Tag: British Films

They Made Me a Fugitive (1947)

Trevor Howard is on the run in They Made Me a Fugitive

Director: Alberto Cavalcanti

Cast: Trevor Howard (Clem Morgan), Sally Gray (Sally), Griffith Jones (Narcy), René Ray (Cora), Mary Merrall (Aggie), Charles Farrell (Curley), Cyril Smith (Bert), Phyllis Robins (Olga), Vida Hope (Mrs Fanshaw), Eve Ashley (Ellen), Jack McNaughton (Soapy), Maurice Denham (Mr Fenshaw)

The Second World War is over – but the country is awash with ex-servicemen, not sure where they fit in, trained to kill. Clem Morgan (Trevor Howard) is one of them. A former RAF man, who escaped from a POW camp, he doesn’t know what to do with himself on civvie street. So he’s definitely open to an offer to work for black marketeer Narcy (Griffith Jones) – but not so keen once Narcy’s business dealings expand into drug smuggling and violence. Clem gets framed for the killing of a policeman and banged up in Dartmouth – where he receives a visit from Narcy’s mistreated girlfriend Sally (Sally Jones) who needs his help to prove Narcy is the real villain. Clem escapes, a fugitive, looking for, and on the run from, justice.

Cavalcanti’s film is a marvellous mix of noir, early kitchen-sink and faded post-war crime drama. The locations are run-down and dirty, the mood faded and worn out. The film is remarkably bitter, cynical and short on hope. Clem’s encounters take him past a gallery of those struggling in post-war Britain: black marketeers, shallow glamour-pusses, bored policemen, common criminals, vengeance minded housewives and brutal heavies. Everyone is corrupt, has violence or treachery in mind and don’t think twice about putting others through suffering. And to be honest, as a shambling, scruffy drunk, Clem makes a pretty good fit among them, a man whose best days happened somewhere in Germany in the 1940s and who hasn’t had a clue what to do with his life since.

The post-war Britain painted here isn’t nice. No wonder ruthless, thuggish black marketeers like Narcy (short for Narcissus of all things – which manages to be both a commentary on self-obsession, while being an abbreviation that sounds like Nasty or Nazi) are flourishing. Narcy – played with a callous, charismatic black-heartedness by Griffith Jones, in a performance bereft of any trace of morality – has no problem with any criminal act what-so-ever so long as it gets him what he wants. Smuggle drugs? Not a problem. Beat a woman? Line ‘em up. Murder a cold-footed subordinate? As many as needed. Narcy is a perfect emblem for this world, uncaring, brutal, sadistic and enjoying the fact that so many others are desperate.

His kingdom is a subterranean hell, in the basement of a undertakers. (It even has a huge sign reading RIP on the top of the building.) His haunts are foggy docksides, chilling streets and rough pubs. His followers are cowed former servicemen – although even they draw the line at using guns – and the police seem unable to touch him. But then Narcy’s world is pretty similar to the rest of England. The countryside Clem journeys through from Dartmouth to London to get his revenge is equally fog-ridden, cold, dirty and unattractive, full of farmers who shoot at him with buckshot and housewives who blackmail him to carry out their dirty deeds.

The film hinges at the half-way point on this surreal scene. Clem arrives at a home where the woman of the house – played with a sort of hypnotic monotone by  Vida Hope – allows him to wash, gives him new clothes, feeds him – and then hands over a gun and asks him to shoot her husband (a shambling drunk played by Maurice Denham). Clem refuses – he’s killed once in his life, while escaping a POW camp, and has no intentions of doing so again. He makes a run for it – at which point the woman does the deed herself, and places the blame on Clem. It’s a bizarre scene, but strangely magnetic – its a window into this topsy-turvy world. Killing means something different to everyone after years of the world tearing itself apart, and behind the chintz curtains of middle-class Britain, we can’t be certain there doesn’t lurk something dark and dangerous.

Trevor Howard makes a perfect lead for this sort of grimy world. He’s got the “hail well met” stance of Clem down perfectly: but he’s a character who also carries a natural integrity to him, someone who we can trust. No matter how drunken, shambling and untidy he gets when he’s in his cups, there is something decent in him we can trust. It also means we can root for him when the chips are down (which they are for most of the film), and while he finds himself in bizarre and dangerous situations, from being shot at by farmers to struggling to escape the curiosity of lorry drivers.

Howard powers the whole film, even if Griffith Jones perhaps carries it away in the more colourful part of Narcy. Sally Jones makes for a relatable woman of fixed morality (perhaps the only truly moral person in the whole film) who has somehow found herself in a dirty world. Cavalcanti’s world is filthy. He shoots it with a delicate but immersive intensity. It’s a surprisingly violent film. Knifes are used, shots are fired and Narcy beats two women with a viciousness (the first is shot with a whirling camera, which might go a little too far to get us to relate to the dizzying violence).

It’s also a film that seems low on hope. It ends on a downer. The forces of good – like the police – seem distant, uninvolved or, at best, useless in the face of all the crime. The forces of evil are left to effectively police themselves and corrupt but decent men like Clem get stuck in the middle. They Made Me a Fugitive makes for an involving and gripping thriller, a perfectly made little British B movie.

Georgy Girl (1966)

Lynn Redgrave excels as permanent odd-girl out in Georgy Girl

Director: Silvio Narizzano

Cast: Lynn Redgrave (Georgy Parkin), James Mason (James Leamington), Alan Bates (Jos Jones), Charlotte Rampling (Meredith), Bill Owen (Ted Parkin), Clare Kelly (Doris Parkin), Rachel Kempson (Ellen Leamington), Denise Coffey (Peg), Dandy Nichols (Hospital Nurse)

Made at the height of the Swinging Sixties – when London was the coolest city in the world – Georgy Girl is, in some respects, a time capsule. It was seen at the time as almost impossibly naughty and subversive, with open talk of abortions and affairs, mothers who feel their lives have been changed for the worse by having babies and young people struggling to accept their responsibilities. Now of course, it all looks rather tame. But there remains a charm to the film – helped above all by its performances – that still manages to make it a winning film, despite some of its attitudes raising entirely different questions today than its makers intended.

Georgy (Lynn Redgrave) is the plain-looking (and doesn’t the film keep reminding us of this!) daughter of the devoted butler (Bill Owen) to millionaire James Leamington (James Mason). Leamington has supported Georgy while she grows up – even letting her use his house for her children’s performance classes – but now his interest in her is changing. With his wife dying, James offers her the chance to become his mistress (with an actual contract). Georgy turns it down – not least because of her growing interest in Jos (Alan Bates), the fun-loving boyfriend of her flatmate Meredith (Charlotte Rampling), a drop-dead gorgeous violinist who treats him and everyone else with disdain. When Meredith falls pregnant with Jos’ baby, the two of them marry – but Meredith wants nothing to do with the child, a contrast to Georgy who has always dreamed of family.

It’s actually a film of cold, hard realities. Beware any film which gives you a conventional happy ending – the hero chasing a woman down a street crying out that he loves her – around the half way mark. All the characters are presented with choices, and are forced to either compromise or run away. It’s telling that the characters who most fit the mood of the era invariably run away, while those with a more traditional outlook stick it out. You could argue that far from being a celebration of the 60s, Georgy Girl is a fierce critique.

At the time, Georgy was seen as something of a free spirit. Perhaps this was because of her unconventional looks or her playful imagination when working with the children in her performance class. Maybe it was the opening sequence, which sees her getting a fashionable haircut, only to instantly wash it out in a sink. Or could it be because she treats her father’s wishes for her to listen to her elders and betters with disdain? (Let’s skirt over the fact her father seems to be effectively pimping her to his employer.) The way she makes a scene at Leamington’s birthday party by performing a raunchy cabaret number? Most of all though it may well have been due to the catchy (and instantly recognisable) Seekers song that plays over the opening and closing of the movie and serves as her calling card.

Interestingly though, watching it now, there is something incredibly conservative about Georgy – and quite possibly about the film itself. While she lives in the heart of the buzzing metropolis, Georgy’s dreams seem to come from another age: to become a mother, in a comfortable domestic setting. It’s hardly a feminist rallying cry. Georgy is so keen for this, she is perfectly willing to step (almost literally) into the shoes of Meredith, inheriting her husband, child and home. The film also misses no opportunity to remind the viewers Georgy is plain, dumpy and sexually inexperienced. Redgrave has been dressed to look like a sort of Teutonic housekeeper. The film doesn’t seem to quite know where to land between praising Georgy and slightly encouraging us, to chuckle at her.

Georgy isn’t in fact the swinging 60s icon in the film. That unquestionably is Charlotte Rampling as Meredith. Looking absolutely stunning, dressed by Mary Quant, Meredith is everything we expect from the era: confident, outgoing, ambitious, sexually liberated. But Meredith is also a stone-cold, ruthless, heartless bitch. Superbly played by Rampling, she treats Georgy as a servant, Jos as a mix between comfort blanket and vibrator, and decides to get married and have the child (rather than abort it as she has two others of Jos’ children – without telling him) because she’s bored. Once the poor child is born, the idea of sacrificing anything from her life is anathema to Meredith who promptly disappears over the horizon.

Georgy Girl is actually a film with much more mixed – even satiric – views of women and its era. The sort of liberation Meredith enjoys goes hand-in-hand with a selfish shirking of responsibility and using her beauty as a justification to treat everyone she meets as supplicants. Georgy is stuck in the middle, a woman in an era of growing freedoms but whose aims remain solidly in the Victorian era. The men are an equally mixed bag. Today we would certainly call what Leamington has been doing grooming. Jos has a happy-go-lucky 60s charm to him, but is flighty, unreliable, selfish and disappears with a smile the second the going gets tough. For all the film is sort of remembered for its joie-de-vive, it’s actually a searing look at the era with mixed feelings about its characters.

The fact we really end up caring for Georgy is due to Lynn Redgrave’s wonderful performance. A second choice for her sister Vanessa, the role typecast Redgrave in Hollywood’s minds as sort of dumpy loser (especially after her Oscar nomination). But she brings the role a real magnetism. Georgy is doomed to play second fiddle in people’s lives (and perhaps even her own). Perhaps the most 60s thing about her though is her determination to get what she wants – whether that is avoiding an affair with her father’s employer, or securing a good life for Meredith’s baby.

The rest of the cast are equally strong. Bates brings the best of his impish charm to the part (even if at times he tries too hard), as well as a metrosexual edge to Jos as someone very comfortable with joking around and being a bit camp. James Mason (who took a massive pay cut for the role, a decision which paid off with an Oscar nomination) is superb as fragile but creepy Leamington, a man who believes he is genuinely in love and is also excited at the prospect of replacing his bed-ridden wife (played by Redgrave’s actual mother Rachel Kempson, adding a nice Oedipal touch) with a younger model. Bill Owen mixes both a hilarious servility with assertions that his daughter “owes” Leamington something for all he’s done for her.

Georgy Girl works well because it is – and remains – funny as well as being dramatic and thought provoking. It might not be a feminist tract – and the character most likely to be seen as a feminist in the thing is its least sympathetic by far – and it might well affectionately scorn a woman who doesn’t look like a conventional man’s idea of attractive, and give her a traditional outlook behind a playful exterior – but it’s an energetic and rather charming film that does make you care. Separating it from the era it’s set in, might well do it a world of good.

The Entertainer (1960)

Laurence Olivier excels as a faded music hall star in The Entertainer

Director: Tony Richardson

Cast: Laurence Olivier (Archie Rice), Brenda de Banzie (Phoebe Rice), Roger Livesey (Billy Rice), Joan Plowright (Jean Rice), Alan Bates (Frank Rice), Daniel Massey (Graham), Shirley Anne Field (Tina Lapford), Thora Hird (Mrs Lapford), Albert Finney (Mick Rice)

In the late 1950s Laurence Olivier was worried about his career. While he was still doing Shakespeare and Coward comedies (intermixed with the odd film), the world of acting and theatre was moving on. Not least as John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger was taking the West End by storm. Olivier seemed the polar opposite of the “Angry Young Men” of British theatre, a dusty relic. So Olivier changed gears – and his entire life – by asking to be cast in the lead role of Osborne’s next play The Entertainer. Olivier’s sensational stage performance – captured here on film – radically changed the path of both his career and his life, with his long-troubled marriage to Vivien Leigh broking down during it. But he also cemented himself as the leading British actor.

Olivier plays Archie Rice, a failing never-has-been end-of-pier comedy performer at an unnamed Seaside town in 1956. Rice’s routines are old-and-tired, his comedy tinged with desperation and he’s all but broke. Archie’s audiences are tired, bored and unamused. His home life, with his faded former beauty champ wife (Brenda de Banzie) is on the ropes due to his constant infidelity. His father (Roger Livesey) – a music hall celebrity with real talent – loves him but thinks he’s a disasater waiting to happen. His son Frank (Alan Bates) adores him but his daughter Jean (Joan Plowright) is more realistic. Archie through continues to peddle the idea of a success being round the corner, trying to put together a hit revue starring his latest mistress (Shirley Anne Field) and funded by her parents. Things will not end well.

The Entertainer’s main claim to historical note is that it captures that sensational stage performance of Laurence Olivier in the lead role. Olivier had always liked to claim that, with a few zigs and zags in his career, he would have become a third-rate comedian. His performance – with its ingratiating patter, it’s seedy sexually ambivalent campness, his selfishness and self-obsession and greed – is brilliant. Archie’s entire life is a desperate struggle to get himself the career he wants – while trying to shut his eyes to his own lack of talent (of which he is painfully aware). Olivier captures superbly not only the front of a man bent on self-promotion, but also the dead-eyed horror of a man who is aware all the time that he is dying inside.

Olivier’s eyes are drill-holes of death, and his life is an exhibition of selfish patter, with a constant sense of performance in every inch of Archie’s life. He’s a run-down, finished and disillusioned man trying to pluck what few moments of pleasure he can from a life he is only going through the motions in. All of it covered with a coating of self-delusion that quickly crumbles into sweaty desperation. While the film can only give a taste of the Olivier stage performance, it re-enforces Olivier’s energy, creativity and bravery. Olivier’s both bravura and tragically tired music hall performances alone are worth the price of admission.

Away from Olivier’s exceptional capturing of the washed up patter of the sleazy loser, it’s easy to overlook most of the rest of the film. But it’s directed with a kitchen-sink freshness by Tony Richardson, who brilliantly captures the faded grandeur and grubby failure of a failing seaside resort. Osborne’s play used the decline of music hall as a metaphor for the decline of the British Empire and while the film (for all its Suez references) doesn’t quite convey this, favouring instead domestic tragedy, it still perfectly captures the crumbling world of Rice and his ilk. Rice’s father – Roger Livesey, excellent and about a year older than Olivier – is a relic of the success of this era, and still carries some of its glamour, but still lives as a virtual tenant in the Rice home, eating spare cake where he can.

While the film is dominated by Olivier, this presentation of the play as a domestic tragedy works rather well. Brenda de Banzie (also reprising her role from stage) is very good as an ex-glamour puss (and former mistress of Archie) now turned into a faded, depressed matron, drunkenly bitter about what her life has (not) led to. Joan Plowright is excellent as the knowing daughter, alternately sympathetic and appalled at her father. Shirley Anne Field’s naïve lover is suitably naïve, under the control of her battleaxe mother, well played by Thora Hird. The cast is rounded out with Alan Bates and Albert Finney (both in debuts) as Archie’s sons.

While the film feels a little overlong at times, and is perhaps too much in thrall to Olivier, it offers a neat kitchen-sink view of failure and corruption in British life of the 1950s. There is, of course, no hope and no second chances here. Only the long, wearying decline and rotting as Archie’s life disintegrates under pressure and his own incompetent self-delusion. 

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

Roger Livesey and Anton Walbrook are friends who war cannot divide in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Cast: Roger Livesey (Clive Candy), Deborah Kerr (Edith Hunter/Barbara Wynne/Angela “Johnny” Cannon), Anton Walbrook (Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff), Ursula Jeans (Frau von Kalteneck), James McKechnie (Lt “Spud” Wilson), David Hutcheson (Hoppy), Frith Banbury (David “Baby Face” Fitzroy), Muriel Aked (Aunt Margaret), John Laurie (Murdoch), Roland Culver (Colonel Betteridge)

Is there a film that has better captured the curious state of being British than The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp? Could any other film makers than Powell and Pressburger take a doltish buffoon from newspaper comic strip, and turn him into a tragi-comic figure worth of Hamlet? Could any other film make a wartime propaganda film that features the most sympathetic depiction of the Germans anyone would see for decades to come? Winston Churchill was so scathing of the film that its US release was delayed for two years – and even then it was cut to ribbons. But then, I guess we knew already the guy wasn’t right about everything.

During the Blitz, Clive Candy (Roger Livesey) is a retired Major-General and now a senior commander in the Home Guard. Ambushed in a Turkish bath on the eve of a training exercise (by young officers keen to follow the German example of effective pre-emptive strikes), Candy rages at their dismissal of him as a relic from yesteryear. In flashback, we see Candy’s entire life over the course of the rest of the film. The film charts his military cross, from the Boer War to World War One and his life-long friendship with German officer Theo Kretschar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook), after both men are hospitalised after a 1902 duel over insults to the German military. Both men fall in love with the same woman, Edith Hunter (Deborah Kerr) although Clive realises it far too late – and their friendship ebbs and flows over the next forty years.

Powell and Pressburger’s film is, of course, quite beautifully made. The film has that distinctively radiant technicolour look of their most successful works, but it works so well because Powell assembles the whole so wonderfully. Powell knows when to hold a shot and when to look away and his judgement is never wrong. In the duel where Clive and Theo meet (Theo has been randomly selected to fight), the camera at first covers the detail of the prep, then moves to an over-the-head shot as it begins, before pulling out of the gymnasium and away, gliding into a long shot with Berlin sprinkled with snow. Because after all, the actual fight is immaterial to the sense of this being one event in the tapestry of life – and the moment of real importance being the friendship that came from it.

Then, much later, Powell does the exact opposite, holding a shot with powerful, emotional, simplicity. It’s 1939 and Theo is trying to remain in England – his wife having passed away, his sons being lost to Nazism and this adopted country being far closer to his old Prussian ideals of duty and fairplay. In a heartbreakingly low-key, simple speech – just exquisitely delivered by Anton Walbrook – Powell lets the entire speech play out in a single take, giving the moment room to breathe and magnifying its impact enormously – not least by the background extra who switches from shuffling his papers to listening intently to this heartfelt appeal.

It’s this mastery of technique that makes the impact of the film so wonderful – and helps it to masterfully capture the changing of an entire nation. Other the film’s forty years the entire world changes utterly, from one of simple truths where right is right and evils are punished, to the morally complex world of World War Two, where bending the rules and playing dirty might be just what is needed to defeat enemies with no principles. 

Candy is a man of unshakeable morals and ideals, who does not believe ends justify means and is determined that fighting honourably for defeat is far better than victory at all costs. It’s an idea the film affectionately praises, at the same time it sadly shakes its head and admits that such ideals were for the last century not this one. These are ideas Theo has captured far sooner than Candy – and Candy’s tragedy, among his many virtues, is that he always fails until it is almost too late to understand the truth of the world around him (be that politically or romantically).

It doesn’t matter really though, because we always know Candy’s heart is in the right place. In a sublime performance by Roger Livesey, this is a man with an upper-class bombast and a paternalistic regard for his duty and for others. His country and the ideals of that country come first and foremost – but it’s not about pushing those home. He will console honourable foes – as he does with Theo after World War One – and when the battle is over will be the first to say by-gones are by-gones. The film he is in a way a somewhat ridiculously old-fashioned character – but he’s always well-meaning, decent and honourable.

Candy also has the tragedy tinged sadness of not knowing what he wants until it’s too late. He doesn’t realise his affections for Edith Hunter, until she and Theo are telling him of their engagement (although we the audience are already well aware that Edith had feelings for him), and the look of realisation of a deep and lasting love that will last his whole life, is fabulously conveyed by Livesey in a perfect reaction shot. Candy will eventually marry Edith’s near doppelganger, but this unspoken love will last his whole life – and form another bond between him and Theo. Which in itself is what we like to think is a quality the British have at their best.

Along with that British fair-play that is so important to him, it also settles in the friendship between Theo and Clive. A friendship unaffected by tragedy or war (or at least not for long) and which, despite years apart, Clive frequently returns to with all the warmth and openness they first shared. These are bonds of loyalty forged on the playing fields, that operate on unspoken feelings (for a portion of their friendship Theo can’t even speak English). 

These are also the ideas and principles that Clive keeps alive in himself, even while the world becomes ever more bleak around him. He’s a character that never loses his essential positivity and kindness. Deaths or disappointed love are met with regret and then losing yourself in sport (whole years are hilariously shown to pass by montages showing Clive’s hunting trophies appear on walls). But always that British idea of (as Churchill put it) “keep buggering on”, and not letting infinite sadnesses and disappointments undermine or define you.

Powell and Pressburger use all this to make Candy not a joke – as the Lieutenant in the film’s prologue sees him – but as a deeply sympathetic and real man. It’s a film also about our disregard for the old, our failure to ever imagine that they were young. The flashback structure fills in this story beautifully. All this, and it’s not even to mention Deborah Kerr’s superb performance as all three of the women in this story, each subtle commentaries on the other and her return throughout somehow representing the perfect ideals that Clive and Theo are living to. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is about understanding how the “rules” of British behaviour are underpinned by a deeper sadness it’s almost a duty to hide – and it understands that better than almost any other film.

The Third Man (1949)

Orson Welles is the dark heart of The Third Man

Director: Carol Reed

Cast: Joseph Cotton (Holly Martins), Alida Valli (Anna Schmidt), Orson Welles (Harry Lime), Trevor Howard (Major Calloway), Paul Hörbiger (Karl the porter), Ernst Deustch (“Baron” Kurtz), Erich Ponto (Dr Winkel), Siegried Breuer (Anna), Bernard Lee (Sergeant Paine),Wilfrid Hyde-White (Crabbin)

It’s regularly held up as one of the cornerstones of classic 1940s film-making – and it has frequently won polls of the Greatest British Films of all time. Does The Third Man live up to expectations? No it excels them. I doubt there has been a film more perfectly assembled than this, one where all the component parts click together to make one perfect whole. No matter how many times you see The Third Man, it weaves its spell every time.

In immediate post-war Vienna, the city is divided into four zones, each run by a different great power (the UK, US, France and USSR). The black market is rife between the zones. Into this city arrives pulp Western writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton), here to visit his old school friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) – only to find on arriving that Lime died in a traffic accident, with British policeman Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) insisting that he was a black marketeer. Holly can’t believe Harry was a crook, and decides to investigate himself – on the way falling in love with Harry’s girlfriend Anna (Alida Valli) and finding that nobody’s story on what happened to Harry matches up. Could the accident actually be a murder?

Carol Reed’s atmospheric film is beautifully, perhaps flawlessly directed – so well made that for years there were fevered efforts to assign its brilliance to Welles himself. Which was studiously unfair to Reed, a director at the top of his game in the 40s.  The Third Man was the crowning glory of a run of superbly stylish thrillers that matched thought provoking themes with striking film-making. The film is soaked in the atmosphere of post-war Vienna, a city half shelled out of existence. The film was shot on location, and Reed’s camera captures the “bombed about a bit” shambles of the city, its long shadows, cobbled streets and mysterious alleys.

The Third Man’s filming style also plays into this truly distinctive look. Working with (Oscar-winning) cinematographer Robert Krasker, the film is shot with a luscious almost German impressionistic style, with murky shadows and noirish lighting. Reed uses huge numbers of Dutch Angles to constantly present both this shattered city, and it mysterious story, from disconcerting angles. This visually represents the uncertainty and mystery that drip from every scene, making Vienna look like some sort of sinking ship, disappearing into a mire of crime and guilt. Reed’s camera fills the edges of the frames with tramps, beggars, the dispossessed and the plain scared – a brilliant snapshot of post-war Europe unsure about the future and ripe for exploitation.

The film looks simply stunning, with Reed’s visuals throwing up images that have stuck in film heritage, from fingers poking through a sewer grill, to the iconic entrance of Harry Lime itself (possibly the most famous entry ever). Shadows loom with gigantic proportions over the streets. A final sewer chase seems to take place in a nightmare world of water, false turns and foreboding architecture. And that final shot! Sublime cinema, the stillest shot in the film, and also a superb capturing of the film’s themes of loyalty, duty and betrayal.

The film was scripted by Graham Greene, and occupies a wonderful corner of Greene-land. His original concept was for Holly (or Rollo in the original script) and Harry to be British public schoolboys – a plan rejected when Hollywood co-funding came to call – but it did allow Holly to be transformed into a naïve American, lost in the cold realities of post-war Europe. Holly believes in the world of black and white, and writes stories where good triumphs over evil in the Wild West. He’s adrift in a Europe where everyone lies habitually, morality is flexible, and nothing is as it seems.

Holly is bound by old chains of loyalty to Harry – but how far does that loyalty stretch? What price personal loyalty when confronted with the impact of what a person has done? Joseph Cotton’s performance is pitch perfect, a middle-ranker who has orbited his whole life around brighter stars like Harry. How one-way was the relationship? Can Holly ever think for himself? 

And is the right thing to do to walk away or try and correct the wrongs done by another?This divide is shown in the relationship between Cotton’s Holly and Alidi Valli’s sensational turn as Harry’s ex-girlfriend. A woman who has seen the harshness of the world, and been through a war-torn life that Holly would struggle to even comprehend, she’s a woman to whom personal loyalty trumps all things. Should you be loyal to the man you know, your experience of him – or do you have a higher loyalty that trumps that? Anna is firmly of the belief that she knows all that she needs to know of Harry and she needs to learn no more. It’s the sort of European post-war compromise that Holly can’t adapt to, the ideas of morality becoming mired in shades of grey.

It’s a world he struggles to adapt to, but is a cold hard reality for Trevor Howard’s Major Calloway – a superb performance of cool reserve that hides a strong sense of justice. Howard’s wry half-smile and control is perfect for the film, and his disgust at the actions of black marketeers is subtly and brilliantly conveyed by both the actor and Reed’s restrained direction – a visit to a children’s ward full of victims of Lime’s penicillin, is notable for leaving everything to our imagination and communicating another loss by showing a Teddy bear being dropped into a box.

And the cause of all this suffering? Why it’s none other than Harry Lime himself. No film ever captured Orson Welles’ impish charm as well as this, his shy grin and air of an enfant terrible turned terrible are brilliantly captured in the boyishly young but demonic Harry. A Mephistopheles placed on earth to tempt men like Holly, Lime argues what do a few people (or dots) here and there really matter in the long run? After all governments sacrifice them all the time – look at Vienna! – why shouldn’t we? What’s the problem? Lime grins and casually outlines a demonic view of the world, casually uses a cheap historical justification or two, and then saunters off never suspecting that he could lose the argument. Like Welles himself, he has all the glamour and magnetism that we could never have, and to live a few moments in his shadow, as Holly and Anna do, is to live a lifetime.

So Holly has to make a choice – the friend he knew, or the strangers he has seen harmed. The film charts the slow passage to making this hard choice, presenting us with a man who refuses to believe his friend could be anything other than the victim of persecution, to the man who is destined to turn him in. With the framework of Carol Reed’s superb filmmaking, it’s still an absolute treat.

And finally, The Third Man is blessed with perhaps the most perfect film score of all time. Recorded by Anton Karas – literally discovered playing the zither on the streets of Vienna – the score is jaunty, lyrical, schoolboyish even but can switch subtly to something quite disconcerting. It perfectly captures the schoolboy bravado of Holly and the childish lack of morals of Lime. As a match with the bombed out Vienna and its rundown, cynical citizens, it’s perfect. Like all things with The Third Man, it just works better than you could ever have hoped.

The Missionary (1982)

Michael Palin sets up a failed mission for change in The Missionary

Director: Richard Loncraine

Cast: Michael Palin (Reverend Charles Fortescue), Maggie Smith (Lady Isabel Ames), Trevor Howard (Lord Henry Ames), Denholm Elliott (Bishop of London), Michael Hordern (Slatterthwaite/Narrator), Graham Crowden (Reverend Fitzbanks), David Suchet (Corbett), Phoebe Nicholls (Deborah Fitzbanks), Roland Culver (Lord Fermleigh), Rosamund Greenwood (Lady Fermleigh), Timothy Spall (Parswell)

In the 1970s Michael Palin co-wrote (with Trevor Jones) a series called Ripping Yarns, affectionate half-hour spoofs of “Boys Own Adventures”, all starring Palin, told with a winning mix of affection, surreal gags and gentle humour. The Missionary is Palin expanding the concept into a full film, written by and starring the future Globe-Trotting Python. Palin plays the Reverend Charles Fortescue, who in 1902 returns from a mission in Africa (teaching the natives the date of composition of Magna Carta) to England and is asked by the Bishop of London to set up a mission in London to “save” prostitutes. Needless to say, things do not according to plan.

Palin’s script is full of some fabulous gags and a gentle, sometimes cheeky, sense of humour that gives you something truly entertaining every moment. If The Missionary does at times feel a collection of sketches and great comedic ideas and characters, rather than a fully formed filmic narrative, that matters slightly less when the jokes are as good as these. Sure, even Palin and Loncraine have said the final act of the film doesn’t completely work and largely fails to add actual narrative conclusion (it feels rather like the film required an ending, so this section was added to give it one), but it doesn’t really matter as much when the sense of fun is as strong as it is here.

Watching this on the recent re-mastered blu-ray from Indicator, this is also a beautifully made film, very well shot and framed by Loncraine with a cracking sense of pace. Visually the jokes work very well, and the push through from comic set-piece to comic set-piece that runs through the opening hour of the film is perfect. 

Palin also is perfect in the leading role, his sense of earnestness and decency, his slight air of a very-British innocence and bashfulness works in hilarious contrast to when (inexplicably to him) finds himself sexually irresistible to a host of ladies. Which sounds, when you write it, like a vanity project if ever I heard it, but never plays like it for a moment as there is a superb, slightly embarrassed, befuddled awkwardness about Palin (which I don’t think any other actor could have done as well) that makes the entire concept work an absolute treat.

It’s part of the extremely British atmosphere of the film, where sex is something deeply embarrassing and slightly shameful, something we are all far too polite to talk about or even acknowledge. Rather than the atmosphere of an end-of-the-pier show the film could have had, instead it has a very dry, rather touching attitude towards sex as something completely natural and everyday, that the repression of the English has elevated to something hugely awkward.

The only person who seems to be in touch with her true feelings and sexuality is Maggie Smith’s sexually liberal Lady Ames, a woman who knows what she wants and is determined to get it come what may. Smith is superbly funny in the role, a part she keeps just the right side of parody, making it very funny but also ring very true. This makes her a complete contrast to Fortescue’s intended (played expertly by Phoebe Nicholls) so repressed she cannot bear to be touched and obsessed with a complex filing system for storing and cross-referencing her fiancée’s letters.

All this happens within a series of sketches that are worth the price of admission themselves. Denholm Elliott has a few excellent scenes as a bullish Bishop, obsessed with sport who seems unable to speak in anything but sporting metaphors. Roland Culver plays a Lord who dies in the middle of an impassioned Fortescue’s pitch for funding, to the intense social embarrassment of his wife (Rosamund Greenwood, very funny). Best of all on the cameo front is Michael Hordern, who practically steals the entire movie as a butler utterly unable to successfully navigate around the gigantic house he works in.

Through this all rides Fortescue, a man with a barely acknowledged sexual drive, who bumbles from escapade to sexcapade with a bright-eyed innocence and determination to do the right thing, but constantly landing himself in trouble. It’s a charming, playful and very British movie and Loncraine and Palin get the tone just right. It’s perhaps a little too close to Ripping Yarns, a fabulous parody of a particular era (and type) of Britishness and British attitudes, and you feel it would be comfortable as a single 45 minute episode. But when the jokes are as cracking as they can be here – and Hordern apologetically leading Fortescue from room to room unable to work out where he is or how he can get to where they want to go, is a pleasure I could watch again and again – then you’ll cut it a lot of slack.

Charlie Bubbles (1968)

Albert Finney and Liza Minnelli deal with ennui in Charlie Bubbles

Director: Albert Finney

Cast: Albert Finney (Charlie Bubbles), Colin Blakely (Smokey Pickles), Billie Whitelaw (Lottie Bubbles), Liza Minnelli (Eliza), Timothy Garland (Jack Bubbles), Richard Pearson (Accountant), Nicholas Phipps (Agent), Peter Sallis (Solicitor), Alan Lake (Airmen), Yootha Joyce (Woman in Café), Wendy Padbury (Woman in Café), Susan Engel (Nanny)

In the late 1960s Albert Finney was possibly the biggest star in British cinema. It was a status that the private and reserved Finney found challenging – and fed heavily into his only directorial effort, Charlie Bubbles, an amiable and whimsical journey through the alienation that afflicts a successful northern writer, bored by the world of success in London but no longer at home in his working class roots. It’s a story that spoke to both Albert Finney and the film’s scriptwriter Shelagh Delaney.

Because writing is really just a hobby, not a viable career path as Charlie Bubbles (Albert Finney) is constantly reminded when he returns to his home in Manchester (“Are you still working sir, or do you just do the writing now?” queries an old friend of his father). Charlie is hugely successful but also hugely bored, wrapped in ennui and barely able to engage in his surroundings be that his wealth, his London settings, working class clubs he visits with fellow writer Smokey (Colin Blakely), the attentions of his enthusiastic secretary Eliza (Liza Minnelli) and his responsibilities to his ex-wife Lottie (Billie Whitelaw) and son Jack (Timothy Garland). (The poster by the way gives a hilariously incorrect idea of the plot as some sort of lothario drama).

The film largely doesn’t really have a plot as such, just follows the drifting lack of engagement Charlie feels for everything around him. It’s largely a showcase for some nifty heartfelt writing and some intriguingly imaginative direction from Finney. It’s actually a bit of a shame watching this that Finney didn’t direct another film, as he not only works well with actors but has an original eye for visuals. One scene is shot entirely through a bank of security cameras, others take interesting angles on everything from lunchtime meetings (with many too-camera addresses) to love scenes (shot with an efficient boredom that hammers home how little Bubbles seem engaged with it). 

It’s also a lovely little showcase for Shelagh Delaney, whose script is crammed with juicy little lines and playful moments, as Charlie struggles from event to event. It’s a very bitty and drifting storyline, that deliberately heads towards no particular destination. In that it reflects the aimlessness of Charlie’s own life. There is nothing particularly wrong with this, as the various sketches of which it is made up work rather well, particularly as they often engagingly switch from style and tone. There are a few other films I can think of that open with a ludicrous food fight between two friends, two guys pretending to be mannequins in a department store, a depressed man shooting pop guns at a video surveillance image, a Manchester United football game, an ex-wife catching chickens and finally the hero drifting away in a balloon.

How you go with this sort of thing really depends how much you engage with the action on offer or the whimsical style of the entire shaggy dog story. It also rather depends on how much sympathy you feel for someone burdened with immense wealth and fame from overwhelming artistic and critical success. The film gives some taste of this – staying with his ex-wife she is pestered by no less than three reporters arriving unannounced eager to hear the words of the boy wonder – but it’s pretty hard for us plebs to understand. Which I guess is the film’s point.

After all every time Charlie heads anywhere around his own working class roots in Manchester, he is met with either a snide insinuation that he has lost touch with his roots or a confused lack of understanding about the London lifestyle he has left behind. Charlie himself feels like he has no empathy for the wealth of London, but struggles to feel at home anymore in a world he has left behind. Interestingly he seems most comfortable in his ex-wife’s country cottage in the middle of nowhere.

Perhaps it’s hard to really understand the feelings you could have about the burdens of success without going through this sort of thing yourself. Finney certainly had – though it’s interesting that he the actor and he the director seem to be on a different page. While the film tries to have an engaging lightness about it, Finney’s own performance is weighted down and overly somber, so low-key as to be almost pushing against the tone of the film. Perhaps it’s a role Finney needed to take in order to get the film made – or perhaps he directed the film because no one else would – but even Finney himself was critical afterwards of his performance as being too heavy for the film.

It does mean however that the lightness and perfect touch of the rest of the actors are needed to balance him out. Liza Minnelli (in nearly her film debut) is superb as an effervescent young woman, delighted with things around her, warm and eager to engage with people around her. Billie Whitelaw is also great (and BAFTA winning) as Charlie’s ex-wife who he continues to share a vast amount of romantic and sexual chemistry with, for all she has no patience for his ennui and the intrusions his fame brings to her life.

The film drifts engagingly along, before finally departing with its star in a hot balloon into the sky. It’s the sort of whimsical fantasy that also feels like a commentary from those wrapped up in the surprising boom of kitchen sink drama British films, that brought fame and wealth to those involved, but also pulled them away from feeling comfortable and happy in their own roots. It’s perhaps hard to understand without having gone through an experience like that, but it works here because most of the rest of the film has an imaginative charm to it.

Philomena (2013)

Judi Dench and Steve Coogan go on a road trip into the past in Philomena

Director: Stephen Frears

Cast: Judi Dench (Philomena Lee), Steve Coogan (Martin Sixsmith), Michelle Fairley (Sally Mitchell), Barbara Jefford (Sister Hildegarde), Anna Maxwell Martin (Jane), Mare Winningham (Mare), Sophie Kennedy Clarke (Young Philomena), Kate Fleetwood (Young Sister Hildegarde), Sean Mahon (Michael Hess), Peter Hermann (Pete Olsen)

Describing Philomena as a sort of odd-couple buddy road movie with a heart seems like exactly the sort of trite journalistic spin that Coogan’s Martin Sixsmith spends most of the film deriding. But it’s a pretty accurate label, in this heartfelt and entertaining film that mixes looking at Irish church scandals, with both the shallowness and promise of journalism and a heartfelt meditation on the virtues of forgiveness.

Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan), a former government spin doctor, dismissed from his position is struggling to find a new purpose for himself in writing and journalism. After a chance meeting with waitress Jane (Anna Maxwell Martin) at his editor’s New Year party, he is introduced to her mother Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) an Irish woman whose son was given up for adoption by the convent Philomena had been sent to over 50 years ago. She has spent years trying to find him, but made no progress. At first Sixsmith is dismissive of this human interest story, but slowly begins to invest in the story, as he and Philomena travel to the US to try and find her lost son.

Philomena is a film that doesn’t pull punches in its moral outrage at the decisions made by convents in Ireland in the 1950s to separate ‘sinful’ mothers from their children and find them new homes. The distress of the young Philomena is clear, and the steps the church took to put barriers in the path of helping these children and their parents reuniting (from burning records to bare-faced lies) are as infuriating as their moral superiority is outrageous in its hypocritical cruelty. But it’s not a film that wants to make a simple or political point. 

If the film has a problem with religion, it’s with the institutions that run it, not the faith itself. For all her ill-treatment, Philomena’s faith has been unshaken by all that has happened to her, and she like the film can separate the flaws of individuals from the principle of faith. The film may take aim at the Catholic church for making people feel sex is something dirty and shameful, but it won’t turn its guns on God himself. Near the film’s conclusion, Philomena even rebukes Martin for his rage (on her behalf) against the nuns who treated her wrongly, pointing out that she is the victim not him and that how she chooses to respond to it is her business – and if she chooses reconciliation and forgiveness that is her choice.

It’s a part of the films light and shade, very well drawn out in Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope’s script that mixes serious reflections on such matters as truth, faith and forgiveness with some good jokes and entertaining banter. The film deviates considerably from the true story it was based on – Philomena in real life never went to America – but in doing so it unlocks the story as a filmic narrative. The odd mother-son type relationship that the distant and cynical Sixsmith and the warm and engaging Philomena develop as they travel America gives the film heart, not least as Philomena constantly surprises Sixsmith with her worldliness and socially moderate views. The two characters end up bonding in a way that is straight out of a Movie-101 but it stills very real and touching.

A lot of that works so well because of the chemistry between the two leads. Judi Dench is just about perfect as Philomena. Dench expertly mixes the twinkle and charm of Philomena’s incessant Irish patter and capacity for small-talk (and fascination with everything from Mills and Boon to hotel toiletry) with a devastating emotional vulnerability and aching pain at the loss of her child, which has clearly been part of her life for so long she has learned to a certain degree to live with it. In one of her greatest screen performances, Dench will have you laughing one minute then spin on a sixpence with genuine emotional devastation or a capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation that seems impossible after what she has been through. The film builds real affection for both her old-world politeness charm and Irish loquaciousness and her emotional strength of character.

She’s well matched with Coogan, who uses his deadpan archness to excellent effect as Sixsmith. Although the film is called Philomena, it’s Sixsmith who represents the audience, and it’s his expectation of being emotionally manipulated by the story that we share at the start – and his growing investment in it that we also share. Coogan keeps the details very small, but along with a skill at delivering deadpan one-lines, he also has a considerable capacity for moral outrage and genuineness (well hidden) that serves the film very well. Sixsmith starts the story as self-pitying, supercilious and interested only in selling the story – the fact he ends it so bound up in rage at the treatment of Philomena, is a testament to Coogan’s skills for subtle character development.

Frears’ directs with a small-scale sharpness of camera and lack of flash that has been at the foreground of so many of his films, letting the focus lie on story and character. The road movie sequences that this film highlights so much are little triumphs of small-scale character story-telling, and while the jokes they feature – and even the emotional points they make – are familiar they are delivered with such grace and feeling they nearly all land.

Perhaps reflecting Coogan’s experience with the British media, it’s Fleet Street that emerges as the most 2D here, with Michelle Fairley playing a tabloid editor interested only in the story, delighting in tragic twists as they will make for even better headlines. It’s the film’s only real crudeness, but packaged within such a well-acted and richly entertaining whole, that makes a strong case for forgiveness not vindication being the true path to inner peace, it doesn’t seem to matter.

Scum (1979)

Ray Winstone finds prison life a tough proposition in Scum

Director: Alan Clarke

Cast: Ray Winstone (Carlin), Mick Ford (Archer), Julian Firth (Davis), John Blundell (Banks), Phil Daniels (Richards), Alan Igborn (Meakin), Alrick Riley (Angel), Patrick Murray (Dougan), Peter Howell (Governor), John Judd (Mr Sands), Philip Jackson (Mr Greaves), John Grillo (Mr Goodyear), Bill Dean (Mr Duke)

In 1977 Alan Clarke’s searing condemnation of the borstal system in the UK, Scum, was shot as a BBC Play for Today. Outraged at its content, pressure in the press led to the film being banned. But that didn’t change what an electric bit of work it was – and when talk turned to creating a film version, having a filmed version of the script already in existence that could be used as a pitch tool was invaluable. So was born the film version of Scum, with much of the same cast, a higher budget (although still tiny by comparison to other films) and a chance for Clarke to bring his uncompromisingly harsh vision to the big screen.

Three young boys arrive at a borstal: Davis (Julian Firth) is a sensitive youngster who ran away from his previous borstal, Angel (Alrick Riley) a black kid who suffers the systemic racism at every level of the system and Carlin (Ray Winstone) a hard man with a dangerous reputation, who punched a warden at his last borstal. On arrival, the three are identified as requiring being “broken” by staff: Davis is bullied, Angel abused and Carlin is placed at the mercy of the wing’s “Daddy” Banks (John Blundell), suffering beatings with the authorities turning a blind eye. The entire system is rotten to the core and, while Carlin eventually rises up to take over the position of “Daddy”, it changes little in a young offender’s prison rife with racism, sadism, violence, abuse and rape. 

Scum is almost unbelievably grim and pessimistic for this system of incarceration, finding nothing to redeem or excuse the system across its entire running time. The borstal is a wintery hell on Earth, with justice and sympathy nowhere to be seen. While the system claims to be helping its inmates (aged from early teens to early twenties) to find new skills and purpose in life, its real function seems to be trying to beat discipline and subservience into its inmates by all means necessary. While the Governor (a silkly patrician Peter Howell) may talk faith, duty and country he oversees a system where the wardens ruthlessly beat the inmates, encourage them to ‘discipline’ each other, turn a blind eye to violence and abuse, encourage an atmosphere of racial loathing and generally show no concern or interest in any boy’s problem that can’t be solved without punching them in the mouth.

It’s a world Carlin is dropped into, and he knows it well. Played by Ray Winstone with a chippy anger that never seems that far from bursting to the surface, Carlin might want at first to keep his head down but quickly accepts the only way to survive in this dog-eat-dog world is to be the top dog. There will certainly be no justice from the wardens, who beat him on arrival as a trouble-maker, and set the Wing’s alphas on him to break his spirit. Casually beaten in the middle of the night, it’s the bruised Carlin who is sent to solitary confinement for fighting while his attackers go free. He is joined by Davis, framed for theft and Angel, for whom being black seems to be crime enough (walloped by a warden, and spilling food across his room, he is sent down for keeping his cell untidy).

What’s striking in this film though is that, as much as we are meant to think Carlin might be the hero, Clarke is smarter than that. He carefully watches Carlin – a tight-control on Winstone’s face that promises retributive violence is on the way – for almost forty minutes adjust in this system, before he takes matters into his hand. The film’s most famous sequence – shot in one dizzying tracking shot that captures the immediacy of Carlin’s putsch – sees Carlin beat Bank’s weasily sidekick Richards (Phil Daniels) with two snooker balls in a sock, before heading up to his dormitory toilet to beat Banks black-and-blue (and bloody), the cut finally coming to show us Carlin (from Banks POV) screaming at him “I’m the Daddy now”. It’s a masterclass of a sequence, electric in its execution and gives a moment of pleasing oomph (for all its extreme violence) as it shows Carlin finally getting a bit of justice.

Only Carlin’s institution as the Daddy brings largely only a change of figurehead rather than real change. Sure Carlin isn’t quite the bully Banks is, but he’s an unashamed racist, a violent thug, who ruthlessly takes over the money smuggling operation Banks was running (but taking a higher cut) and takes control of another wing by beating its “Daddy” (another black inmate) with an iron bar. Carlin is also quickly adopted by the wardens, just as Banks was, agreeing to maintain peace and control in the borstal in exchange for certain privileges like his own room. Carlin may at first seem to us the angel of retribution – but he’s really a ruthless survivor who is perfectly happy with the status quo so long as he on the top of it.

But then no one has any interest in improving things. The governor is only interested in the appearance of gentility. The wardens couldn’t care less about the rehabilitation of the inmates so long as they have a quiet life. The inmates drift through their life there, never questioning the violence around them. The matron is well-being, but hopelessly rules-bound, whose concern for the boy’s welfare never develops into seeing them as human beings. It’s a systemic failure.

There are other perspectives of course. Possibly the most fascinating character is Mick Ford (replacing David Threlfall in the original production) as Archer, a precociously intelligent inmate in his early twenties, possibly the only one who has read the rulebooks and enjoys running intellectual rings around the wardens. Causing trouble in his “own little way”, he claims to be a vegetarian (requiring a complex set of arrangements to be put in place to feed him separately) and also unable to wear leather boots (requiring his own special plastic boots to be located) and provokes the bible-bashing Governor with thoughts of converting to Islam and Sikhism. 

But he’s also a smart cookie, who recognises (in a fascinating conversation with veteran warder Dukes) that the entire system is a trap, both for the inmates and the wardens, imprisoning them in a system where criminal acts are endemic, the wardens are trapped and brutalised by the system as much as the prisoners and the whole system manifestly fails to do anything other than inoculate Darwinian violence into its inmates (Archer is of course promptly put on report for this cutting analysis). The scene – a key part of the film’s argument – is also a tribute to the skilful writing of Roy Minton, whose script bubbles with both quotable and sadly realistic dialogue.

Clarke’s entire film is the exploration of this violence and the mixture of hypocrisy and denial down to outward condonation and support it receives from the Governor down to the wardens. Any proper review of the conditions in the Borstal is impossible, as it would rock the boat and fly in the face of the positive message the Governor wishes to promote about his institution. Effort is put into putting the boys at loggerheads with each other (usually on racial grounds) as a divide and rule. The weak are happily left at the bottom of the rung, not least the tragic Davis, a sensitive boy (marvellously played by Julian Firth with a heartbreaking vulnerability) totally failed by everyone around him.

Clarke’s final act spins out of a disturbingly intense rape scene of a young inmate (an act witnessed with a sneer by sinister warden Sands, a repulsive John Judd) – the scene a mix of careful filming to show nothing too graphic, and heart-rendering intensity in its vulnerability and violence. The victim is totally ignored, leading to tragic consequences – another difficult to watch scene which hammers home both the cruel indifference of the warders and the helplessness of the victim. The eventual riot this is all leading too is, however, painfully futile: scapegoats are selected at random and beaten senseless, the status quo is reinforced by a bland platitude speech from the Governor. 

Directed with fire and passion by Alan Clarke, a virtuoso of realism and master of social conscious, Scumis a masterpiece of anger, of boiling resentment against systems that do not work and do not care that they do not work. Packed with astonishing performances and some sublime camera work and film-making skill, it’s a must-see.

The Dam Busters (1955)

Richard Todd leads the most famous bombing raid ever in The Dam Busters

Director: Michael Anderson

Cast: Richard Todd (Wing Commander Guy Gibson), Michael Redgrave (Barnes Wallis), Ursula Jeans (Mrs Molly Wallis), Basil Sydney (Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris), Patrick Barr (Captain Joseph “Mutt” Summers), Ernest Clark (Air Vice-Marshal Ralph Cochrane), Derek Farr (Group Captain John Whitworth)

It’s famous for its stirring theme. Those bouncing bombs. The fact that George Lucas, while still completing the special effects, spliced in the final bombing runs into his first cut of Star Wars. But where does The Dam Busters sit today as a film? 

In 1942, aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave) is working on a plan to take out the German dams on the Ruhr, a strike that could cripple German heavy industry. Conventional bombs can never cause enough damage, and the dams are protected from torpedo attack. So Wallis has a crazy idea – to build a bouncing bomb that will skim the top of the water, hitting the dam, with its top spin taking it down to the base of the dam for detonation. It’s a crazy idea – but it finally wins favour, with Wing Commander Guy Gibson (played by real-life World War II paratroop veteran Richard Todd) given command over an operation that promises to be risky and dangerous beyond belief.

The Dam Busters doesn’t really have much in the way of plot, being instead a rather straight-forward, even dry in places, run through of the mechanics involved in planning the operation and overcoming the engineering difficulties that stood in the way of the operation. Throw into that our heroes overcoming the various barriers and administrative hiccups put in the way by the authorities and you have a pretty standard story of British pluck and ingenuity coming up with a left-field solution that saves the day. (Though Barnes Wallis denied he faced any bureaucratic opposition like the type his fictional counterpart struggled with for most of the first forty minutes).

Of course, the film is also yet another advert for the “special nature” of the British under fire, a national sense of inherent destiny and ingenuity that has frequently done as much harm as good. Made in co-operation with the RAF, it’s also a striking tribute to the stiff-upper-lipped bravery of the RAF during the war, and the sense of sacrifice involved in flying these deadly missions.  

In fact it’s striking that the film’s final few notes are not of triumph after the completion of the operation, and the destruction of the two dams, but instead the grim burden of surviving. After 56 men have been killed on the mission, Barnes Wallis regrets even coming up with the idea. The final action we see Gibson performing is walking quietly back to his office to write letters to the families. Anderson’s camera pans over the empty breakfast table, set for pilots who have not returned, and then over the abandoned belongings of the dead still left exactly where they last placed them. It’s sombre, sad and reflective – and probably the most adult moment of the film.

Because other than that, it’s a jolly charge around solving problems with a combination of Blue Peter invention, mixed with a sort of Top Gear can-do spirit. Michael Redgrave is very good as the calm, professorial, dedicated Barnes Wallis, constantly returning to the drawing board with a reserved, eccentric resignation to fix yet another prototype. The sequences showing the engineering problems being met and overcome are interesting and told with a quirky charm that makes them perhaps one of the best examples of such things made in film. 

The material covering the building of the flight team is far duller by comparison, despite a vast array of soon-to-be-more-famous actors (George Baker, Nigel Stock, Robert Shaw etc.) doing their very best “the few” performances. Basically, generally watching a series of pilots working out the altitude they need to fly at in training situations is just not as interesting as watching the boffins figure out how to make the impossible possible.

The flight parts of the film really come into their own in the final act that covers the operation itself. An impressive display of special effects at the time (even if they look a bit dated now), the attack is dramatic, stirring and also costly (the film allows beats of tragedy as assorted crews are killed over the course of the mission). The attack is brilliantly constructed and shot by Michael Anderson, and very accurate to the process of the actual operation, in a way that fits in with the air of tribute that hangs around the whole film.

All this reverence to those carrying means that we overlook completely the lasting impact of the mission. “Bomber” Harris (here played with a solid gruffness by Basil Sydney) later considered the entire operation a waste of time, money and resources. Barnes Wallis begged for a follow-up to hammer home the advantage, but it never happened. The Germans soon restored their economic capability in the Ruhr. Similarly, today it’s more acknowledged the attack killed over 600 civilians and over 1000 Russian POWs working as slave labour in the Ruhr. Such things are of course ignored – the film even throws in a moment of watching German workers flee to safety from a flooding factory floor, to avoid showing any deaths on the ground.

And of course, the film is also (unluckily) infamous for the name of Gibson’s dog. I won’t mention the name, but when I say the dog is black and ask you to think of the worst possible word to use as its name and you’ve got it. It does mean the word gets bandied about a fair bit, not least when it is used as a code-word for a successful strike against the dam. Try and tune it out.

The Dam Busters is a solid and impressive piece of film-making, even if it is low on plot and more high on documentary ticking-off of facts. But it’s also reverential, a little dry and dated and avoids looking at anything involved in the mission with anything approaching a critical eye. With its unquestioning praise for “the British way”, it’s also a film that reassures those watching it that there is no need for real analysis and insight into the state of our nation, but instead that we should buckle down and trust in the divine guiding hand that always pulls Britain’s irons out of the fire.