industry that is built on the love and dedication of the working people behind them.

The actors in the film do, however, contribute most of its comedic and romantic elements. Neurotic, needy matinee idol Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud in a neat performance of childish self-obsession), fawns possessively over his girlfriend Liliane, who he treats as part lover, part sister, part surrogate mother. Frequently he disappears or melodramatically announces that he is finished with acting. He contrasts nicely with Alexandre (a gentlemanly and endearing Jean-Pierre Aumont), who goes through the film with a professional calmness, laced with charm, who is never late and never causes any trouble, but enjoys gossip – and quietly lives with a far younger male tennis player.

Jacqueline Bisset (again hugely engaging – it’s hard not to fall in love with the people in this film) perfectly captures both the attractive likeability and vulnerability of the person who lives their whole life in the spotlight, in a thinly veiled portrait of Julie Christie. She has a natural ease with the assistants and crew – but it’s her fragile mental state that has the insurance companies worried. It’s easy to see why she might feel like that, as the film set is a hot bed of flirtation and casual one-night stands – at one point even called out as such by an outraged assistant-director’s wife. What’s “nice” about the affairs though is their relative lack of long-term drama – short term tears and tantrums are swiftly forgotten, as everyone pulls together to make the film.

The drama of film creation is the magic here. The film is bookended by elaborate set-ups for a street scene (the film even playfully doesn’t reveal at first that what we are seeing is a film-within-a-film) – one carefully rehearsed, the other reshot with the set covered in snow to help cover up the reasons for an urgent reshoot. A scene between the father and the daughter-in-law is conceived, written, rehearsed and shot in one sequence – all in response to Ferrand and Joëlle’s perceptions of the dynamics between the actors. Ferrand, behind his quietness, is ruthless in using things for the film – one character finds their heartfelt confessions about the emptiness of life pushed under their door the next day as lines integrated into the script. It’s not cruel – and that’s the best thing about this film, it’s never cruel or bitter – it’s just the way of the game, the way we struggle to create art.

And the struggle is what is clear here. Ferrand bemoans in voiceover that every film starts with him wanting to make the best film he can, but always seems to end as a salvage job. Much time is spent setting up a complex ballroom sequence, which circumstances later require to be cut. Séverine (a winningly bright performance of diva self-parody from Valentina Cortese) frequently struggles with lines and blocking, regularly bringing the film to a halt – at one point her lines are stuck on a wall out of camera shot. It’s another example of the exposure of film magic – at one point a window and part of a wall is built on a scaffolding to give the impression of a building – only what will appear on camera is built, everything else is scaffolding. 

Interestingly, the film all this effort and work is being put into looks like a pretty forgettable melodrama. It’s in many ways another piece of comedic self-parody – Truffaut’s Ferrand is filming a thinly veiled version of Truffaut’s own The Soft Skin (I’m indebted to the Criterion Collection blu-ray special features for that titbit) – but it’s also a sign of how art and compromise go hand-in-hand. The final film is hewn from the circumstances of its making: it might not be what was intended at the start, but it’s the best we can do with the marble the artist has been given. Sure Meet Pamelalooks pretty average – but the important thing is the love invested in making it. If this goes into an average film, the same level (perhaps more) goes into a great one.

Day for Night is the perfect film for film aficionados. It’s warm, funny and moving. It’s crammed with wonderful performances. It’s shot with a playful expertise. It has a marvellous score by Georges Delerue – part actual score, part score recordings for Meet Pamela – and Truffaut keeps the whole light confection perfectly intact, never letting it burst or sink. It’s a masterclass in film crafting, which is about the craft behind making a film. It’s like peeking behind the magic curtain. It’s brilliant.

Enchanted (2007)


Amy Adams excels as Disney heroine in the real world Giselle in Enchanted

Director: Kevin Lima

Cast: Amy Adams (Giselle), Patrick Dempsey (Robert Philip), James Marsden (Prince Edward), Susan Sarandon (Queen Narissa), Timothy Spall (Nathaniel), Idina Menzel (Nancy Tremaine), Rachel Covey (Morgan Philip)

With Disney devoting themselves full-time to remaking their back catalogue of classics, replacing animation with live actors, it’s nice to be reminded how imaginative combining animation and live actors can actually be. Enchanted is an original story, packed with charm and feel-good warmth – and for my money it’s streets ahead of the production-line remakes churning out of Disney.

In the animated world of Andalasia, Giselle (Amy Adams) is the classic Disney heroine – singing joyfully, talking with animals, all the usual trappings. She falls (instantly, of course) in love with the dashing Prince Edward (James Marsden), but Edward’s cruel step-mother Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon) is determined to thwart the match so she can retain the crown. On Giselle’s wedding day, Narissa pushes her through a magic well to a place where there are no happy endings: modern day New York. Stuck in the real world, Giselle meets quietly disillusioned family lawyer Robert (Patrick Dempsey) and his 6 year old daughter Morgan – can Giselle adjust to the modern world? Can Edward save her? And will she want to go back?

The star turn is Amy Adams, and she is terrific. This is one of those performances that looks easy, but is in fact extraordinarily difficult. She simultaneously plays a fairytale character in the real world, with a cartoon’s outlook and understanding, but also subtly deepens and enriches this character with real world traits, developing and growing her personality to become someone who feels “real”. She does this without jarring gear changes or sudden swings – and holds both these characterisations together simultaneously. So Giselle’s fundamental personality doesn’t change, while her outlook and understanding changes dramatically. She’s endearing, a wonderful light comedian, and her singing and dancing is terrific. It’s not too much of a jump to say she basically is the movie.

And an enchanting movie it certainly is, one part affectionate recreation of Disney, one part affectionate send-up. Relocating the conventions and style of a Disney movie to the real world allows a lot of fun, as Giselle musters the animals of New York to help her clean (pigeons, rats and flies) or recruits the people of Central Park into an extended song and dance routine while Robert looks on with bemused confusion. It helps that the songs are so well written – Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz’s tunes are basically classic Disney tunes with a satirical bent, which means it’s perfectly possible to enjoy both for what they are and for the dry commentary they offer on Disney.

In fact that’s why the film works so well: it is so blinking affectionate. There is no cruelty about it and none of the tedious “smarter than thou” referencing of, say, Shrek. Instead it teases Disney, while simultaneously understanding the vast majority of us love these films: that if we had the chance, as Nancy does, we might well jack in the real world for a fairytale. We don’t want “gags for the grown-ups” or dumb film references: if a film concentrates on making itself sincere and engaging, it will engage both adults and children at the same time.

The film really successfully bowls along, full of entertaining charms and gags. In fact the appeal of the fish-out-of-water plotline with Giselle is so effective the sub-plot around the villainous Queen Narissa actually becomes less interesting. While the presence of a villain of this type is a pretty central part of the Disney structure, it never quite comes together here – it feels like something inserted due to the rules of the genre rather than an organic part of the story. Now it is essential there is some peril to propel the story forward, but Narissa just isn’t quite interesting enough (and the final battle with a CGI dragon, while a great recreation of similar moments isn’t really gripping). Fundamentally the emotional and dramatic culmination of the film is Giselle realising what she wants – and it’s this compelling human story that powers the film.

But this is a niggle in a charming and very funny film. Amy Adams is of course the star, but Patrick Dempsey very successfully adds warmth to the “stick-in-the-mud” straight man who flourishes as the film progresses (in a nice touch, he slowly takes on the very singing, dancing, cartooney traits he finds so bemusing in Giselle). James Marsden has huge fun as the gently egomaniacal Prince Edward, providing many of the film’s belly laughs with his unreconstructed fairy-tale hero view of the world.

Enchanted works so well because it’s both a subtle commentary on Disney fairytale films and also a marvellous fairytale itself. With a terrific performance from Amy Adams (how did she not get an Oscar nomination for this?) and some cracking songs, the film is wonderfully entertaining, making some gentle fun of its genre, while also celebrating it. It only wants to entertain and enchant you – and it certainly succeeds.

Sullivan's Travels (1941)


Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake go on a journey of discovery – with a lot of jokes

Director: Preston Sturges

Cast: Joel McCrea (John L. Sullivan), Veronica Lake (The Girl), Robert Warwick (Mr Lebrand), William Demarest (Mr Jonas), Franklin Pangborn (Mr Casalsis), Porter Hall (Mr Hadrian), Byron Foulger (Mr Johnny Valdelle), Robert Grieg (Burrows), Eric Blore (Sullivan’s Valet)

Sullivan: I’m going out on the road to find out what it’s like to be poor and needy, and then I’m going to make a picture about it. 
Burrows [his butler]: If you’ll permit me to say so sir, the subject is not an interesting one. The poor know all about poverty and only the morbid rich would find the topic glamourous.

Preston Sturges was one of Hollywood’s first writer-directors, a whip-sharp satirist. In Sullivan’s Travels he turned his guns firmly on Hollywood, satirising the industries self-importance. However, what he did so well was to counterbalance this with a genuinely insightful look at the urban poor and a celebration of the magic of the movies. The fact that he managed to cover this all in one movie – without making the film feel wildly inconsistent in tone – is quite some accomplishment.

John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) is a Hollywood director tired of making shallow crowd-pleasers. He wants to make a serious, social-issue film (called O Brother Where Art Thou?). When studio heads point out he knows nothing about the working man, Sullivan declares he will head to live the life of a drifter until he understands them. After several false starts, it isn’t until he meets a girl (Veronica Lake) that he starts to truly experience the life of the poor.

I’ve mentioned Sullivan’s Travels shifts in tone. In many ways, it’s a film that wants to have its cake and eat it – to be a satire of self-important move-making, and at the same time be an important movie. The extent to which it succeeds is a matter of taste: I can imagine plenty of people being thrown by the sudden shift in tone that kicks in for the final 40 minutes, after the slapstick and screwball comedy of the opening hour. But that’s partly the point. Sullivan’s Travels works because it puts all the objections you could make to a film “teaching” real people about their lives in that first hour – so you feel disarmed heading into the final half hour when the film does just this.

So that first hour first: it’s very funny. The scattergun satire of Hollywood folks is brilliantly done. The fast-paced dialogue of Sullivan and his studio bosses discussing his plans is wonderfully funny – how could you not like an exchange like this:

Sullivan: I want this picture to be a commentary on modern conditions. Stark realism. The problems that confront the average man!
Studio head #1: But with a little sex in it,
Sullivan: A little but I don’t want to stress it.

What’s sparkling about the exchanges is that Sullivan is just as out-of-touch and elitist as the suits, but with a higher degree of self-delusion. His attempts to head off onto the open road and live the life of the drifter are hilariously inept – his first sees him travelling with a “support team” (including a doctor, chef and media man); the second sees him accidentally return back to Hollywood. Sullivan wants to make a film about real people, but Sturges stresses he is as clueless and confused about the subject as any other rich Hollywood snob. The film has a glorious mixture of verbal acrobatics and slapstick pratfalls to demonstrate the comedy of this extraordinarily rich man (who at one point off-handedly runs through the features of his vast home) trying to relate at a distance to the poor.

It takes his meeting with Veronica Lake’s unnamed Girl for him to begin to understand the drifter’s life. Lake’s character remains unnamed, which is another joke on Hollywood – earlier Sullivan discusses women in films with the phrase “There’s always a girl in the picture”, so the plot shoe-horning a Girl in (without even naming her) as a sort of beggar Viola is, in itself, a neat parody of the structural conventions of Hollywood films. Anyway, it’s the introduction of this character that serves as Sullivan’s gateway into seeing what the world is like. Disguised as a boy (which allows plenty of neat gags in itself) the Girl takes Sullivan on a tour of shanty-towns and soup kitchens.

It’s here the tone of the film slowly shifts towards seriousness as we finally get to see the lives of paupers, in a film satirising a Hollywood director who wants to make a film about that subject. It’s wonderfully meta! Sturges shoots these scenes with tenderness and simplicity, without dialogue and scored only by gentle music. There are some small laughs on the way – but we never laugh at the poor and the overall impression is of the quiet dignity of these people just struggling to get by. It couldn’t seem further away from Sullivan’s privileged expectations. It’s quiet and it’s dignified.

Sullivan ends the film (for various reasons) as part of a chain-gang, and finally true suffering and gains the strength of character to acknowledge his own vanity. In one of the film’s most magical sequences, Sullivan watches a film with his fellow convicts and a poor black congregation. Unlike a sequence earlier where he watched a film with the urban middle class (hilariously then every possible breach of cinema etiquette is made, from crunching loud food to babies wailing) this audience are transported by the magic of a Walt Disney cartoon.

This sequence is justly famous, not only for its innocent charm, but also its ahead-of-its-time treatment of the black congregation. The congregation is open-hearted, intelligent and generous. There is a marvellous (and moving) rendition of Go Down Mosesand the black working class is contrasted with the dehumanising conditions of the chain gang. The whole sequence points out the underlying social injustice of America during this era. It’s wonderful – so well done you forget the film (in its jauntier first half) had a crude “white face” gag with its forelock-tugging black chef.

That’s the kind of film this is – a real mixture of genres, of views, of satire on social commentary mixed with real social commentary… Sturges throws almost everything at the wall here, and nearly all of it sticks. The underlying theme, if there is one, is the nature of class and privilege in America. Sullivan is well-off, from a rich background. He finds himself on a chain-gang when he is mistaken for the bums he is attempting to find out more about – but when he is revealed as a rich film director he is immediately released, despite still being guilty of the offence he was arrested for in the first place. In America, money talks and everyone else walks.

Sullivan’s Travels is probably not going to be everyone’s taste. Watching it, I missed the comedy of the first half during the more serious second half, cleverly done as the build of expectations was (how can you criticise the film, when the film is already criticising itself successfully?). Sure parts of it are dated, but it contains so many different types of film-making (screwball wit, Chaplin-esque pratfalls, animation, social realism, melodrama, romantic comedy) it’s almost a film school essay. It also manages to make its changes of tone throughout feel like natural developments.

All this and I’ve hardly mentioned the performances. The cast is full of brilliant character players, all of whom get their moments to shine – Sturges cast from a pool of regular actors, and he was a superb judge of distinctive faces and unique vocal delivery. Veronica Lake is very good – endearing but also sharp and smart as the Girl – but the film is totally anchored by Joel McCrea’s superb, low-key, straight-forward performance which resists all temptations to wink at the camera. 

Sullivan’s Travels feels like a little known masterpiece – but it deserves being known better. It’s original, it’s funny, it’s moving, it’s clever and it’s packed full of great moments. It’s a wonderful example of old-school Hollywood looking harshly at itself – not only at its shallowness and formulaic nature, but also at its self-importance and self-satisfaction – but still acknowledging that the escapist pleasure it can give to people is valuable, that it can be a force for good, for all its faults. It tries to have its cake and eat it – but do you know what? It’s probably one of the very few films that pulls that off.

Clueless (1995)


Alicia Silverstone leads her in crowd troop in neat Jane Austen reimagining Clueless

Director: Amy Heckerling

Cast: Alicia Silverstone (Cher Horowitz), Stacey Dash (Dionne Davenport), Brittany Murphy (Tai Frasier), Paul Rudd (Josh Lucas), Dan Hedaya (Mel Horowitz), Elisa Donovan (Amber Mariens), Justin Walker (Christian Stovitz), Wallace Shawn (Mr Hall), Twink Caplan (Ms Geist), Breckin Mayer (Travis Birkenstock), Jeremy Sisto (Elton Tiscia)

The 90s saw a rash of films that reworked classics into US high-school settings, aimed squarely at the teenage market. One of the most successful of these was Clueless: a decent, just-smart-enough reimagining of the plot of Jane Austen’s Emma.

Austen’s wealthy, match-making heroine here becomes Cher Horotwitz (Alicia Silverstone) – queen bee of the in-crowd in her high school. Like Emma Wodehouse, Cher is smart, beautiful and taken to meddling in the lives of those around her, sure she knows best about how they should behave – and whom they should date. She can be selfish and self-obsessed, but beneath it is fundamentally good-natured. When new girl Tai (Brittany Murphy) arrives at the school, Cher sees the scope for a makeover project – but it’s Cher herself who undergoes the greatest transformation.

The obsessions with status that populate Austen’s world actually translate very well into the high school setting, with its in and out crowds. It also a very neat restructuring of the novel, hitting all the basic plot points of Austen’s story, with some smart translations into the modern world (Christian – the Frank Churchill role – is particularly well updated). The film is sprinkled with sharp lines and snappy dialogue exchanges, and the cast are certainly in on the joke, walking a fine line between parody and playing it straight. This all contributes to the film’s fizzing energy and its charming momentum – you can see why teenagers loved it, as Heckerling has a wry wink at the camera at the concerns of teenagers, but also celebrates their potential for fun and friendship.

Watching the film over 20 years on, it’s remarkable how successfully it used the limitations of Alicia Silverstone to such great effect. It’s a bit bizarre to think Silverstone was considered the next big star of Hollywood, considering how few of her films have made any impact since this. However, here her lack of depth and shading, her unmodulated voice and rather bland style somehow work perfectly with a character who is superficial and who believes she is far cleverer than she actually is.

Clueless is that strange thing – a star-making turn that didn’t make a star, but Silverstone clicks perfectly into this role, making Cher engaging and rather charming despite her self-obsession. She delivers what the film requires in spades, even if Cher’s late character blossoming seems something required for the film’s plot rather than growing truly organically over the course of the film.

This abrupt burst of “learning and growing” partly clunks because Heckerling shies away from Emma’s more negative characteristics – tellingly, Emma’s public shaming of another character is here given to a different character. Can’t have anyone not liking the heroine for a second can we? In fact this determination to make Cher constantly as likeable as possible does rather miss the point of the original novel. It also reduces the “tension” (we all know how stories like this end!) of whether the heroine has driven her love interest away through her mistakes and missteps – and with less for the heroine to learn about herself, and less damage to repair in the relationship with the object of her affections, there’s proportionally less emotional impact to the final happy ending.

Speaking of that romantic plotline, you also can’t talk about the film without also commenting on the fact that it makes a bit of a fudge around the attraction between Cher and Josh, who (the film is at very great pains to point out) are not actuallysiblings, but do share the same father/step-father. It’s actually quite a weird twist, but I suppose just as retrospectively unsettling as Mr. Knightley loving Emma from afar from a ludicrously young age. It’s funny though to watch the film fall over itself to hammer home the non-family relationship between the two characters early on, so we don’t start shrieking “incest” by its conclusion.

All in all, the film – like its heroine – is a sweet, but superficial, candyfloss concoction, without the depth that could have lifted it from pleasing popcorn fare to satisfying story.

Annie Hall (1977)


Diane Keaton and Woody Allen on the quest for love and romance. How much of this is autobiographical eh?

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Woody Allen (Alvy Singer), Diane Keaton (Annie Hall), Tony Roberts (Rob), Carol Kane (Allison Portchnik), Paul Simon (Tony Lacey), Janet Margolin (Robin), Shelley Duvall (Pam), Christopher Walken (Duane Hall), Colleen Dewhurst (Mrs. Hall), Donald Symington (Mr. Hall)

Why is love so damned difficult? And, as it is, why do we keep setting ourselves up for a fall with it? Why are we all such relationship addicts? These are questions that Woody Allen tackles in Annie Hall, the film that elevated him from comedian to Oscar-winning cinematic super scribe (he won three Oscars for the film – Picture, Director and Writer). Does it deserve its reputation? You betcha.

Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) is a neurotic New York comedian (is it any wonder he was seen as synonymous with Allen himself?), twice divorced and incapable of maintaining a relationship. He meets Annie Hall (Diane Keaton, Allen’s ex-girlfriend playing Allen’s character’s eventual ex-girlfriend, using Keaton’s real name as a character name – confused?) over a game of mixed doubles tennis, and their immediate chemistry and shared sense of humour leads to a romantic relationship. Their only problem? Their innate neurotic self-analysis that stands forever in the way of maintaining a relationship.

Annie Hall is a deliriously funny film – I actually think it might be one of the funniest I have ever seen – with an astounding gag-per-minute hit rate. Allen uses multiple techniques to deliver gags: commentary, voiceover, celebrity cameos, an animated interlude, “what they are really saying” subtitles, flashback, direct to camera address – and the blistering parade of delivery styles never seems jarring, but ties together perfectly. Large chunks of the film are inspired high-wire dances where a punch-line is a few beats away, and the film never settles into a style or becomes predictable. So many of the jokes have become so familiar due to their excellence that it’s almost a shock to see them minted freshly here – and the fact they all land so effectively is a tribute to the performers. 

In many ways, Annie Hall is a series of sketches loosely tied together with an overarching plot line. In fact Alvy’s constant commentary on events (a brilliant playing with conventional cinematic storytelling form), add to the feeling this is in some ways an illustrated stand-up routine by a gifted self-deprecating comedian. The material seems so synonymous with Allen’s personae (and the characters of Alvy and Annie so close to what we know about the actors who play them) it’s very easy to see the whole film as auto-biographical. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – particularly as the hit rate of the gags here is so phenomenally high. 

But what makes this film such a classic is that it is more than a collection of excellent jokes. Allen is also telling a story about romance – or rather or need for romantic connection, and how easily we can sabotage or undermine this through our own mistakes, errors and (above all) neuroses. Alvy Singer is almost chronically incapable of embracing happiness and contentment, with every good thing merely an interlude between crises. Annie is the most promising opportunity he has had for long-term contentment – and still his neurotic self analysis gets in the way. As such the film is about the quest for love – and the title Annie Hall(not the character) is a metaphor for this – to Alvy Annie Hall represents the perfect relationship, something he (and indeed she as well) will never accomplish. 

The film perfectly captures the dance of first meeting – the shy, stumbling early conversations of people who are attracted to each other but are both trying too hard (the subtitles here are a brilliantly funny choice – we’ve all thought to ourselves “what am I saying?” in that situation!). There is a wonderfully playful scene where Alvy panics over the cooking of lobsters – clearly playing up for Annie’s delighted engagement in it, as she photographs his distress. These photos appear in the background, framed on their wall, as their relationship breaks up relatively amicably later. At another point, Alvy attempts to recreate the same moment (same location, lobsters again) with a new girlfriend – only to be met with unamused, annoyed confusion. It’s a perfect little vignette that captures the magic of chemistry – and the difficulty of finding it or holding onto it.

Because what is striking is that Allen allows the relationship to break apart surprisingly early. Roger Ebert has written about Annie almost “creeping into” the film – and this is true. She is only briefly seen in the first 25 minutes (the first third of the film almost!) as the focus is on Alvy’s discussion of his background and childhood, and his past romantic failings and sense of disconnection from people. Then very swiftly after its establishment, the relationship is past its prime, with both parties finding it hard to keep the interest going. The second half of the film follows them amicably drifting apart – meaning this is probably the most romantic film about a long break-up ever made.

The film has a beautiful little wistful coda of Alvy and Annie meeting outside a cinema, each with new partners. In long shot we see them engage in an animated and engaged conversation while their new partners look on, nervously smiling. The magic link between them hasn’t faded away, and their importance to each other, and natural chemistry, hasn’t changed – but, the film seems to be saying, their natures work against them. It’s one of several touching moments in the film that demonstrate the heart that underpins the jokes. After their first break up, Annie calls Alvy round to get rid of a spider in the bath. He does so with comic incompetence, then in a still medium shot he comes to Annie in the corner of the frame sitting on the bed. They reconcile and then embrace tenderly – it’s a beautiful, moving, gag-free moment, all the more effective as its reality is contrasted with the humour throughout the rest of the film.

The film is a full of tender and real moments like these in between the jokes: it’s a nearly perfect balance between them. The parts are perfectly written for the actors: Allen is so brilliantly good here as Alvy that the character has essentially become the public persona of Allen (and allegedly his desire to never make a sequel was linked to his unease with the association between Alvy and himself). Diane Keaton (her real surname being Hall and her nickname Annie) also had this part perceived as a loose self portrait (her past relationship with Allen not helping). Truth told, it’s a very simple part and Keaton actually has to do very little in the picture beyond react (the focus is so strongly on Alvy) and deliver the role with charm – but she captures the sense of an era shift, a woman stuck between transitioning from the hedonistic 60s to the ambitious 80s, an ambitious free-spirit. The Oscar for the role was generous, but not undeserved.

For all the film’s emotional understanding and complexity, it’s the jokes though that you will remember, and they are glorious: Alvy’s schoolfriends telling us what they are doing now as adults; Alvy’s description of masturbation; the accident at the cocaine party; Christopher Walken’s monologue on driving; the puncturing of the pretention of a loud-mouth know-it-all in a cinema queue – it’s a blistering array of comic genius and it will have you coming back for more and more. It’s Allen’s most garlanded movie and it’s certainly the best balance he ever made between “the early funny ones” and his “later serious ones”. It’s simply shot, but told with heart, feeling and emotional intelligence and with dynamic, comic wit – it’s one of Allen’s greatest movies.

Pretty Woman (1990)


Hard bitten businessman meets prostitute: of course romance blossoms. Happens all the time right?

Director: Garry Marshall

Cast: Richard Gere (Edward Lewis), Julia Roberts (Vivian Ward), Ralph Bellamy (James Morse), Jason Alexander (Phillip Stuckey), Héctor Elizondo (Barney Thompson), Laura San Giacomo (Kit De Luca)

In a parallel universe there exists a gritty prostitution drama Three Thousand. Al Pacino plays a cool, heartless besuited executive who picks up a prostitute, played by Diane Lane. The prostitute is bitter and cynical and addicted to cocaine. Pacino needs a female face and pays her top whack for a weekend’s work with one condition – no crack for a week. However, addiction and bad company are hard to shake off, and Lane’s prostitute succumbs to addiction once again and is turfed out on the street. Realising her life is in the toilet, she closes the movie by catching a bus to Disneyworld (her childhood dream to visit) – hoping that tomorrow “will be another day”.

But that’s a parallel universe, where writer J.F Lawton’s original screenplay Three Thousand emerged onto screens in line with his vision. In this one, Garry Marshall and Hollywood realised that the same story, with a heft of rejigging and a dollop of charm, could become a modern Cinderella story. So in this universe it became Pretty Woman, a charming romantic comedy where a besuited executive (Richard Gere), who has mislaid his soul but is still a charming hero, picks up a wholesome, sweet prostitute (Julia Roberts) – and they both change each other’s lives for the better.

I don’t think such a film would be a hit today. Can you imagine the online backlash? Can you imagine the bashing a film would get that presented prostitution largely as just another possible career choice for a girl in Hollywood? Flipping heck, we’re currently going through a backlash against Ryan Gosling’s character in La La Land, so goodness only knows what the Twitterati would make of Julia Robert’s Vivian Ward in this.

But despite everything, Pretty Woman gets away with it. Julia Roberts oozes so much charisma and joie de vive that you let slide the fact that she is not 1% convincing as a prostitute – or that despite living on the streets and being practiced at selling herself for sex, she remains wholesome and untouched by the nastiness around her. But then that’s par for the course for the entire film – it’s a bizarre fairytale that’s told with such swooping charm and playfulness, and with such an old-fashioned lightness of touch, that it makes you feel churlish to point out that it’s rooted in something profoundly troubling and unpleasant.

Not surprisingly given the character’s initial appearance as a prostitute, Vivian is a role that half of Hollywood turned down before Roberts said yes. But her star-making combination of girl-next-door charm and the perfect amount of sass makes her totally endearing.  She is brilliant. Equally Richard Gere gives a perfect low-key, Cary Grant style performance as the smirking executive. To be honest, he’s no closer to what a hard-bitten businessman would really be like than Roberts is to a real LA prostitute, but hell it doesn’t matter, you still come out of this movie wanting to give him a hug. As the guy sings at the end while our heroes embrace on the stairs, “This is Hollywood!”.

So despite the fact that it should really hit all your outrage buttons, and make you gag on its sentimentality, it’s funny, sweet and lovable enough that you just disengage your brain and go with it. The film does this because it taps brilliantly into the same class unease as we all feel – who hasn’t popped into a high class hotel or (most brilliantly of all) a high-class shop and felt (or been made to feel) “I don’t belong here…”. Despite its subject matter, it all feels endearingly old fashioned, like something from the 1930s. The old fashioned shooting style, the structure that owes a lot to fairy tales, the jaunty old school musical numbers, the restrained sense of sex – it’s all successfully mixed together to make us feel safe.

Away from the wonderful leads, Jason Alexander and Laura San Giacomo have the thankless tasks of showing us what big business sharks and Hollywood Boulevard prostitutes are probably really like, but handle them well. Hector Elizondo is marvellous as a cuddly hotel manager, part a sort of benevolent uncle to Vivian, part a smoothly charming and caring Henry Higgins (although of course, the idea that prostitutes are unknown at high class hotels is equally nonsense).

The film is old fashioned, demands you not think about it and has two perfectly cast, charismatic leads who rarely played these sort of parts better. It’s not remotely rooted in any sense of reality and don’t even begin to think about any sort of message this could send to anyone. Think about it – as millions and millions of people do – as a handsome prince sweeping a normal girl off her feet. Perfect cinematic comfort food.