Category: Theatre Adaptation

Watch on the Rhine (1943)

Dialogue heavy, drama light, war-time propaganda, that was already dated by the time it was released

Director: Herman Shumlin

Cast: Bette Davis (Sara Muller-Farrelly), Paul Lukas (Kurt Muller), Lucile Watson (Fanny Farrelly), Geraldine Fitzgerald (Countess Marthe de Brancovis), George Coulouris (Count Teck de Brancovis), Beulah Bondi (Anise), Donald Woods (David Farrelly), Donald Buke (Joshua Muller), Henry Daniell (Baron Phili von Ramme), Kurt Katch (Blecher)

In 1940, dedicated anti-fascist campaigner Kurt Muller (Paul Lukas) arrives in the USA with his American wife Sarah (Bette Davis) and their children. They are welcomed by Sarah’s mother Fanny (Lucille Watson), but soon discover that America has little understanding of the dangers of Nazism – and that there is in danger in their refuge. Fanny’s other houseguest is Romanian diplomat Teck de Brancovis (George Coulouris) – whose wife Marthe (Geraldine Fitzgerald) is quietly in love with Sarah’s brother David (Donald Woods) – and he has every intention of selling Muller out to the Nazi embassy if he doesn’t pay him thousands of dollars. Can the Mullers escape?

Watch on the Rhine is adapted from a play by Lilian Hellman. Hellman was otherwise engaged and unable to write the script, so her long-term lover Dashiel Hammett came on board to open up the one-set play into a movie, with Hellman providing some additional speeches. Their best efforts can’t hide the fact this is a painfully worthy, preaching-to-the-choir propaganda piece. It’s packed with on-the-nose (if well-written) speeches and horrifically slow in its pacing and plotting.

First staged in early 1941, the original play did at least serve a clear purpose. It preached about the dangers and evils of fascism to a nation watching Europe tear itself apart. It was a heartfelt cry to understand that Hitler and his cronies were wicked men determined to let all the liberties America held dear burn. Its characters speechified at length about the conditions in Europe, the loss of freedom and the wickedness and danger of a political movement many in America felt was basically someone else’s problem.

This would have carried some real power as a rallying cry if the play had been bought to the screen in 1941. But, by 1943, American soldiers were already fighting Nazi forces in Africa and Italy: it hardly felt necessary to cry for intervention. Even by 1943, it was a period piece, looking back at a moment in time when fashionable types went to the German embassy for fancy dinners with black-shirted diplomats. And certainly, viewing it now, even its 1943 perspective looks slightly naïve and uninformed, in light of the horrors we now know were taking place.

Shorn of its original purpose to educate, the film comes across as a mix of heavy-handed propaganda (“This is why we fight!” it might as well be saying) and civics lesson. It’s because, frankly, there is very little drama at all to take the place of the political lecturing. It’s fair to compare the film to Casablanca – another film that calls for action, released after a point when action had been taken. That could have been a propaganda piece: instead it’s a fast-paced, drama packed mix of romance and conspiracy thriller where Paul Henreid (remarkably similar to Lukas’ character here) struggles to gain the papers to escape from Vichy with a life-and-death urgency this film never musters.

Although Watch on the Rhine eventually works in a blackmail plot, where Muller’s plan to return to Europe and take on the leadership of the anti-fascists is threatened by George Coulouris’s smarmy diplomat, it takes so long to get to this (nearly an hour of screen time) your attention may well already have been lost.

Watch on the Rhine was directed – rather flatly, in one of his only two films – by it’s original Broadway director Herman Shumlin (heavily assisted by cinematographer Hal Mohr). The cast included several actors recreating their roles, including Lukas, Coulouris and Lucille Watson. Obviously, this left it short of heavyweights for the box office so the studio bought in Bette Davis to play Muller’s wife, expanding the role heavily (and insisting, against her protests, that she get top billing). Davis – exhausted after working intensely on Now, Voyager – took the part out of commitment to its message, but struggled with both Shumlin and serious personality clashes with Lucille Watson over their wildly differing politics.

Shumlin was unable to rein Davis in and Watch on the Rhine features one of her more melodramatic performances. Almost every scene features her staring off into the middle distance, voice trembling (not helped by Max Steiner’s music swelling magnificently practically every time she speaks). It’s a performance that never quite rings true, especially when compared to the underplaying from Lukas, who won the Best Actor Oscar for his low-key, restrained performance. He is quiet and genuine – and his pain and desperation when driven into a terrible moral choice is moving – but it’s hard to shake the feeling this fine performance was rewarded more for the words from his lips (especially since he beat Bogart in Casablanca). Watson was also nominated, playing the sort of role beloved by awards ceremonies, an eccentric old snob with a hidden heart of gold.

Watch on the Rhine is a rather dull civics lesson full of worthy speeches and very short on drama. It also has some of the most irritating child actors you will ever see (already infuriatingly precocious, the kids communicate their German background with stilted, precise accents). Even in 1943, its moment had passed and it never manages to create any dramatic point compelling enough to make you want to rewatch it. A film less worthy, and more willing to indulge in espionage thriller, would have been a distinct improvement.

The Lost Daughter (2021)

Motherhood, loss and guilt are at the heart of this over-extended drama that doesn’t feel like it focuses on the right things

Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal

Cast: Olivia Colman (Leda Caruso), Jessie Buckley (Young Leda Caruso), Dakota Johnson (Nina), Ed Harris (Lyle), Dagmara Dominczyk (Callie), Paul Mescal (Will), Peter Sarsgaard (Professor Hardy), Jack Farthing (Joe), Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Toni), Athena Martin (Elena), Robyn Elwell (Bianca), Ellie Blake (Martha)

Leda (Olivia Colman), a professor of Italian Literature, holidays in Greece. That holiday is disturbed by the arrival of a noisy, aggressive family from Queens. A member of that family, unhappy young mother Nina (Dakota Johnson) loses her daughter on a beach. Leda finds her, but it triggers her own unhappy memories of motherhood (Jessie Buckley plays the young Leda). She impulsively steals the child’s beloved doll, as her paranoia and mournful reflections grow.

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut is a confident, assured piece of film-making, but I found it a cold and slightly unsatisfying film. There is a fascinating subject here, that the film fails to really tackle. One of life’s great unspoken expectations is that everyone should find being a parent – especially being a mother – hugely rewarding. This film studies a woman who didn’t, but still wants to reassure us of the love and happiness found in the bond with a child, no matter your mistakes as a parent. In doing so, it marginally ducks an important societal issue and reaches conclusions that feel predictable, for all the ambiguity the film ends with.

Colman’s expressive face and ability to suggest acres of unhappiness in a forced smile or gallons of frustration with a single intake of breath, are used to maximum effect. Leda is a woman comfortable with her own company, forced and uncomfortable in conversation, her eyes flicking away as if looking for an exit. She seems confused about how to respond to the quiet advances of handyman Lyle (a gentle Ed Harris) and increasingly resents the intrusion into her holiday of outsiders.

How much is this slightly misanthropic, isolated view of the world her natural personality, and how much has it grown from her choices in the past? Flashbacks reveal her struggles as a mother – and the strained relationship with her children today – and it’s clear Leda is a bubble of confused emotions, uncertain about what she thinks and feels.

That past, to me, is the real area of interest, rather than the distant, cold woman those choices have created. I’d argue a stronger film – and one that would feel like it was really making a unique point – would have focused on the younger Leda. Expertly played by an Oscar-nominated Jessie Buckley –brittle and growing in claustrophobic depression – she loves her two girls. But, most of the time, finds them overbearing, all-consuming and more than a little irritating. She’ll laugh at their jokes and be terrified when one of them gets lost, while still resenting their domineering impact on her life.

When she wants to work, they demand attention. When her daughter has a small cut on her finger, Leda is repeatedly asked to kiss it better like a broken record. Leda gives her other daughter her own childhood doll – and then throws it out of a window in fit of hurt fury when the daughter covers it in crayon and says she doesn’t like it. The kids get in the way of everything: be it work (she retreats behind headphones to focus), holidays, sex with her husband or even masturbation.

Her feelings go beyond post-natal depression. She is someone who genuinely loves her children, but can’t bear the idea of mothering them. This is the meat of the film, far more than the present-day narrative. Gyllenhaal sensitively tackles a rarely discussed topic: what can we do if we find parenthood was a mistake? Knuckle down or give up and run away? A film exploring this could have been compelling: but it only takes up a quarter of an over-extended film.

Instead, by focusing on the maladjusted present-day Leda, the film presents her motherhood difficulties as the root cause of her problems. Leda sees a potential kindred spirit in young mother Nina – a brash and exhausted Dakota Fanning – who seems equally frustrated by parenting. But Leda is so insular and self-obsessed, is she only seeing what she wants to see? If she thinks Nina is also failing as a mother, will that make her feel better about her own failures?

The Lost Daughter is an unreliable narrator film – and Gyllenhaal expertly suggests much of what we see are Leda’s perceptions rather than necessarily the truth. The menace from Nina’s loud and aggressive extended family is a constant presence: but is it real, or just Lena’s paranoia. Does the family really cover every tree with a missing poster for a child’s lost doll, or does it just that way to Leda? Does Nina share Leda’s own resentments with motherhood, or does Leda just want her to?

It’s a subtle ambiguity that continues until the film’s close. It leaves many questions unanswered and open to the viewers interpretation. Different viewers will take very different messages from it. But for me, the film wasn’t quite interesting enough – and shied away from exploring the questions of guilt and doubt about parenthood. At no point does Leda even voice the possibility that she regrets having kids – for all that she surely does – which feels odd. For me the film takes a long time to not quite say as much as I feel it could have done.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

Blood, guts and gore in this horror-tinged, claret-dipped Burton adaptation of Sondheim’s musical

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd), Helena Bonham Carter (Mrs Lovett), Alan Rickman (Judge Turpin), Timothy Spall (Beadle Bamford), Jayne Wisener (Johanna Barker), Sacha Baron Cohen (Adolfo Pirelli), Laura Michelle Kelly (Lucy Barker/Beggar Woman), Jamie Campbell Bower (Anthony Hope), Ed Sanders (Toby Ragg)

Sondheim’s blood-soaked musical about the infamous serial-killing barber, intent on revenge against the judge who transported him to Australia and stole his late wife, took years to make it to screen. His intensely theatrical, intricate musical masterpieces don’t always translate to film – they lack that crowd-pleasing oomph. What with Todd slashing throats with misanthropic glee, aided by besotted neighbour Mrs Lovett baking the bodies into pies, and no wonder Sweeney was a difficult pitch.

However, it’s practically tailor-made for the High Priest of Gothic Oddity, Tim Burton. A lifelong Hammer horror fan, it’s no surprise Burton had loved the musical since first seeing it in 1980. He’s a perfect match for this stuff, and his film is a bleak, heavily desaturated, oppressively grim and strikingly optimism-free descent into a subterranean hell, with almost every scene accompanied by a free-flowing deluge of Shining-style levels of blood.

Sweeney Todd is a design triumph (Oscar-winning for its production design and nominated for its costumes). It’s London is like an Oliver! set run through a fevered nightmare slasher film. Everything is grandiose, filthy and above all cold, oppressive and unwelcoming. Most of the light comes from the reflection of moonlight on the blades of Todd’s razors, and the basement of his building is a gruesome horror show, with a pumping furnace and mangled body parts in a mincer.

The film shocked critics expecting a more traditional Broadway musical translation with the dark glee it embraces the gore. When throats are slashed – which occurs as regularly as clockwork – blood sprays over the actors, camera and virtually everything else. Sweeney’s chair drops his victims head-first into the cellar: each fall is seen in terrible detail, bodies landing with a sickening crunch, twisted out of shape and heads smashed open on the stone floor. There is little black comedy, the film embracing flat-out horror.

It also focuses on the black hate in Sweeney’s heart, his fixation on revenge at any costs and the lack of any trace of humanity within him. While Mrs Lovett longs to turn this “relationship” into something more intimate and loving – she even sings about it in By the Sea to the stony-faced indifference of Sweeney – to Sweeney she is little more than a convenient means to an end. Bravely, no real attempt is made to make us feel real sympathy for this brutal killer – and the visceral brutality of his killings only adds to this.

The film is dominated by its two leads, simplifying the musical down to something leaner, swifter and meaner. This is a dark revenge tragedy doubling as a character study of its two leads’ souls. These places a lot of pressure on Depp and Carter. Sweeney Todd was very much at the apex of a trend in musical film-making where stars were trained to sing, rather than casting skilled singers who can act. Sweeney Todd is an immensely complex musical, with deeply challenging lead parts. Even using the intimacy and immediacy of the camera to bring the scale down (they don’t need to hit the back row), it still must have been intimidating to sing with very little experience.

Depp and Carter however acquit themselves well. Working with a director they both trust implicitly, they give dark, twisted performances of unspoken longings. Depp, in one of his finest and most restrained performances (which says a lot about the irritating abandon of many of his other roles) that stresses Sweeney’s sociopathic coldness. He is a tortured man, turning his unhappiness and self-loathing into a weapon to slice open the world. Carter channels sociopathic eccentricity with a tenderness, vulnerability and desperation for love.

As singers however, they are competent rather than inspired. Depp goes for an earthy, Bowie-esque, Rex Harrison-paced growl that conveys the emotion but simplifies the songs and robs them of some of their impact. Carter’s more lively rendition carries more character, but in both cases you wonder what would have happened if the film had married its cinematic visuals with assured Broadway performers. The best singers by far are Jamie Campbell Bower (whose role as the would-be lover of Sweeney’s long-lost daughter is heavily cut) and Ed Sanders, who is excellent as the orphan taken under Mrs Lovett’s wing (West End-star Laura Michelle Kelly, perversely, barely sings a note).

The focus on Sweeney and Mrs Lovett leaves little room for the other actors. Rickman brings a subtle perversion to Judge Turpin – even though, bless him, he’s not the best singer – and Spall a creepy eccentricity to the Beadle. But this is the Sweeney show, a decision that robs the film of any trace of the more hopeful elements of the original, to zero in on the dark horrors.

The film pulls few punches, but never makes us care about Sweeney. For all the trims, it’s surprisingly poorly-paced (especially considering its short run-time). Such little importance is given to the supporting characters, time feels wasted when we are with them. The cuts also stress how little actual plot there is around Sweeney and Mrs Lovett (once they decide to embark on a life of crime, there is little that happens to sustain the film through its middle act).

The film is a Gothic slasher triumph, but it’s perhaps neither a great musical nor a truly engaging tragedy. A slice more humanity, in between the slashed throats, might have helped a great deal.

West Side Story (2021)

Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler are star cross’d lovers in Spielberg’s triumphant West Side Story

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Ansel Elgort (Tony), Rachel Zegler (Maria), Ariana DeBose (Antia), David Alvarez (Bernardo), Mike Faist (Riff), Rita Moreno (Valentina), Brian d’Arcy James (Officer Krupke), Corey Stoll (Lt Schrank), Josh Andres Rivera (Chino), Iris Menas (Anybodys)

Was there actually a need to remake West Side Story? It’s the question everyone was asking before the film’s release. Judging by the disaster at the Box Office (also connected to our old friend Covid), it’s a question people are still asking. Well, you remake it by refocusing and partially reinventing it while remaining loyal to the roots of what makes this one of the greatest 20^th century musicals. Spielberg’s triumphant film does exactly this, in many places even exceeding the Oscar winning original. This West Side Story is full of toe-tapping, heart-breaking numbers, gloriously choreographed numbers and scenes of high emotion and social insight.

In 1957 in Manhattan’s West Side, it’s the dying days of the San Juan Hill district, which is being slowly bulldozed to build the Lincoln Centre. Scrambling to retain control of what’s left are two gangs of youths: the Jets, a group of white rough kids led by Riff (Mike Faist) and the Sharks, a migrant Puerto Rican gang led by would-be boxer Bernardo (David Alvarez). The two groups plan a ‘rumble’ to settle matters forever. A fight that ends up carrying even more importance when both communities are outraged by the burgeoning romance between former Jet leader Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Bernardo’s sister Maria (Rachel Zegler). Will love triumph over hate? Well, it’s based on Romeo and Juliet, so I’ll leave it to you to work that out.

The original, Oscar-laden, West Side Story is a ground-breaking and brilliant musical. Based closely on the triumphant original Broadway production, it showcased earth-shatteringly brilliant choreography by Jerome Robbins. The sort of grace, power, passion and beauty in movement that very few productions of anything have got anywhere near matching. Spielberg’s remake can’t match that – and wisely doesn’t try, rejigging and reinventing the choreography with touches of inspiration from Robbins’ work. But, in many ways, it matches and even surpasses the other elements of the original.

The musical’s book is radically re-worked by playwright Tony Kurshner to stress the racial and social clashes between these two very different communities. Helped as well by the racially accurate casting (memories of Natalie Wood passing herself off as Puerto Rican are quickly dispatched), Spielberg’s film transforms West Side Story into a film exposing the kneejerk jingoism and xenophobia of the Jets (who are often deeply unlikeable) and the touchy, insecure defensiveness of the Puerto Rican Sharks.

Everything in the film works to establish the difficulty the Pueto Rican community had in settling in America. From language problems – most of the characters are still mastering English, with Spanish exchanges untranslated – to the obvious bias of police officers like Corey Stoll’s bullying Lt Schrank (officers and others frequently order the Puerto Ricans to “speak English”). Maria and Anita no longer work in a dress shop, but as cleaners in a department store. Racial slurs pepper the dialogue (Spic and Gringo litter the dialogue). The Jets are first seen defacing a mural of a Pueto Rican flag. Loyalty to your community – both of whom see themselves as under siege – is more important than anything. The film bubbles with an awareness of time, place and the dangers and troubles faced by migrant communities far more than the original.

For that choreography, Justin Peck keeps the inspiration of Robbins, but mixes it with his own fast-paced, electric dynamism. The big numbers dominate the screen, from opening confrontation of the Jets and Sharks to the carnivalesque America, the playful Office Krupke, the frentic Gym Dance and the ballet inspired Cool. The choreography is earthier and punchier (in some cases literally so) more than Robbins, with a rough and tumble physicality and strenuous attack that contrasts with the balletic perfection of the original. It’s both a tribute to the original and also very much its own thing – and works perfectly.

Balancing tribute and forging its new identity is also at the heart of Spielberg’s brilliant direction. He’s confident enough to shoot many of the musical numbers with a Hollywood classic style – which allows us to see and admire all the choreography. But he also mixes this with sweeping, immersive camera work, thrilling tracking shots and beautiful images – there is a great one of Tony standing in a puddle surrounded with apartment window reflections, which looks like he’s surrounded with stars. Spielberg brings the demolished buildings very much into the visual design, part of making this West Side Story, earthier and rougher. The film is electrically paced and lensed with an expert eye.

The film’s two leads are both superior to the originals. Ansel Elgort is a fine singer (with a heartfelt rendition of Maria) and dancer (he excels at Cool), even if he at times struggles to bring his slightly bland character to life. He gives Tony a puppy dog quality – that does make hard to believe this version of the character killed a man in a brawl – as well as a wonderful sense of youthful impetuousness. Opposite him Rachel Zegler – plucked from YouTube by an open casting call – is sensationally wide-eyed, youthful radiance as Maria, naïve and in love, a superb singer.

Even better though are the supporting roles. Finest of all is Ariana DeBose, for whom this film feels like the unearthing of a major talent. Her singing and dancing is awe-inspiring, but it’s DeBose’s ability to switch from warm and motherly, to flirtatious and sexy, to grief, rage and confusion and all of it feeling a natural development from one to another is extraordinary. Her major songs are the films main highlights, stunningly performed. David Alvarez is a passionate, head-strong Bernardo, convinced that he is acting for the best (like DeBose his singing and dancing is extraordinary). Mike Faist is brilliantly surly and enraged (and struggling with repressed feelings for Tony) as Riff.

And, of course, there is Rita Moreno, now playing Valentina, a re-invention of the original production’s character of Don. Moreno worked closely as a consultant with Spielberg and Peck, and gives her scenes a world-weary sadness and desire for hope. She sparks beautifully with Elgort and to see her save Anita from gang rape (still a shocking scene, as it was when Moreno played it) and then angrily spit her contempt and rage at these boys is very powerful.

West Side Story needed to justify its existence. It does this in so many ways. Wonderfully performed by the cast, Spielberg pays homage to the original and classic Hollywood musicals but mixes this with electric film-making and a far greater degree of social and racial awareness (without ever hammering the points home) that allows you to see this tragedy from a new perspectives. It reimagines without dramatically reinventing and sits beautifully alongside the original. It’s more than justified its existence: in many ways it’s even better than the original.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

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

Cast: Joel Coen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oliver! (1968)

Mark Lester asks for More. You may not share his sentiments in the Oscar winning Oliver!

Director: Carol Reed

Cast: Ron Moody (Fagin), Mark Lester (Oliver Twist), Jack Wild (The Artful Dodger), Oliver Reed (Bill Sikes), Shani Wallis (Nancy), Harry Secombe (Mr Bumble), Joseph O’Conor (Mr Brownlow), Hugh Griffith (Magistrate), Peggy Mount (Mrs Bumble), Leonard Rossiter (Mr Sowerberry), Hylda Baker (Mrs Sowerberry), Kenneth Cranham (Noah Claypool), Megs Jenkins (Mrs Bedwin)

1968. The Vietnam War gets worse. The My Lai Massacre is a low-point in America’s global reputation. MLK is assassinated. Student protests rip through campuses, culminating in Chicago riots at the Democratic convention. RFK is assassinated. In the UK, Enoch Powell talks about “Rivers of Blood”. A flu pandemic sweeps the world. The USSR ends the “Prague Spring” with tanks. It was a year of horrific global turmoil. Perhaps it’s not a surprise the Oscars chose as Best Picture something as blandly comfortable and utterly disconnected from all this mayhem as Oliver! A personality-free re-tread of a successful stage musical, with a few good tunes bolstering a lobotomised adaptation of Dickens’ novel, Oliver! is so coated with sugar it must have helped the medicine of 1968 go down.

Young Oliver (Mark Lester with his singing voice dubbed) is an angelic orphan, thrown out of the workhouse for asking for “more” (Never before has such an event occurred), eventually escaping to London (Where is Love eh?). There he finds the Big Smoke to be nothing less than a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Invited by pickpocket The Artful Dodger (Jack Wild) to consider himself part of the family, he’s soon learning how to pick a pocket or two from Fagin (Ron Moody). It’s not all fun and games though: violent criminal Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed) is a wildcard, although his devoted girlfriend Nancy (Shani Wallis), the sort of girl the boys will do anything for, remains loyal to Bill for as long as he needs her. But there’s a secret in Oliver’s past – who are his parents?

Carol Reed could once make a claim for being the greatest director in the world. You couldn’t make a case for that based on this cosily chocolate-box, unimaginative trudge through a musical that has little other than a couple of catchy tunes to really recommend it in the first place. The real MVP here is Onna White, whose choreography is very impressive. White takes everyday acts and, with a little bit of jazz and a dollop of musicality, turns them into dance movements. It gives the dance numbers a heightened reality that kind of works and provides nearly everything worth looking at it in the film. Reed certainly leaves her to it, carefully setting the camera up with simple wide and medium shots to capture as much of it as possible.

And you could argue that’s his job. But he brings nothing to the other parts of the production. Of course, Lionel Bart’s musical is a much lighter affair than Dickens’ original (although, in actual fact, this is much more of a musical remake of Lean’s Oliver Twist, making many identical cuts and sharing nearly all the same dialogue), but you’d think the director who gave us Odd Man Out and The Third Man could give some drama and character to London’s underbelly. Not a jot. They have the same muted technicolour cleanliness of everything else, and any hint of ruthlessness, criminality or moral conundrums are well and truly left at the door. What we get is a world where everyone – apart from Bill – is fundamentally nice and decent, and rapacious old men using children as criminals is basically not a lot different from running an after-school club.

It isn’t helped that Oliver!, like Bart’s stage original, has a weak book that offers little light or shade for its characters other than to typecast them into simplified “goodies and baddies”. Reed and the film either can’t or won’t stretch this much further – although the film does rearrange some events of the original production to give a bit more motivational heft to actions and introduce Bill earlier to at least add a bit more tension. The film is as quickly bored with the angelic Oliver as the original is – fair enough since he’s a tediously saintly chap – with Mark Lester alternating between looking winsome and shocked at the company he finds himself amongst.

Nothing can interrupt the overflowing “niceness” of what we are seeing. Ron Moody’s Fagin had been honed from performing it on stage so often (and he is very good). But his Fagin is a cuddly uncle, the sort of grown-up scamp you would invite over for a drink, only keeping an eye on the silverware when you did. This is, let’s not forget, a bloke who colludes in murder (though the film reduces his responsibility), kidnapping, grooms kids for a life of crime and willingly lets them die for him. Not a whiff of this is allowed onto the screen. The Artful Dodger (played with a cheeky but tellingly amoral charm by Jack Wild, who tragically never hit these heights again) is given more light and shade than Fagin.

Like the musical, the film downplays the abusive relationship at its heart. Nancy is little more than a walking embodiment of the cliched “tart with a heart” trope, and the film adaptation chooses to praise her for not just sticking with her abuser, but slavishly devoting herself to him. In fact, beyond being casually kind to a child once in a while, this devotion is pretty much Nancy’s entire personality – and the film approves of it. This isn’t a dark picture of a violent man victimising a young woman, folks, it’s love! See, there’s a ballad about it and everything!

It’s a family drama so her murder takes place off screen (just her death spasm legs are seen), but you’d like to think the film could have taken a few moments to put a bit of light and shade on just why this character feels the way she does and does the things she does. In fact, the film is quite dependent on Oliver Reed, the only actor in it who dares to touch some sort of psychological depth – it’s quite telling that, even though he was a famed drunk, he’s the only member of the cast to have had any success after the film was released.

Instead, this is a great big, colourful, empty pantomime of a musical, devoid of character and (outside of its choreography) inspiration. It’s a great big explosion of tasteful sets, mugging actors, pretty colours, prancing and the odd catchy tune. It’s got no idea what the original novel was about at all, and no interest in even touching some of the themes of poverty and criminality Dickens was aiming at. Reed directs the entire thing with the indifference of a gun-for-hire.

Its syrupy sweetness and hammering tweeness leaves you punch-drunk rather than sugar-rushed. Oliver is such an insipid fella you’ll be delighted when he shuts up and sits in the background for most of the second half. It clumsily unveils a mystery and then drifts towards a conclusion that lacks any real drama. It studiously avoids anything that could remotely stretch the viewer. It’s trying so hard to charm you and hug you, it comes across like a lecherous stranger offering you sweets. Oliver! wasn’t even the best musical of 1968, let alone the best film. But in a year when the world was going to hell in a handcart, perhaps a kid-friendly fable bending over backwards to charm and reassure you was what the world needed. Doesn’t mean I need to stomach it now.

Gaslight (1944)

Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman excel in Cukor’s cinematic staging of Gaslight

Director: George Cukor

Cast: Charles Boyer (Gregory Anton), Ingrid Bergman (Paula Alquist Anton), Joseph Cotton (Brian Cameron), May Whitty (Miss Bessie Thwaites), Angela Lansbury (Nancy Oliver), Barbara Everest (Elizabeth Tompkins), Emil Rameau (Maestro Guardi), Edmund Breon (General Huddleston), Halliwell Hobbes (Mr Mufflin), Heather Thatcher (Lady Mildred Dalroy), Lawrence Grossmith (Lord Freddie Dalroy)

Spoilers: Spoilers here in for Gaslight both film and play

Paula Alquist (Ingrid Bergman) has terrible memories of finding her aunt, a world-famous opera singer, murdered in their home on Thornton Square when Paula was just fourteen. Years later she falls in love with, and marries, the charming Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer) who suggests she returns to London and her old home. To save his wife’s nerves, Gregory has all her aunt’s property moved into the attic. But then Alice starts to lose items, Gregory tells her she moves things and has no memory of it and at night she sees the gaslight dim and hears strange creaks in the attic. Is she slowly going mad as her husband insists? Or is she – and this is where the word comes from – being gaslit into thinking so by a husband who isn’t as nice as he seems?

Adapted from Patrick Hamilton’s play, George Cukor’s bring a sumptuous version of the iconic story of a decent wife manipulated by a bad husband to the screen (MGM allegedly tried to destroy all copies of a British version from 1940 so this could be the ‘only’ adaptation). While the original play is a claustrophobic one-set affair, using minimal characters and taking part in a narrow window of time, the film expands and deepens the stories timeframe and uses a host of locations to build-up Paula’s isolation and mounting insecurity. It’s a subtle and extremely well-handled costume-noir thriller, that holds it cards close to the chest and is powered by excellent performances.

It also makes several genuine improvements to the original play. There, the villainous husband is trying to drive the wife mad so he is no longer constrained by her presence while he searches the house he has purchased for missing jewels. It’s not clear why the villain has saddled himself with a wife (when his life would be much easier if he was a single man). The film improves this immeasurably by making marriage to the wife an essential prerequisite to the villain gaining entry to the house. This one change unknots many problems with the original play and also raises the stakes considerably, by increasing the personal connection to events from the wife.

Giving a traumatic backstory to the re-named Paula (all the names are changed from the play), also gives Ingrid Bergman far richer material in her Oscar-winning role. Bergman’s Paula is already nervous and vulnerable from the start, and her desperate need for love and security draws her inevitably towards a man who, even before we work out he’s a wrong ‘un, offers her a sort of fatherly reassurance. Bergman’s heartfelt performance also contains a streak of independence and determination: she struggles painfully with knowing she isn’t insane, even while being told she might be. The film also gives her a greater sense of agency, and Paula’s final act payback works as well as it does, because Bergman has made her gentleness so under-stated earlier, that her sudden iron and fury are even more striking.

Opposite her is an equally fine performance from Charles Boyer. Boyer inverts his charm and suaveness into a ruthless opportunist, devoid of morals, who takes a sociopathic delight in his own cleverness, even as he semi-regretfully mentally tortures and manipulates his wife. He’s never less than charming – making it all the more unsurprising that Paula places as much faith in him as he does – but the little marks of danger and control are there throughout. Cukor uses a wonderful shot early on of Paula disembarking from a train, at which point a hand enters frame and grasps her arm – it’s revealed as Anton, but a brilliant indicator of his threat and controlling nature. Truth is, Gregory is insane, and Boyer subtly suggests this throughout: there is another lovely shot from Cukor late on where studio lights are reflected in Boyer’s eyes giving him an insanely intense gaze.

It all revolves around finding those diamonds. If there is one area that film is slightly weaker is that it doesn’t actually dedicate much time to that dimming gaslight or those creaking floorboards at night. It feels like a beat that should be hit more regularly (a montage would have helped no end), a more constant presence would have helped make it a more convincing continual dread for Paula.

But its counter-balanced by the expansion of the film to multiple locations where Gregory manipulates Paula to disgrace herself in public. From a lost broach in the Tower of London to an evening soiree where she is made to appear as if she has stolen a watch, it all helps to tip Paula more and more into believing she is losing her mind. Again, Cukor keeps the focus within all this finery very much on our two leads, reproducing for us as much as possible the growing claustrophobic fear that is consuming Paula that was as at the heart of the stage production.

The moments away from this are slightly less strong. Joseph Cotton has a thankless role (with an awkward mid-Atlantic accent) as a police inspector, who smells a rat or two. The ‘investigation’ moments around this are often heavy handed, and labour under the sort of exposition that the scenes between Gregory and Paula skilfully avoid. Basically, Inspector Cameron barely has a personality, meaning he never really develops beyond being just a plot device.

Conversely, a character who takes on a great deal more presence is Angela Lansbury’s star-making turn as a sultry, defiantly sexual maid, parachuted into the house for goodness-only-knows what reason (!) by Gregory, who takes every opportunity to undermine her mistress. It’s a brilliantly pointed little performance from Lansbury, full of sass and smirk (it got her an Oscar nomination in her first movie) that adds even more to the feeling of Paula being a stranger in her home.

Gaslight is all smartly directed with Cukor, brilliant as always with actors, adding more visual flair than he often does with his fog-filled London and noir-tinged Edwardian home. With strong performances and many changes that materially improve the original material, it’s a fine adaptation.

Picnic (1955)

William Holden stirs up a small-town – and Kim Novak – in Picnic

Director: Joshua Logan

Cast: William Holden (Hal Carter), Kim Novak (Madge Owens), Rosalind Russell (Rosemary Sydney), Betty Field (Flo Owens), Susan Strasberg (Millie Owens), Cliff Robertson (Alan Benson), Arthur O’Connell (Howard Bevans), Verna Felton (Helen Potts), Reta Shaw (Irma Kronkite)

In a small Kansas town in the early 1950s, everything is sweet as apple pie. But under the surface, tensions bubble – and it only takes a stranger changing the status quo to make them explode. In William Inge’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning play – bought to the screen by original Broadway director Joshua Logan – that stranger is Hal Carter (William Holden), failed sportsman, actor and college drop-out, drifting into town looking for a new start from old friend Alan (Cliff Robertson). But Hal, an amiable screw-up, quickly puts himself in the middle of a love triangle between Alan and his girlfriend Madge (Kim Novak), the local beauty tired of being judged only by her looks.

All this eventually explodes into a series of furious confrontations where the true colours of various participants are revealed. In the 1950s Picnic looked like a criticism of the cosy conservatism of small-town America. But today, it actually feels more than a little nostalgic for the lost innocence of those times. Sure, some people in the town are less than sympathetic, or their lives have been crushed by the expectations of others. But generally, with its pastel colour palette and its generally fundamentally well meaning characters, it now feels a rather reassuring watch.

Like many films that pushed the envelope at the time, it also looks rather tame today. The film is strong on demonstrating the impact of the sexuality of a topless Holden on the women of the town – nearly all of whom go weak at the knees. But generally, the film’s sexual content now looks remarkably safe and gentle. A sense of powerful longing for something missing from their own lives does comes across strongly – Russell’s Mrs Sidney, worse for wear from drink, ends up feebly trying to pull up Holden’s trousers to look at his legs while dancing. But the sexual outbursts largely restrict themselves to that and a few passionate clinches.

Logan’s film throws in a few big visuals (such as the closing helicopter shot as a bus drives out of town) and clearly enjoys its location shooting, but remains stage-bound. Several scenes translate across exactly to backyard locations, the same sets in all but name that appeared on stage. It also struggles to fill the cinemascope screen, for all that James Wong Howe’s photography has a certain Autumnal beauty to it (you won’t see any vibrant greens, reds or yellows). In addition, many of the actors go for somewhere between naturalism and a mannered Broadway show-boating.

Perhaps the main issue is that film dwarves this slight and intimate story. Moments of intimacy that on stage you feel carry impact – heartfelt declarations and tortured confessions – don’t carry nearly so much on screen. In fact, the story ends up feeling rather slight and even predictable: the drifter has depths, but the town unfairly turns against him, the old-maid schoolteacher is deeply frustrated, the local beauty juggles depression, the good natured son of the local bigwig is a self-entitled bully. None of this really feels revelatory and, on screen, easily drifts by with little impact.

Logan’s stagy style also has a mixed impact on the acting with some going for a cinematic underplaying, and others inspired by a theatrical grandness to embrace the big moments. Leading the way in that camp is Rosalind Russell who gives a strong performance as the frustrated schoolteacher, but frequently allows herself to go a little too far in moments of emotional outburst. It’s particularly noticeable as she’s paired with Arthur O’Connell (reprising his Broadway role, and getting an Oscar nomination) who underplays with a quiet wit and honesty.

One of the film’s principle problems are with the two leads. William Holden gives a fine performance – fun-loving and kind but also cutting a rather sad and tragic figure behind the bonhomie – but is blatantly too old for the role. Hal is probably meant to be in his 20s – Holden was 37 and, with his craggy face, actually looks older. While it does add a level of Hal being increasingly irresponsible for his age, the part really means a charismatic youngster dripping sex appeal (think James Dean – Paul Newman was turned down for the part). Opposite him the inexperienced Kim Novak does, at times, give her line readings a striking genuineness but at others comes across as slightly wooden.

A stagy and slightly old-fashioned watch today, Picnic was nominated for several Oscars, but increasingly looks rather like a celebration rather than a gentle criticism of the small-town values it depicts.

Fences (2016)

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis triumph in an overly theatrical version of August Wilson’s Fences

Director: Denzel Washington

Cast: Denzel Washington (Troy Maxson), Viola Davis (Rose Lee Maxson), Stephen McKinley Henderson (Jim Bono), Jovan Adepo (Cory Maxson), Russell Hornsby (Lyons Maxson), Mykelti Williamson (Gabriel Maxson), Saniyya Sidney (Raynell Maxson)

Pittsburgh in the 1950s. Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington) works as a garbage collector after his dreams of becoming a professional baseball player came up against the colour bar. Troy lives with his second wife Rose (Viola Davis). Troy had a troubled upbringing, turning to crime (and serving time in prison – lost time Rose quietly believes may have had more of an impact on his failed baseball career) and claims to have beaten Death in a wrestling match. Proud of his self-made status and certain, always, that he is right, Troy has difficult relations with his two sons Lyons (Russell Hornsby), a musician he believes is forever sponging money and Cory (Jovan Adepo), a teenager being scouted by an American Football team.

Fences follows a couple of years (with a coda that jumps forward five years) in the lives of these characters, and principally the impact that Troy’s mixture of pride, selfishness and bull-headed self-righteousness has on the family. It’s adapted from August Wilson’s award-winning stage-play, with a script prepared before his death by the playwright himself (earning him a posthumous Oscar nomination). Washington, Davis and most of the cast all starred in a hugely successful Broadway production of the play a few years before, and the film is a careful restaging of this production.

Perhaps a little too careful. If there is a problem with Fences, it is that it falls rather awkwardly between two stools. It’s neither particularly filmic – few of the scenes have been adjusted from the single-set locations of the play, and it’s filmed with an unobtrusive conventionality that makes it look and feel pretty similar to watching a National Theatre Live production – nor is it sufficiently theatrical. I can well imagine the power – and they are undeniably powerful – performances by the cast, principally Washington and Davis, would have blown you away live: but on screen, they can’t quite capture that same impact, in a film that feels slightly constrained by its theatricality.

Most of this comes from Washington’s determination that Wilson’s words would be the star, and all other factors in the production would service that. To that end, the film is a clear success – and you can’t argue Wilson doesn’t deserve a certain reverence, particularly as transfers of his plays to film had been almost non-existent before Fences. Wilson’s plays have rarely crossed the Atlantic, so watching this – a play I was not familiar with – I was enraptured by the working-class poetry of Wilson’s language, not to mention the empathy with which he explores his characters.

At the heart is Troy, a fascinatingly flawed human being. Played with huge charisma, which masks a deep bitterness, cynicism and self-pity, by Denzel Washington, Troy manages to be both admirable and destructive at the same time. You can’t not admire the way he has built his own life from scratch, or the “go-out-and-grab-it” balls that helps him become the first black garbage truck driver in Pittsburgh. He’s witty, warm-hearted and loves his family deeply. He’s also domineering, proud and so convinced his view is right that he sees no problem with cheating on his wife or forcing his children, often against their will, to conform with exactly his ideas of how they should live their lives.

So, he’ll tell his son that because Troy’s dreams of becoming a professional sportsman came to nothing, so will his: so there isn’t even any point trying. He loves his mentally handicapped brother Gabe (Mykelti Williamson), and rages at the Government that failed to support this wounded veteran – but he also takes Gabe’s disability payout and uses it to buy himself a house and charge Gabe rent for living in it. He’ll talk endlessly about putting duty and family first – but that fence of the title, which Rose asks constantly him to build, is a job he’ll put off time and time again in favour of holding court in his backyard. Troy’s built the family – but he’s also the main factor holding it back from moving forward any further. He’s a classic tragic figure.

Equally superb is Viola Davis as Rose, endlessly patient and caring, holding the entire family together and quietly and carefully cleaning up after Troy’s outbursts or bad temper. Davis won the Oscar, and Rose is a dream of a part a woman who closes her eyes to problems, believing she lives a perfect family life, until it is too late. When finally confronted with the selfishness of Troy’s actions, Davis’ emotional devastation – her resentment and fury at having benched her own dreams and desires to service Troy – is hugely moving, perfectly showcasing Davis’ skill to play deep emotions while simultaneously holding those emotions in.

These two actors are both extraordinary – and there are also fabulous performances from Henderson, Adepo, Williamson and Hornsby. What stops it from being an outstanding film though is that its more of a theatrical event pushed into a cinema. With the majority of the scenes taking place in Troy and Rose’s backyard, you can picture the single-set theatre production. The camera moves calmly from close-up to medium shot but does very little else. Very little has also been changed or reworked in the play – compare to Arthur Miller’s reworking of The Crucible or Peter Shaffer’s re-imagining of Amadeus for the screen. It’s a film with a slightly worthy, mission quality to it. But as a showcase for the play – and the performances – it’s very fine.

Les Misérables (2012)

Hugh Jackman runs for years in Tom Hooper’s controversial Les Misérables adaptation

Director: Tom Hooper

Cast: Hugh Jackman (Jean Valjean), Russell Crowe (Inspector Javert), Anne Hathaway (Fantine), Amanda Seyfried (Cosette), Eddie Redmayne (Marius), Helena Bonham Carter (Madame Thenadier), Sacha Baron Cohen (Thenardier), Samantha Barks (Eponine), Aaron Tveit (Enjolras), Daniel Huttlestone (Gavroche)

Of all the behemoth musicals of the 1980s, Les Misérables may just be the best. An entirely sung adaptation of Victor Hugo’s door-stop novel, it’s been thrilling sold-out global audiences ever since 1985. It ran on Broadway for 16 years and never stopped playing in the West End. Plans to turn it into a film have took decades, with its scale always the problem (not least since musicals spent a large chunk of the 1990s as far from sure bets at the Box Office). Finally, it came to the screen, with an Oscar-winning director who supplied the ‘fresh new vision’ a show that had been staged literally thousands of times needed. That vision has its merits, but it’s also divisive.

The story follows Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), a convict imprisoned for nineteen-years for stealing a loaf of bread. He is persecuted by his nemesis Javert (Russell Crowe), a rigid policeman who believes a man can never change. On parole, Valjean is an outcast but his life is changed forever after encountering a Bishop (played by original West End Valjean, Colm Wilkinson) who claims he had gifted the silverware Valjean had in fact tried to steal. The Bishop charges Valjean to live his life for the good of others. Eight years later he has become a respected mayor of a small town. But his past starts to catch up with him as Javert arrives as the new chief of police. Will helping Fantine (Anne Hathaway), the mother of illegitimate child Cosette (growing up to become Amanda Seyfried), lead to his secret being revealed?

Tom Hooper has a difficult challenge taking on Les Misérables. There can be few people around who haven’t heard at least some of the songs – and no musicals fan who probably hasn’t at a minimum watched a concert version, if not the show itself. How do you even begin to make one of the most famous musicals of all time fresh? Hooper chose a new approach that would up the intimacy and drama, fore-fronting emotion over scale. It also allowed him to fuse his unconventional framing with the raw, hand-held camera work of John Adams, his hit HBO miniseries.

So, Les Misérables, unlike many other musicals was to be all-sung live by the actors, rather than separately recorded and lip-synched on set. The camera would fly into their faces and almost interrogate the actors as they performed, capturing every emotion passing across their face. It would be up-close and intimate. What in the theatre works as a series of powerful, theatre-filling, ballads would be repackaged into something very personal. At times it works extremely effectively.

Having the actors sing live, means all the power of the performances they gave in the moment are captured. Emotions are dialled up, with songs often delivered through cracking voices or snot-filled nose sniffs. This has a particularly huge benefit for Anne Hathaway, whose deeply heartfelt, devastating rendition of I Dreamed a Dream is delivered in a single shot close-up that turns the song into a powerfully raw song about trauma (this sequence alone probably ensured Hathaway won every major gong going). It’s the same with Jackman: Valjean’s Soliloquy in particular plays off the raw guilt, shame and self-disgust Jackman lets play across his face while later Who Am I gains even more impact from the fear, hesitation, regret and moral determination Jackman injects into it, cracked voice and all. Perhaps not a surprise the two most confident performers benefit the most.

The downside is that, repeating the same visual technique for every single song, does make the film at times rather visually oppressive and repetitive. Even the large group numbers sees the camera drill into the faces of the individual singers, rather than offer us any wide shots. In fact, the wide shots in the film are so few you can almost count them on one hand. While Hooper’s approach uses the close-up to present the songs in ways theatre never could (good), it does mean he sacrifices the scale and beauty cinema can bring (less good).

You actually begin to think perhaps Hooper doesn’t really like musicals that much. His vision here is to turn Les Misérables into more of an indie film than an adaptation of West End musical. Choreography isn’t, to be fair, a major part of the stage production, but theatrical spectacle is, and that’s almost completely missing. Some of the most powerful, hairs-on-the-back of the neck power of the big numbers has been sacrificed for grinding the emotion out (Jackman at points speaks some of the lines rather than singing them). Musically, Samantha Barks’ marvellous rendition of On My Own is the only song in the film I would listen to out of context. It makes the show different – but more variety and more willingness to embrace the spectacle of the show – mixed with the intimacy of the solo numbers might have added more.

Les Misérables is still however very entertaining: after all it can’t not be when it has some of the best songs in the business. The acting is extremely strong. Jackman is perfectly cast: he not only has the vocal range and strength, but also the acting chops to bring to life a character who goes from red-eyed fugitive to caring and dutiful surrogate father. Hathaway is hugely affecting as Fantine, vulnerable but also with a deep resentment. Redmayne is hugely engaging and charismatic as Marius. Barks is excellent, Seyfried gives a lot of sensitivity to Cosette and Carter and Cohen are fun as the Thenadiers. The only mis-step is Crowe, who has the presence for the role but notably lacks the vocal strength for a notoriously difficult role.

They all provide some of the most intimate renditions of these songs you’ll ever see and the film unarguably offers a take you will have never seen before, even if you had sat through every single one of the thousands of stagings. It works better for solos than group numbers (which, with their kaleidoscope of voices all in different locations are hard to replicate on screen anyway), and it’s a well the film dips into far too often, but when it works, it really does. Les Misérables divides some – and on repeated viewings its repetitive visuals make it feel longer, with the second half in particular flagging – but Hooper does something a West End show can’t do. It might well have been better if it has used more of the things cinema cando (scale, sets, mise-en-scene – it’s hard to picture an actual image from the film that isn’t a close-up) but a film with actors as good as this and songs as affected as these will always work, no matter what.