Flash Gordon (1980)


Flash Gordon: Sometimes words fail you

Director: Mike Hodges

Cast: Sam J Jones (Flash Gordon), Melody Anderson (Dale Arden), Max von Sydow (Ming the Merciless), Topol (Hans Zarkov), Ornella Muti (Princess Aura), Timothy Dalton (Prince Barin), Brian Blessed (Prince Vultan), Peter Wyngarde (General Klytus), Mariangela Melato (General Kala), Richard O’Brien (Fico), John Osborne (Arborian Priest), Philip Stone (High Priest Zogo), John Hallam (General Luro)

Well. If almost 40 years on, Flash Gordon is a cult favourite and beloved by millions, then there is hope yet for Jupiter Ascending. By any objective standards, Flash Gordon is a terrible film. But it gets a pass from millions because it’s one people have grown up with. I dread the same reaction to The Phantom Menace from those people whose first exposure to Star Wars was through that film.

Ming the Merciless (Max von Sydow) rules the planet Mongo and decides to destroy the Earth for his own amusement. Disgraced ex-NASA scientist Hans Zharkov (Topol) is the only man on Earth who believes a series of natural disasters are the actions of invaders from space. Zharkov flies a rocket into space to find them – accompanied, for strange reasons, by professional football star “Flash” Gordon (Sam J Jones) and travel agent Dale Arden (Melody Anderson). Arriving at Mongo, they encourage its citizens – especially the forest people led by Prince Barin (Timothy Dalton) and the hawkmen led by Prince Vultan (Brian Blessed) – to unite and rise up against Ming.

Yup you read that right. It’s all as barmy as you might expect. Any film that asks to believe Brian Blessed can fly is always going to be odd. Flash Gordon does at least have its tongue firmly in its cheek. The whole thing is as camp as Christmas. In an age where science fiction and comic books are treated like holy texts, it is at least interesting to see a film that treats its source material with such a breezy lack of respect. The entire film is an exercise in high camp, cheaply put together, that refuses to take anything seriously and actively encourages the respected actors in its cast to take the piss.

So what is Flash Gordon? Is it a big old joke? Yes it probably is. No one is taking it seriously. The actors clearly think it’s a pile of campy rubbish. The producers seem determined to throw as much technicolour cartoon colours at everything as possible. The film is so cartoonish it all but has “Pow!” and “Thwack!” appear on screen as punches land. At a time when Star Wars (and it’s hard to believe it, but George Lucas only made Star Wars because he couldn’t get the rights for this) took its space opera roots rather seriously, this seemed to miss the point completely. It’s a would-be Star Wars rip off that has nothing in common with the tone of the thing its ripping off. Usually that would be a good thing: here I’m not sure it is.

So the dialogue is terrible, the plot line makes no real sense, the film barrels around telling jokes against itself as inopportune moments. Characters shrug off events with no problems at all – at one point a character undergoes brainwashing torture: two scenes later he’s fine (“I just didn’t think about it” he gleefully tells someone. It’s never mentioned again.) The special effects, even for the time, are shockingly bad (the backdrops are sub-Doctor Who. The costumes and design are ludicrously overblown, like an explosion in a campy dressing-up box. It’s a terrible display of excess married with a complete lack of understanding about what made the things it’s trying to rip off successful in the first place. But yet, and yet, and yet it’s still in a terrible, terrible, terrible way quite good fun.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about its campy rubbishness, is how much odd sexual stuff creeps in under the radar. There are also lashings of sadomasochism, incest, orgasms, sex dens, threesomes, swinging, voyeurism – acres of cheeky sexual humour. Ming has a ring that can induce orgasms (it’s so effective on Dale Arden that it’s even commented only Ming’s daughter has had such a response). Ming has a harem, full of opiates to encourage “performance”. There are references to pleasure planets and sex toys. Ming’s daughter is whipped while tied to a bed by Ming’s henchmen (while Ming watches eating some popcorn). The arborians have a bizarre ritual which seems laced with wanking references. It never stops. At least they had some fun.

Some of the actors are also clearly enjoying themselves. Of course Brian Blessed throws himself into it: an actor who never knowingly underplays, Blessed rips through a bizarre role that sees him perform in a jockstrap with some unconvincing wings. Timothy Dalton channels Errol Flynn. Max von Sydow chews the scenery and virtually everything else in sight as a campy, moustachio-twirling Ming. Peter Wyngarde has a great voice and uses it to marvellous effect as pervy security chief Klytus, while Mariangela Melato plays his dominatrix assistant. There are bizarre, eclectic casting choices: so we get Look Back in Anger author John Osborne playing a high priest, Blue Peter’s Peter Duncan as an initiate, and Richard O’Brien (of course!) playing – well to be honest himself.

Sam J Jones is of course simply awful as Flash (wooden, dull and confused). Melody Anderson isn’t a lot better as Dale Arden, while Ornella Muti gets some awful dialogue which she does at least deliver with some conviction (sometimes too much: “Not the BORE WORMS!” sticks in the mind as a bizarre moment of over such over conviction that it simply becomes funny). It’s a bizarre mix of acting styles and overblown, fourth-wall leaning. It’s so bad, I suppose, that to many people it’s good. But actually it gets a little overbearing.

Because nothing is taken seriously at all, the film actually becomes a bit wearing after a while. The writer later regretted playing everything for laughs: it removes any stakes from this ridiculous film. It says a lot that Brian Blessed – the most overblown actor in it – is the only one who really emerges with dignity intact. Blessed at least knows it’s utter crap and plays it like he’s taking the piss in every scene. He commits so fully to the scenery chewing that it sort of works. The rest of the cast can only aspire to his levels of camp. Flash Gordon is a terrible film. But age and fondness have been kind to it, and made it remembered as something better than it is. It’s a misfiring gag with some great Queen songs. It goes on forever, it looks awful but it fails utterly as anything but a joke. But hell maybe that’s enough.

Enemy at the Gates (2001)


Jude Law takes aim in wonky Stalingrad drama Enemy at the Gates

Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud

Cast: Jude Law (Vasily Zaytsev), Joseph Fiennes (Commisar Danilov), Rachel Weisz (Tania Chernova), Bob Hoskins (Nikita Khrushchev), Ed Harris (Major Erwin König), Ron Perlman (Koulikov), Eva Mattes (Mother Filipovva), Gabriel Marshall-Thomson (Sasha Filippov), Matthias Habich (General Friedrich Paulus)

The Second World War in film almost always focuses on the heroics of the Western Front, where the rights and wrongs are usually pretty clear (the Western powers are noble, the Nazis savage). So it’s different to set a film on the Eastern front – where the Second World War was arguably really won and lost, and where morality is much more complex. The Nazis are terrible, but Stalin’s Russia was no picnic either.

Stalingrad in 1942: Soviet tactics involve giving every other man a gun, and ordering the second man to follow his partner and take his gun when he is killed. Witnessing the sharpshooting skills of young soldier Vasily Zaytsev (Jude Law), political Commissar Danilov (Joseph Fiennes) decides to turn him into the romantic hero the Soviets need to help inspire them. He’s so successful in doing so that the Germans send their own expert sniper, Major König (Ed Harris), to find and kill Zaytsev. Meanwhile, the friendship between Danilov and Zaytsev becomes complicated when they both fall in love for the same woman, sharpshooter and German translator Tania Chernova (Rachel Weisz).

It’s quite something for a film to be denounced by both sides of the war it’s depicting: this probably means it’s doing something right, as it doesn’t deny the hellish atrocities carried out on both sides (even if many of these are implied). The real reason to be outraged is probably more to do with its general flatness and shoving of the great battle into the standard war-movie clichés. There are some attempts to suggest what we are seeing is a true story, but other than a man called Zaytsev existing, there is very little of truth on show. Instead we get a Hollywood view of Soviet Russia: where the characters we like are regular joes, while the ones we don’t are full-on Commie zealots.

The film starts well, with an extended sequence that follows Zaytsev and several other soldiers boarding boats, crossing the river, arriving in Stalingrad and being marched immediately into the front line. Half the men are killed – the fleeing remainder are swiftly machine gunned by their officers for cowardice. It brings back memories of Saving Private Ryan and, while not as good, gives the impression we are going to see a “horrors of war” film – which the film doesn’t turn into.

Instead we get an increasingly melodramatic plotline around love triangles and sniper duels that never really feels like Russian lives at the time. In fact, the film fails to capture any real sense of Soviet Russia, other than its dirt and ruthlessness. Danilov and Zaytsev celebrate their newfound fame with a sort of giddy laddishness that just doesn’t fit any Russian’s understanding of what being noticed in Soviet Russia would surely mean. When the film does try to sound Soviet it stumbles: there is a painful (unintentionally) funny moment when Zaytsev talks about his dream job to be working in a factory, because factory work seems so noble.

The love triangle also seems ripped from Mills and Boon. Not a lot of it rings true, with Danilov turning into some sort of jealous head-boy. The romance blossoming between Zaytsev and Tania can’t decide whether it’s two souls coming together, or whether it has the air of a “last romance” with death around the corner. So it’s either overblown and overplayed, or not given enough room to build. It doesn’t help that there are a number of strange choices – not least a sex scene where Rachel Weisz seems more uncomfortable and in pain than in the throes of passion.

Maybe it’s that none of the performances of the lead actors feels either particularly Russian or soldierly. Jude Law fails to convince as a man from peasant hardship. He’s also saddled himself with a wooden “peasant” accent that not only makes Zaytsev sound like a mockney chancer, but also sound like a worse actor than he is. Joseph Fiennes is more school prefect than Soviet Commissar. Rachel Weisz is the most natural of the three, but her character makes little real sense: sometimes she’s gung-ho, others she talks about wanting this war to end. None of these actors really brings the right charisma needed – in particular Law looks as overwhelmed by the events around him as Zaytsev claims to feel.

The film belongs to the sniper sequences, and the duel of wits that develops between Zaytsev and König. Ed Harris’ part is as limply written as the rest, but Harris has a movie star charisma the others lack, and suggests a great deal of reserved arrogance and professional coldness. He’s the best thing about the movie. Annaud shoots the slow-burn waiting of sniping with a tension – and the film rather bravely stresses König’s superiority time and time again. As the film zeroes in on these two men trying to outmatch each other, it feels like it’s about something – and also that it’s relieved to leave the war at large behind.

Because for a film set in the Eastern Front, this feels unnerved by there being right and wrong on both sides. It even feels squeamish about sniper shooting. After his initial display of skill, we literally don’t see any sniper work from Zaytsev again – the “cowardly” killing from a distance of regular German soldiers is handed out to other characters. Russians are sorted into good and bad, with the good showing they are “just like us” by quietly denouncing their government. König can’t just be a professional, but the film has to try and nudge him into being a cold-hearted killer. It’s a film about the complex morality of war, that wants to make it as simple as possible.

It’s still well-made, but you wish that more time had been directed towards the script, to give us a story that was slightly better and characters that felt a bit more real. James Horner supplies a decent score (interestingly it also shows how much of film music is re-used, as key refrains in this film are strongly reminiscent of Willowand Troy). But the lead actors are all miscast (Bob Hoskins isn’t much more convincing as a bulldog Khrushchev) and it feels like a film that’s running away from a complex series of issues to try and present something as close as possible to goodies vs. baddies. The War on the Eastern Front was a hugely complex thing: this film hardly scratches the surface.

Molly's Game (2017)


Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba excel in Aaron Sorkin’s dynamically scripted Molly’s Game

Director: Aaron Sorkin

Cast: Jessica Chastain (Molly Bloom), Idris Elba (Charlie Jaffey), Kevin Costner (Larry Bloom), Michael Cera (Player X), Brian d’Arcy James (Brad), Chris O’Dowd (Douglas Downey), JC MacKenzie (Harrison Wellstone), Bill Camp (Harlan Eustace), Graham Greene (Judge Foxman), Jeremy Strong (Dean Keith), Angela Gots (B)

Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) is all set to join America’s Winter Olympics team, under the guidance of her ultra-demanding psychiatrist father Larry (Kevin Costner), when a freak accident ends her career. So she heads to LA and becomes embroiled in the world of high-stakes poker, eventually setting up and running her own high stakes games in LA and New York, earning millions. But, over a decade later (in a parallel plotline) she has had a millions seized and is battling against imprisonment for her connections to the mob, with only lawyer Charlie Jaffrey (Idris Elba) on her side.

Sorkin’s zippy new drama has plenty of sparkling dialogue – as you could expect! Sure this film probably also proves he’s not really a director (it’s over-long, a little flabby, and structurally not very clean) but the guy can certainly put a speech together. My main issue with Molly’s Game is I’m just not quite sure what its point is. Maybe it only exists to entertain, but it feels like it wants to put together a touching story about family, faith and the value of your word. I’m not sure it really manages to achieve any of this. 

The parallel plotlines don’t always do the film a lot of favours. The present-day plotline of Molly and Jaffey working to clear her from the various charges she has been accused of, continually hints at some serious gangsterism set-ups later on: largely these never really transpire. Actually, the film heads into pretty standard “my-Daddy-didn’t-love-me” territory. It shy’s away from being something different and interesting about excess and punishment into psychiatry solving our problems.

Sorkin doesn’t always get the structure right, as if he hasn’t got the patience to actually make sure the fundamental plot information was clear enough, so eager was he to get on with the verbal pyrotechnics. Time is spent carefully exploring several poker hands – but the exact nature of the illegality of what Molly does running her poker games gets glossed over in seconds. 

But then this is a film that isn’t really that interested in plot dynamics, or even in over-arching themes. What it’s interested in is sizzling dialogue, and letting actors deliver it. The camera sits back and watches. So it’s not a surprise the most memorable scenes feature Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba (both superb) in a room, talking (or arguing) with each other. It’s the moments like these where the film really works – and Sorkin the director basically stays out of the way, using a two-camera set-up to record the scenes, like a filming of a Broadway play. 

Those two actors dominate the film. Chastain is excellent as Molly – ambitious, driven, playful but also vulnerable and ever-so-slightly bitter, who gets where she is through her own intelligence and hard work. Chastain also embraces playing a character with such a strong moral code – she’s terrifically warm and human in the part. Elba is equally fine, a wry professional with his own strong moral code (yup, The West Wing writer still loves those liberals of great conscience), an articulate (of course!), passionate advocate who is far warmer than he first appears.

The rest of the film never quite lives up to this, maybe because the poker games are never really that interesting, or because the life Molly leads among the rich and famous seems ill-defined (she has possibly the least impactful drugs addiction seen on screen). For someone who remains loyal to the end to her clients, we are never really clear why other than a suggestion of her basic sense of honour. Her projects are all set-up with ease, and the film builds towards a solution buried in psychiatry speak that similarly feels a little too easy.

Because while it is great that Molly is not defined by a romantic relationship – she is defined by men in virtually every other way. Her entire career is based on pleasing rich, middle-aged men (from whom she frequently has to bat away expressions of devotion or sexual interest). Three times she falls victim to senior male partners in business relationships. Above all, she is defined by her relationship with her overbearing father (well-played by a low-key Kevin Costner). The scene where this comes to a head, a father-daughter exchange late at night on a snowy New York bench, is so well-written and played you almost overlook its pattness.

Sorkin’s script is the most important thing here – and the film is built around it. Like Scorsese’s Casino(a film he must have seen a couple of times!) most of its opening act is structured heavily around Chastain’s expertly delivered voiceover. The actors get to enjoy delivering his engaging rat-a-tat dialogue, the expert playing and sharp dialogue ends up carrying a lot of uplifting moments in the film. It’s a film that embraces Sorkin’s scripting, and doesn’t worry about being too filmic about it: the zippiest moments of editing are so because the dialogue or voice-over demands it.

Some of the roles aren’t quite so well drawn: Michael Cera is just plain miscast in a role that needed a young Rob Lowe as an absurdly glamourous Hollywood poker addict (I can’t imagine people crossing a street let alone a continent to play cards with Cera). The rest of the women in the script get short shrift – even Molly’s mother is little more than a walk-on part. 

Molly’s Game is a lot of fun, even if it’s probably about 15 minutes too long. It’s got some great dialogue and, if Sorkin turns out not to be the best interpreter of his own work, he’s certainly no dud as a director. Overall, the themes and plot don’t quite come together as well as they should. But it’s very well acted – Elba and above all Chastain are absolutely terrific – and it has more than enough sparkle to it for an enjoyable Friday night.

The Woman in Black (2012)


Daniel Radcliffe sneaks round a haunted house in the creepy but not haunting The Woman in Black

Director: James Watkins

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe (Arthur Kipps), Ciarán Hinds (Sam Daily), Janet McTeer (Elizabeth Daily), Liz White (Jennet Humfyre), Roger Allam (Mr Bentley), Tim McMullan (Jerome), Jessica Raine (Joseph’s nanny), Shaun Dooley (Fisher), Mary Stockley (Mrs Fisher), David Burke (PC Collins)

Susan Hill’s 1983 novel is a favourite modern ghost story – not surprising then, after a stage adaptation has been packing them in in the West End since 1987, that it hit cinema screens. Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is a widowed solicitor whose wife died giving birth to their son (now four years old). He is sent to an abandoned house in the countryside to review documents before the property is sold. The villagers nearby are hostile and wish him to leave. At the house he hears strange noises and sees a woman in black starring at him. Gradually the horrific nature of the house, and the curse on it, becomes clear.

The Woman in Blackis an effective and atmospheric scare-a-thon. It feels very creepy, it looks pretty good, it makes very good use of the sort of inherent terrifying nastiness you find in porcelain dolls, music boxes, creaking chairs, chintzy wall-paper and the wind whistling through the trees. It carries a lovely air of foreboding, and the shots (where we get them) of the woman in black herself carry a great feeling of menace and maliciousness. 

What is just as good though is its slim running time, because, effective as its jumps are, they are all structured in the same way. We get the haunted house late at night. We get Daniel Radcliffe walking round it slowly, breathing heavily, the camera carefully following him. We get slow camera movements around rooms until they begin to rest on an object or something appears in the corner of a frame. And then we get a crash of music and something flashes in front of the camera briefly. It’s a standard “boo” haunted house technique. Sure it’s very well pulled off indeed, and works great when it’s happening, but it’s a basic trick, using a sudden noise and distracting movement. 

Its good craftsmanship to make the same surprise (basically) constantly startling – but it’s like being on a rollercoaster. You can see each dip coming time and time again. You know exactly what’s going to happen, that you going to be plummeted down. And then when it happens you still have the adrenaline, driving your fear. But will you be scared after the rollercoaster has finished? Nope. 

That’s where the film’s sort of horror fails. There is nothing really lingering about this. Even when watching it late at night (as I did) it didn’t leave me unsettled five minutes after it finished. Effective horror films – The Shining – leave us with images and ideas that haunt us for years to come. This one barely lasts seconds. Compare it too, say, Blink, the classic Doctor Who episode. This comes up distant second-best. That works because it has a simple but brilliant idea (statues move!) and it has a brilliantly simple-but-very-hard-to-do way to avoid getting caught (don’t blink!). This just has things jump out at you. All the time.

This film is twice as long but has half the scares and dread of that. But all the film-makers can really think to do with this idea of a child-killing ghost is turn it into a “boo” monster. Charles Dickens’ The Signalman uses a premonition ghost like this to ominous effect – the ghost appears, that’s it. That’s all the haunting you need. Do you need the ghost moving around a house jumping out at Radcliffe? Nope. You start to feel the film-makers couldn’t think how to really extend this idea to fill a film (even one as short as 90 minutes), so needed to pad it out with no less than two extended sequences of Radcliffe creeping round a haunted house, sweating.

In the lead Daniel Radcliffe does his best but, to my eyes, seems hopelessly miscast. For starters he is manifestly far too young to be playing the father of a four-year-old child. Secondly, Arthur Kipps’ emotional trauma and depression seem to be just out of Radcliffe’s range – I’m not sure that Radcliffe is quite the actor I think of for world-weary misery. Now he does a decent job, but he neither looks nor feels quite right for the part. 

he Woman in Black is a B-movie done rather well, but a B-movie and nothing more. It exists to spook you and to make you jump. But, if it aspires to anything else, it never achieves it. As soon as it is finished you’ll never feel a need to see it again – and nothing from it will stick with you even an hour later. It’s a good atmosphere piece, but that’s really all it is. It’s as far from giving you a sleepless night as it could get.

Get Out (2017)


Daniel Kaluuya finds himself well out of his depth in Get Out

Director: Jordan Peele

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya (Chris Washington), Allison Williams (Rose Armitage), Catherine Keener (Missy Armitage), Bradley Whitford (Dean Armitage), Caleb Landry Jones (Jeremy Armitage), Stephen Root (Jim Hudson), Lakeith Stanfield (Logan King), Lil Rel Howery (Rod Williams), Marcus Henderson (Walter), Betty Gabriel (Georgina)

Really great genre film-making transcends its genre, while demonstrating all its strengths. Get Out is nominally a horror film, but strangely it didn’t feel quite like that while I was watching it. It’s more of a horror-inflected social drama with lashings of satire and commentary on race in America. It’s a smart, deeply unsettling film, which really makes you think about how racism has subtly developed in America over the past 100 years. It also manages to feel very much like a film caught at the turning point between Obama and Trump.

Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) is a young, black photographer dating wealthy white Rose Armitage (Allison Williams). He reluctantly agrees to spend the weekend with her family on their countryside estate. Rose’s parents, neurosurgeon Dean (Bradley Whitford) and hypnotherapist Missy (Catherine Keener) are almost overly welcoming and in expressing their liberal credentials. Chris is doubly unsettled that the Armitages’ house has two black workers, both of whom seem alarmingly compliant. The weekend coincides with an annual get-together the Armitage family hosts, where the guests (all rich and white) make comments to Chris admiring his physique, build, sporting ability and genetic advantages. Chris can sense something is wrong – but can’t even begin to guess the mystery at the heart of the Armitage house.

Get Out is, more than anything else, a film about racial politics in America. It trades in the unsettled discomfiture some liberal white people feel when they actually have to interact with a black male from a different background, and then inverts this into a horror. But it rings true: the father so keen to be seen as liberal he uses the phrase “my man” repeatedly, praises Obama, shows off his “multi-cultural art”, delightedly repeats stories about Jesse Owens; the guests at the party who pinch Chris’ muscles, and praise his physique. It feels like a situation where Chris is invited but not welcome. 

In turn, it also inverts the discomfort some black people feel in white middle-class society. Chris finds his hosts patronising and condescending in their desire to be seen as open-minded. He’s uncomfortable at the black staff. Every second in the house reminds him that he doesn’t belong there. But the genius of Peele is that this could be nothing to do with anything except seeing a black man being constantly made aware of his difference in an unfamiliar milieu. 

Chris though, being basically a decent guy, does what any polite person in a minority tends to do: he works overtime to put his hosts at ease. He keeps quiet, he smiles, he laughs at jokes,  he tries to gently drift away. As almost the sole black person, he’s lost and out-of-his-depth and comfort zone (he’s reluctant about even going). All the other black people he meets are strange – Peel brilliantly shows the mixed messages from the servants in particular. In one brilliant sequence Georgina, the maid, says everything is fine while smiling and simultaneously crying. A black party guest dresses and behaves like the rest of the white people around him: has he just completely assimilated or is there something sinister going on here? Chris might guess more – but until it’s too late he decides to batten down the hatches and ride out an awkward weekend.

The house has plenty of mystery – there is a throw-away reference to a locked off-limits basement. Early in the film the couple hit a deer with their car: the police demand to see Chris’ ID even though he wasn’t driving, to the outrage of Allison. It’s a brilliantly eerie opening that hints at danger to come, both in the corpse of the deer and the suspicion of the police. It’s a brilliant touch to explore the barely acknowledged underlying racism of some middle-class Americans – this liberal elite would be horrified to hear the suggestion that they are anything but open-minded, but in fact have deeply paternalistic, two-tier beliefs that have subtly developed since the end of segregation.

The film is played superbly by the whole cast. Bradley Whitford brilliantly inverts his Josh Lyman persona. Catherine Keener is a sort of warm Earth Mother figure, with darkness and control under the surface. Both characters seem suspicious and yet are both so open and direct in what they say, you think it’s almost too obvious to assume they are villains. Caleb Landry Jones as their son is both full of alpha-male welcome and strange, violent and scornful looks and yearnings. Allison Williams as Chris’ girlfriend seems a strange presence in this household, but her honest sympathy for Chris, and her growing realisation with him that something is wrong, is the one thread Chris has to hang onto.

The star-turn of the movie is of course though Daniel Kaluuya as Chris. A young British actor, he’s superb here in a reactive role, trying to persuade himself everything is fine. His unease and insecurity are brilliantly done, as are the surface humour and reserved politeness he uses to disguise this. In a paranoid film, he is going out of his way to not appear paranoid. His relief in seeing any other black people – and then confused discomfort at their behaviour – is endlessly brilliant. As the plot progresses, Kaluuya takes Chris to some dark and emotional places, conveying both despair, fury and pain brilliantly. 

Peele’s film is not perfect. Introduce a character as a hypnotist and you are probably tipping the hat a little too soon – though to be fair, Peele even lampshades this by having Chris’ friend Rod (a hilariously endearing Lil Rel Howery) immediately point this out. The explosion of violence when it comes at the end is gratifying, but a little too much almost for a film about lack of power. The DVD contains an alternative ending that is, in fact, far better and more appropriate, which continues this theme (and is what I expected the ending to be as the film entered its final act) but was replaced because Peele felt (he says on the commentary) it needed a more upbeat ending.

Get Out though is both an excellent paranoia thriller with lashings of horror, and also a brilliant satire on race in America. Trading on the comedy of embarrassment, it has genuine things to say about how the racial divide hasn’t really gone away at all. Both funny and also deeply terrifying, its final reveal of what is going on is brilliant and also rings very true – as well as casting new light on several scenes we have already seen. Peele is a first-time director – but based on this he certainly won’t be one and done.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)


Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi defy gravity and danger in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Director: Ang Lee

Cast: Chow Yun-Fat (Li Mu Bai), Michelle Yeoh (Yu Shu Lien), Zhang Ziyi (Yu Jiaolong), Chang Chen (Luo), Cheng Pei-pei (Jade Fox), Suhung Lung (Sir Te), Li Fazeng (Governor Yu), Gao Xi’an (Bo), Wang Deming (Prefect Cai Qiu), Li Li (May)

Ang Lee is the sort of director who can turn his hand to anything – is there a director with a more eclectic CV? From costume dramas to comic book films, coming-of-age 1970s stories to gay cowboys, he seems able to do everything. But the film that cemented him as a blockbuster director was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, an awe-inspiring, visually stunning, beautifully made martial arts film, told with a poetic grandiosity that opened the West’s eyes to a whole genre of film-making.

Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat) is looking to give up the warrior lifestyle, and surrenders his legendary sword “Green Destiny”. Mu Bai asks Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh), a professional bodyguard, to guard the sword on its way to its new owner. Mu Bai and Shu Lien have long held feelings for each other, but her late fiancée being Mu Bai’s best friend led them to never act on (or truly speak of) their love. The sword is stolen by a mysterious warrior, soon revealed to be the daughter of the local governor, Yu Jiaolong (Zhang Ziyi). Jiaolong has been trained by Jade Fox (Cheng Pei-pei), who murdered Mu Bai’s former master. Gradually the sword becomes the centre of a complex clash between these characters, of conflicting emotions and desires.

Despite its gravity-defying visuals, what Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is really about – and perhaps why it works as well as it does – is contrasting the principles and standards of two different generations. Li Mui Bai and Yu Shu Lien have both lived lives governed by restraint and self-denial, not least in denying their own love. Jiaolung and Luo, on the other hand, are far more willing to act on their emotions – even if these lead to destructive consequences. It’s the human stories like this that ground the drama and make it something with heart that you can invest in.

Jiaolong isn’t willing to tame her wild spirit, and Lee’s film explores within it the nature of mentor-mentee relationships, and the level of confinement that comes from training: Jade Fox wants to control Jiaolong, and both resent each other for the restrictions they have placed on each other. Mu Bai wants to train Jiaolong – but she doesn’t want to submit herself to a master. Mu Bai has spent his whole life searching for Jade Fox to avenge his master. The shadows that masters place over their apprentices hang over the whole movie.

It’s also a refreshing movie that places women so firmly at the centre. Its central figure is Jiaolong, a young woman with an instinctive mastery of the art of Wudang – and she has the fiery defiance and impulsiveness you would expect of a traditional male figure. Jiaolong is a loving but damaged figure, confused and poisoned by Jade Fox’s resentment. She can love with great feeling and also feel a prickly resentment towards the same person – a feeling she expresses time and again. Zhang Ziyi is terrific in the role, an electric screen presence, it’s impossible to take your eyes off her.

She is contrasted throughout the film with Shu Lien, expertly played by Michelle Yeoh. Shu Lien has lived years of control over her feelings, but carries great reserves of emotion. Yeoh’s eyes are crowded with emotion, and she conveys a great sharpness. Shu Lien is a shrewd, kind but reserved character – someone who realises too late the price she has paid. For all the combat in the film, you feel that the real clash is between these two women and how they have chosen to live their lives.

In the lead male roles, Mu Bai is played with a serene calm by Chow Yun-Fat. Yun-Fat is so reserved that he’s not always as interesting as he could be – despite having a few beautifully played moments. Chang Chen as Lo is a more conventional romantic figure, but he has a lot of charisma – and it’s also a refreshing balance that he is both the more traditionally “female” character in the relationship, but also feels like a worthy partner for Jianlong.

But the thing that makes the film really memorable is its extraordinary beauty. Ang Lee is a master at marrying up marvellous, dynamic images with intelligent, thematic plotting. The battle scenes are of course the most memorable, and they are truly striking, wonderfully choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping. These defy gravity and are extraordinarily graceful in timing and movement – as striking and genuinely beautiful to watch as they are exhilarating. They look marvellous and Lee films them with a disciplined simplicity to allow us to appreciate their beauty. 

On top of that, the overall design and feel of the film is wonderful. Every scene is carefully framed and beautifully composed. Tan Dun’s score is marvellous (amazingly the whole lot was composed, produced and recorded in just two weeks) and really helps to strength the emotions in the scenes themselves. Lee’s masterful direction never loses track of the emotions and relationships that underpin the action sequences, and makes them develop and grow organically from the story, rather than fight scenes for the sake of it.

Crouching Tiger works because it has a strong story, while showing some beautiful and breathtaking fight sequences, the likes of which many people had never seen before. It’s a well-paced movie, that packs a lot into a tightly controlled run time and its thematic richness gives every scene something to reward the viewer with. The real hero here is Ang Lee. Lee is not just a director who can deliver action, he is a man with an intimate emotional understanding. In particular, he has shown in his films an empathy and warmth towards women, and an appreciation of their worldview, in a way few other male directors have managed. Crouching Tiger still stands up – it’s still strikingly different, well acted, looks gorgeous and has a lot of emotional investment.

Up in the Air (2009)


George Clooney about to head Up in the Air in Reitman’s brilliant bitter-sweet comedy

Director: Jason Reitman

Cast: George Clooney (Ryan Bingham), Anna Kendrick (Natalie Keener), Vera Farmiga (Alex Goran), Jason Bateman (Craig Gregory), Amy Morton (Kara Bingham), Melanie Lynskey (Julie Bingham), Danny McBride (Jim Miller), Zach Galifianakis (Steve), JK Simmons (Bob), Sam Elliott (Marnard Finch), Tamala Jones (Karen Barnes)

One of the worst days in your life can be the day you lose your job. The uncertainty, the insecurity, the sudden feeling of no longer knowing what the future holds – it hurts. Imagine, however, if you were the other side of the equation. What if it was your job to actually tell other people they no longer had a job?

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) works for a Human Resources consultancy company who specialises in firing people for companies. Ryan spends his life flying from company to company across America, fires thousands of people a year, and gives motivational speeches promoting his ideology of no relationships with people or possessions. His relationships are on-the-road flirtations, in particular with one of his female counterparts Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga). However, Ryan’s world is facing threat: his company has hired young, ambitious Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), and wants to introduce a video conferencing system to conduct firings remotely. Ryan argues Natalie knows nothing about the ‘human element’ of his job, and she joins him on the road to find out more.

Up in the Air is a marvellous, perfectly formed, small-scale film: thought-provoking, endearing, with plenty of laughs as well as an air of bittersweet sadness. It manages to focus on all its issues and themes equally without short-changing any of them, and leaves you feeling rewarded and rich at its end. There are moments in there that will make you cry, make you laugh but also make you a little angry. Reitman never insults your intelligence though: he presents things as they are and trusts you to make the judgements you want to make. It’s quite simply wonderful, a little masterpiece of cinema. 

It’s also a wonderful film of its time, which very deliberately doesn’t shy away from the brutality of the economic climate so much of its plot focuses on. Reitman used a series of talking heads of real people who really had gone through meetings exactly like this, and their emotional, very real reactions to losing their jobs gives the picture a profound depth. 

Up in the Air doesn’t take the easy route of condemning Ryan’s work. Sure our sympathies are naturally with those losing their jobs, but Ryan isn’t a heartless shark. He genuinely feels he is there to support people: his principal objection to the video conferencing is it removes the human element from an extremely difficult moment in people’s lives. He has platitudes, and smooth professionalism, but also a brilliant understanding of people and he gets so close to appearing that he cares deeply about people’s lives (even if he can’t remember them days later) it’s as near as damn it to counting. Watch the scene where he fires JK Simmons’ character – he’s read Simmons’ CV, gently questions why Simmons is working anyway at a company he hates and encourages him to follow his dream of becoming a chef. Sure it’s about defusing a situation – but to Ryan it’s also about helping a person see possible future steps, if only for a moment.

It’s such a brilliant snapshot of how Ryan can analyse in seconds what might encourage a person to find greater depth in their lives, that you forget for a moment that Ryan prides himself on having nothing. His flat is a facelessly cold place, which looks less welcoming (and cheaper and colder) than the hotel rooms he stays in. He’s never happier than when in a VIP lounge. He proudly lives out of a suitcase perfectly sized to avoid checking bags. His motivational career stresses the aim of getting everything that matters to you in the world into a backpack. He has no friends, he’s a stranger to his family, no fixed abode (he spends over 320 days a year travelling). He shares a few painful minutes with people and then never sees them again. 

This might just be the part Clooney was born to play: his handsome, slightly smug grin, his studied chuckles, his slight air of blankness behind his good looks are perfect for Ryan’s surface, but Clooney’s great gift as an actor is the emotional weight and depth he is able to show beneath this veneer as soon as it is scratched. He’s a marvellous physical actor – watch his growing flirtatious ease with Alex turn into a comfy affection. He understands the psychology of Ryan completely and never judges him: he can see why Ryan does what he does, and why it works for him. His performance gives Ryan the dignity of his convictions, doesn’t present with any inch of satire Ryan’s feeling that his job is partly about helping people. Even the slightest touch of distance from the part would have shattered the film’s delicate equilibrium – Clooney doesn’t do it for a second.

Of course, drama means Ryan is thrown into situations that challenge this way of thinking, not least his relationship with Alex (essentially the female version of himself). Vera Farmiga is outstanding as a woman with a very male outlook on the world. Perhaps because they share so much, their relationship grows from a sexually charged flirtation (a brilliantly shot and edited sequence in a VIP lounge) into one that increasingly becomes more and more tender. The film dangles before us and Ryan the option for a new way of life – but it doesn’t lie to us about the nature of either of these people. The relationship doesn’t develop the way we expect – and in fact it becomes a commentary in its own way on the very same future prospects Ryan spends his life selling the people he fires, that despair is a gateway to future opportunity.

Anna Kendrick’s Natalie comes at the world of firing from our ruthless modern age – how can we do this faster, quicker and cheaper? Let’s put together a framework for all conversations, let’s do it remotely, let’s use as many buzzwords and platitudes as we can. While Ryan’s work (to him) is all about not forgetting you need to guide an actual human being through without them getting angry or upset, for Anna it’s a simple progression from A to B. Kendrick’s wonderful performance is all about unpeeling these layers. As she finds out first-hand what the job involves, so we discover she is a far more sensitive, “normal” person than we expect, someone who can’t see the logic behind Ryan’s world-view.

And the film asks Ryan to look at the logic of this world view as well. Everything he expresses at the start of the film comes under fire. Change threatens to make him as redundant as the people he fires. His growing closeness to Alex challenge his ideas about commitment (“we fall in love with pricks and are then surprised when they are pricks” Alex comments, something the film explores late on). The impending marriage of his sister – and the realisation of the complete lack of presence he has in his family’s lives – makes him start to think about the strength of his rootless existence.

But the film doesn’t hammer these points home, it juggles them all perfectly within its framework of looking at corporate America today. In a world where people are increasingly becoming faceless numbers on a spreadsheet, is it surprising so many need a faceless man to do the firing for them? Travel has made the world smaller, but also our lives smaller – like Ryan we can be everywhere and nowhere. Up in the Air is a sad and tender film, but one which leaves a kernel of hope somewhere – there are moments that make you think there are opportunities for change and rebirth. Sure it might be pulling the same trick Ryan does, but if so that’s smart – and shows what a good trick it is. Up in the Air is a hell of a movie, and Reitman is one hell of a director.

The International (2009)


Clive Owen and Naomi Watts are lost in the high-pressure world of big finance in The International

Director: Tom Twyker

Cast: Clive Owen (Louis Salinger), Naomi Watts (Eleanor Whitman), Armin Mueller-Stahl (Wilhelm Wexler), Ulrich Thomsen (Jonas Skarssen), Brian F. O’Byrne (The Consultant), James Rebhorn (New York DA), Michel Voletti (Viktor Haas), Patrick Baladi (Martin White), Jay Villiers (Francis Ehames), Fabrice Scott (Nicolai Yeshinski), Haluk Bilginer (Ahmet Sunay), Luca Barbareschi (Umberto Calvini), Alessandro Fabrizi (Inspector Alberto Cerutti), Felix Solix (Detective Iggy Ornelas), Jack McGee (Detective Bernie Ward), Ben Whishaw (Rene Antall), Lucian Msamati (General Motomba)

Welcome to another of my unlikely pleasures. I remember seeing The International because we took a punt on it with an Orange Wednesday 2-for-1. I had no real expectations, but I was totally wrapped up in it. It has an old-school 1970s Hollywood-conspiracy-thriller feel. I keep waiting for it to be rediscovered (I’m waiting in vain it seems). But it’s a wonderful, tense little thriller which – by focusing on the shady, morally corrupt dealings of private banks – always seems relevant. Throw in alongside that a truly stand-out action set-piece at the centre of the film and you have a much overlooked pleasure.

Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) is a scruffy Interpol agent, with a reputation for getting too involved in his cases. Working with Assistant New York DA Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts), Salinger is investing possible illegal arms deals involving private investment bank IBBC. After their inside contact and Whitman’s fellow DA are both murdered in quick succession, Salinger takes the battle directly to IBBC. But the bank, chaired by ruthlessly blank businessman Jonas Skarsson (Ulrich Thomsen), is prepared to go to increasingly violent lengths to protect its interests, with assassinations arranged by its in-house security expert ex-Stasi agent Wilhelm Wexler (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and carried out by his mysterious Consultant (Brian F. O’Byrne).

Tom Twyker shoots the film in cool grays and drained out colours, giving it a very cold palette fitting for its exploration of the ruthless viciousness of big business. Twyker uses the cold, modern architecture of the various businesses the film is set in to great effect, making a wonderful, imposing backdrop. The camera constantly allows this domineering modern architecture to fill the frame, and mixes it up with some well-chosen aerial shots that reduces the action to cogs in a machine. It’s a very distinctive visual film – and it’s not until it finishes that you realise (apart from blood) you’ve really seen a red, a green or a purple in the whole film. There’s no jittery editing or hand-held camerawork – it’s got a smooth old-school cinematic quality to it.

The plot is a chilling conspiracy thriller, that (within the confines of a Hollywood action thriller) gets really in-deep into the workings of big finance. Critics accused it of being a light-weight Jason Bourne but really it’s more of a colder Parallax View. It largely eschews action in favour of paranoia, investigation and simmering tension. It’s a well-constructed journey down the rabbit hole, as Salinger gets both closer towards answers, and further away from bringing anyone to justice. 

Clive Owen’s rumpled performance is perfect. Far from being a “Bond audition”, Salinger is an outsider, a man who lives for his job, who wears his heart on his sleeve, and spends large chunks of the film either terrified or out-of-his-depth. Practically the first thing that happens to him is being knocked out by the wing-mirror of a truck. His grubby, unshaven scruffiness doesn’t recover from that. Owen gives the performance both a moral conviction and a slight air of desperation and bewilderment, as if he can’t quite understand why others aren’t as wrapped up in his case as he is.

He’s part of a great cast of actors – the film is full of unusual choices and rewarding cameos. Armin Mueller-Stahl mastered playing these world-weary ex-spies years ago, but delivers here. Broadway star Brian F O’Byrne is great, as a ruthlessly efficient hitman. Ulrich Thomsen is rather good as the blank businessman and family man, who seems to see no moral issues in the conduct of his bank’s business. Interesting actors like Patrick Baladi, James Rebhorn, Luca Barbaeschi, Haluk Bilginer and Lucian Msamati round out the cast with terrific cameos – there is always a unique actor and dynamic performance around every corner.

The plot of the film doesn’t unfold the way you expect it to – and mixes hope with a nihilistic powerlessness. Twyker’s directing is professional and he adds a lot of intelligence to a standard Hollywood set-up. He also throws in a few moments where the film pauses to reassess things we’ve seen before or to allow Salinger to puzzle out another crucial clue.

And it’s fitting for a film so in love with overwhelming power of modernist architecture that its most explosive sequence takes place in New York’s Guggenheim museum. This is a gut-wrenchingly exciting, destructive gun battle that serves as the pivot point. Brilliantly shot and edited, and perfectly built towards, it explodes into the film and grabs your attention. Owen again is perfect for this sequence – determined, but terrified and completely out of his depth – and Twyker’s use of the Guggenheim is masterful. Honestly it’s one of the best shoot-out scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie: five minutes of brilliance. You’d remember the film for that scene alone, if for nothing else.

Okay it’s not a perfect film by any stretch. Poor Naomi Watts has a thankless, ill-formed part. I’m pleased the film doesn’t include any romantic connection between the two characters at all, but (despite her work on the case) Whitman seems more a plot device than a character. The script largely fails to serve up too many memorable lines – and its main strengths are to present familiar actions and events in a fresh manner. Some have found the plot momentum to often flag – and there is something to that – and the overall schemes of the bank are not always completely clear.

But, nevertheless, I really like The International. It’s got a classic old-school feel to it. Its views on the immorality of big business feel very true, as does its presentation of the villain as basically a monolithic institution – the actual guys running the bank seem irrelevant, it’s just the ongoing nature of business. And in this world of corporations, where destroying a few men don’t admit to a hill of beans, how can truth and justice ever win out? Even if it had nothing else, tackling that idea makes The International feel like something new and worth revisiting. Well that, and that Guggenheim gun fight…

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1971)

Janet Suzman and Alan Bates balance the pressure of bringing up a paralysed daughter in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg

Director: Peter Medak

Cast: Alan Bates (Bri), Janet Suzman (Shelia), Peter Bowles (Freddie), Shelia Gish (Pam), Joan Hickson (Grace), Elizabeth Robillard (Jo), Murray Melvyn (Doctor), Constance Chapman (Moonrocket lady)

The playwright Peter Nichols’ daughter Abigail was born in 1960, suffering from severe physical and mental disabilities, requiring 24-hour care from her parents. Nichols transformed the experience into a play about two parents who struggle to care for their daughter, and spin out little fantasy conversations with their child, indulging in flights of fancy even while her father wonders if it is even worth carrying on with looking after a child who will never experience any improvement or independent life.

Alan Bates plays the husband Bri, a put-upon teacher at a boys’ school, prone to flights of comic fantasy. Bri feels increasingly frustrated about the unacknowledged strain their handicapped daughter Jo is placing on his marriage to Shelia (Janet Suzman), whose focus is almost exclusively on looking after their daughter. The couple use often surreal black humour to cope with the constant pressure of caring for the child.

The excellent Indicator blu-ray contains a fascinating interview with Peter Nichols, who clearly didn’t care for the film. He found it off-balance, too emotionally overwrought, too realist and essentially too depressing. He’s probably right. The play is a finely balanced mixture of near stand-up comedy and marital grief. Bri’s comic moments are vaudeville fantasy sequences, with funny accents and larger-than-life characters pulled together. This toying with the fourth-wall just can’t be translated in to cinema here, instead the film downplays the dark humour and humanity of the piece, and instead makes it a rather heavy-handed and glum watch.

Bates still has many of the essentially comic funny voices and character-based routines – there are sequences where he acts out the roles of various doctors and priests who have consulted on Jo in the past. But his performance is just a little too eccentric, a little too out-there, a little too twitchy – frankly it makes him hard to engage and empathise with. Maybe it’s the changing times that haven’t helped, but Bri’s constant whining that his sex life has been destroyed just doesn’t sound right.

Of course, Nichols is using this whining to touch upon the damage done by the pressure of constantly caring for a daughter who will never show any signs of improvement and never be capable of communicating with her parents. Nichols knows of what he speaks: he and his wife eventually hospitalised their daughter (and had two other children) – and he believes the parents should have done the same in his play. By making the entire focus of their life a child who is, essentially, an object (twice at opposite ends of the film she is pushed into a room slumped over a wheelchair), it’s clear the couple are causing no end of damage to their emotional lives. Maybe it’s just heavier going as well because the film features a real child – while the play used theatrical invention to represent the child.

The film slightly unbalances itself by moving away from black humour to emotional impact. Maybe part of this is due to Janet Suzman’s astonishingly strong performance as Shelia, a part she invests with great layers of emotion and hope, constantly refusing to give up hope that one day Jo may respond. Suzman has one extremely emotional speech, recounting a moment where Jo pushed over some play blocks, which she delivers with a teary, earnest, simplicity to the camera which is profoundly moving. It probably makes Bates’ performance seem a little more irritating than it actually is, because she is strong.

And that is a problem with the film, because in order for it to work you need to bond with both parents. You need to share and be inspired by Shelia’s hope, while at the same time see that Bri’s more realistic perceptive, and his dark longings to end Jo’s life of suffering, are in many ways just as legitimate. The film is all about this issue of euthanasia – conversations dance around it constantly – and it largely manages not to fall either side of the issue. There are points on both sides – and the real issue is should the parents find some other way to get support and help with caring for their daughter? Instead you don’t quite bond with both parents the way you need too. You feel Bri is a bit too sharp, and that Shelia is a bit too unrealistic in what she believes in.

The second half of the film introduces most of the secondary characters, particular Freddie and Pam (expertly played by Freddie Bowles and Shelia Gish), giving us a fresh perspective on the events. Freddie is bluntly concerned in a jolly way with doing what he can to help and urges the couple to consider hospitalisation. Pam, however, behaves with the awkward embarrassment many of us are ashamed to admit we feel when confronted with the seriously paralysed. We also get to see more of Joan Hickson (the only cast member from the original stage production) as Bri’s brassy and difficult mother, whose attempts to help largely only serve to increase tensions.

It slowly becomes clear though that this is a film about the collapse of a marriage under pressure, even more than about caring for a disabled child. But shorn of much of its humour – the fantasy sequences don’t really work, because they feel a little too heightened and overplayed – the film turns the play into something really quite bleak. It’s frankly a little too depressing and overbearing to really enjoy. It has plenty of good performances, but doesn’t really open up the play and instead turns it into an intense, rather overbearing chamber piece. A film that loses its balance from the stage version, and instead becomes something quite glum, in which Bates’ Bri doesn’t really win our sympathy as you feel he should do. It’s a tougher watch than Nichols intended – surely why he wasn’t really happy with it.

Stalag 17 (1953)

William Holden is the untrusted fixer in Billy Wilder’s prison camp drama Stalag 17

Director: Billy Wilder

Cast: William Holden (JJ Sefton), Don Taylor (Lieutenant Dunbar), Otto Preminger (Colonel von Scherbach), Robert Strauss (Stanislas ‘Animal’ Kuzara), Harvey Lembeck (Harry Shapiro), Peter Graves (Price), Sig Rumann (Sgt Johann Sebastian Schulz), Neville Brand (Duke), Richard Erdman (Hoffy)

A sort of cross between The Great Escape and Colditz (but not as good as either), Stalag 17 is a relatively minor entry into Billy Wilder’s illustrious cannon: but that makes it more than good enough to be a stand-out movie in anybody else’s. Set in a German prisoner of war camp for captured American NCOs, it follows the hunt for a traitor leaking escape plans to the Germans. The suspicions of the other inmates quickly turn to camp fixer JJ Sefton (William Holden), a self-serving, cynical outsider, despite his protestations of innocence. When a saboteur and POW is betrayed to the Germans, Sefton decides he needs to locate the stool pigeon himself.

The main historical interest in Stalag 17 is William Holden’s Oscar-winning performance. Holden apparently walked out of the original Broadway production of the play, but such was his trust in Wilder’s judgement he agreed to play the substantially rewritten role. Just as well he did, as Holden’s drawling cynicism, air of bitterness and the marvellous impression he is able to give of a man of commitment and principle under the veneer of a self-serving egotist are perfect for it. Holden won the Oscar (he believed it was a consolation for his failure to win for Sunset Boulevard) – and co-incidentally gave the shortest acceptance speech ever (due to TV coverage rules), a simple “thank you.”

Holden’s character slowly dominates the narrative more and more, but is often shot on the margins of the film. Wilder shoots a film where the lead character is on the periphery of the action, with Holden on the edge of frames, or just being caught by the camera as it drifts towards him. He feels like a supporting character for a large chunk of the first half of the film, while Wilder focuses on the daily life and bonhomie of the camp: two things Sefton deliberately exiles himself from. But you keep coming back to him, and are always aware of what he is thinking and planning.

The focus on the atmosphere of the camp allows a number of fun scenes around the isolation of the men. There are joyful celebrations for Christmas (including tree decorations and a full dance in the barracks, with men eagerly grabbing each other for a whirl in a way you can’t imagine them doing back home). We get the games and in-jokes that keep them sane, the cheeking of the guards, and the obsessive interest in the women held in the Russian camp next door.

This also allows a number of colourful performances from a solid group of character actors. Robert Strauss was Oscar-nominated as the scruffy, Betty-Grable-obsessed “Animal”, and his comic antics provide much of the film’s humour. There are fine performances from Harvey Lembeck as his confidante (Lembeck and Strauss had both played the same roles in the stage production), while Peter Graves, Neville Brand and Richard Erdman contribute performances as very different POWs.

The film also deals with mob dynamics: the group turns on Sefton, it seems, because he dares to bet against an escape and, as a fixer, he has access to luxuries the rest of the group don’t have (and charges them to access). Throw in his distance and his happiness not to make friends and it’s clear why they suspect him. But that doesn’t make their brutal punishment of him (on no evidence) and their cruel ostracism any easier to watch. You can’t help suspecting that Wilder had more than half his mind on the McCarthy trials taking place at the time when he was filming this mob-justice film.

The film is also notable for making the Germans reasonably fully-formed characters. Sure, our two main characters are, to varying degrees, ruthless buffoons, but they are not vicious or cruel. Otto Preminger’s camp commandant is a puffed-up martinet who puts his boots on when calling a General merely so he can click the heels together (and immediately removes them when the call is complete). Sig Rumann’s barracks guard is a decent cove and bluff braggart, who actually runs a fairly efficient spy system with the traitor.

The film is partly a study of men under pressure and partly a mystery – obviously Sefton isn’t the traitor, and the film slowly reveals who is before an impressive sequence where we see the traitor in action planting a message. There is a noir-ish quality to this mystery element, and the film holds a balance fairly well between a war comedy and an adventure where lives really are at stake (it’s book-ended by characters being machine gunned by the Germans after all). It’s not the greatest war film ever, but it has more than enough going for it.