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This week’s Flick of the Week takes with Donna Reed from her Oscar winning role as Alma 'Lorene' Burke in From Here to Eternity to the movie role she is probably most famous for, Mary Hatch), in Frank Capra’s absolute classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. 

I must say right off the bat that It’s a Wonderful Life is in my all-time Top 5 favourite movies. In reality there are probably about 8 or 9 films in that Top 5, but this one would never be pushed out. I love it on many levels and have done since I first saw it as a 20 year old in 1992.

It was a film I had read about, but never come across. Unlike America, where it is a staple of TV at Christmas time, in Australia it is rarely seen, and does not hold any grip on our culture in the way it does in America. I came across a video copy for sale in Woolworths for bugger all (literally – I think it was $4.99, which even back then was easily spent for a student surviving on Austudy). I was living in a flat at the time, and my flatmate was out that Friday night and no one else was all that interested in watching an old 1946 black and white flick, and so I watched it on my own.

This turned out to be a good thing because by the end of the film I was an absolute wreck. I don’t mean a little bit misty eyed, or just blinking away a few tears. I mean bawling my eyes out and going through two hankies. Such a state is generally not best displayed in front of friends when you’re 20 and struggling to maintain some level of coolness (a struggle I pretty well lost I must say).

The film concerns George Bailey (James Stewart) and his life in the small town of Bedford Falls. It follows his life from childhood to adulthood. We see others leave the town and go on to better fortunes and what George believes are better lives, while George himself – although the smartest one in his class – is left behind. Along the way he gets married (to Mary Hatch) and things are comfortable if boring, until the fateful day where his life seemingly falls apart and then due to divine intervention (Clarence Oddbody, Angel Second Class) he gets to see the world as it would have been had he never lived.

For those who have not seen it I won’t give away the ending suffice to say this is a Frank Capra film and Capraesque is not an adjective used to describe films with unhappy endings.

Other Frank Capra films such as Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Mr Deeds Goes to Town, You Can’t Take it With You, It Happened One Night, Arsenic and Old Lace, rightfully sit high up in the American film canon, but this one I think easily outshines them. It was also Capra’s last great film, which is odd given he was only 49 at the time and would live till 1991. 

But while Capra is a masterful director, and the screenplay – based on a short story by Philip van Doren Stern – which included uncredited work from left wingers, Dorothy Porter, Clifford Oddets and Dalton Trumbo is just about the best tale ever of the little man fighting against the rich and powerful, the film is carried to great heights by one man – James Stewart.

Filmed in 1946, this was Stewart's first film role after serving in the American Army as a bomber pilot during WWII. Some actors’ roles in the war may have been elevated a bit by studio publicity, but with Stewart there was no need to pad. He joined the Army Air Corps before Pearl Harbour (he was33 at the time), flew 20 combat missions over Europe, won the Distinguish Flying Cross twice and finished the war as a Major. He was also a lifelong conservative – and an early supporter of Ronald Reagan. Despite this – and showing politics is not the be all of life he was also best friends with Henry Fonda who was of the complete opposite political view.

That Stewart was such a conservative is rather surprising when you see him in this role. Far from being a paean to the great American Dream – where hard work and honesty will see you succeed – here we see George working hard, being honest, finding some small measure of success, but being grossly dissatisfied with it all. Some of this is his own choosing – he turns down an offer to get in “on the ground floor’ of the plastics industry run by his old school friend Sam Wainwright – but mostly it is because he feels trapped into doing that honest, hard working, proper thing. He stays while his brother goes. He stays while Sam Wainwright goes. Sure at the end (ok bit of a spoiler) he is declared the richest man in town, but the reality is that has happened in spite of his best efforts – and is in no way a monetary sense either.  George wanted to leave – he wanted to do “great things”. He tells his father his attitude to this supposedly perfect example of small town America that is Bedford Falls, and his father’s small business running the Bailey “Building and Loan” (a type of Building Society):

George Bailey: Oh, now Pop, I couldn't. I couldn't face being cooped up for the rest of my life in a shabby little office... Oh, I'm sorry Pop, I didn't mean that, but this business of nickels and dimes and spending all your life trying to figure out how to save three cents on a length of pipe... I'd go crazy. I want to do something big and something important.
Pa Bailey: You know, George, I feel that in a small way we are doing something important. Satisfying a fundamental urge. It's deep in the race for a man to want his own roof and walls and fireplace, and we're helping him get those things in our shabby little office.
George Bailey: I know, Dad. I wish I felt... But I've been hoarding pennies like a miser in order to... Most of my friends have already finished college. I just feel like if I don't get away, I'd bust.

George’s tale is not the tale of American capitalism succeeding; more it is the tale that shows success is not found through chasing financial riches but the riches of friends and family.

The great thing about Stewart's performance is we see him as Jimmy Stewart, all around good guy, but then we see him “bust”. On the day when it all goes wrong – $8,000 from the Building and Loan has been lost by George's uncle (though George takes the blame) – we see George Bailey get angry at his kids, his wife, his kid’s teacher. And at no stage does Stewart give the audience a little nod to let them know it’ll be ok – that he’s just pretending. We see the pent up rage of a man who has been wanting to get out of this crummy town being let loose and it ain’t pretty.

When the angel does arrive, George is cynical and contemptuous. The first thing he does is take him to a bar (bear in mind this is Christmas Eve!). The scorn and anger in his performance only dissipates when he discovers that his wish to never have been born means his wife Mary does not know him.

I think Stewart’s performance is the greatest leading-acting role in any Hollywood film. Better than any by Bogart, or Grant, or Clift or Brando, or Hoffmann or Nicholson or Pacino or De Niro. Heck it’s better than Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption! He truly runs the gamut of emotion from A to Z and back. We see him young and cocky. We see him assertive and bold. We see him loving, caring, and kind. We see him angry, hurt, and truly at the end of his rope.

Here is a scene of George arguing with the town richest man Mr Potter (Lionel Barrymore) over the value of the Building and Loan. It displays the brash force behind Stewart's performance perfectly:

Now compare that scene to one later in the film when George goes to Potter after the $8,000 has been lost:

I cried when I watched this film (and still do – though I have seen it many, many times) not because of the cutesy things like his daughter telling us that “teacher says every time a bell rings and angel gets its wings”, but because the journey George Bailey takes was one I could relate to oddly even as a 20 year old. That desperate desire to do something with my life, that want to shake the dust of the small town in which I grew up of the shoes of my feet. That knowing knowledge that were I George I would probably make the same choices he does.

This film has become so ubiquitous to American culture that it has been parodied in The Simpsons and South Park and just about anything else that wants to take a stab at American culture. And while I am cynical of media and politics and manipulative films, this one destroys my cynicism because it comes from such an honest core. It is not all saccharine and angels. It is actually a film of frustration and greed and struggle. It is that basis that makes the ending so magnificent.

When the film was released it was moderately successful. It made back its budget, was nominated for  5 Oscars – including Best Picture, Actor and Director. It didn’t win any. Now I suggest it would win the lot, and a few more besides.

A great film.

Previous Flicks of the Week:

From Here to Eternity – Burt Lancaster
Sweet Smell of Success – Elmer Bernstein
The Great Escape – Richard Attenborough
Elizabeth – Geoffrey Rush
Pirates of the Caribbean – Johnny Depp
Platoon – Willem Dafoe
Inside Man – Clive Owen
Gosford Park – Robert Altman
The Player – Tim Robbins
Bull Durham – Kevin Costner
Field of Dreams – Ray Liotta
Goodfellas – Samuel L Jackson
Pulp Fiction – Frank Whaley
Swimming with Sharks – Kevin Spacey
Working Girl – Sigourney Weaver
Aliens – Bill Paxton
Apollo 13 – Ron Howard
American Graffiti – Richard Dreyfus 
The Graduate – Dustin Hoffmann
All the President’s Men – Jason Robards
Once Upon a Time in the West – Henry Fonda
Mister Roberts – Jack Lemmon
Some Like it Hot – Billy Wilder
Witness for the Prosecution – Marlene Dietrich
Touch of Evil – Orson Welles
The Third Man – Trevor Howard
Brief Encounter - David Lean
Lawrence of Arabia – Claude Reins
Casablanca – Humphrey Bogart
The Big Sleep – Howard Hawks
His Girl Friday – Cary Grant
Charade – John Williams
Schindler’s List – Liam Neeson
Love Actually – Emma Thompson
Sense and Sensibility – Ang Lee
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Michelle Yeoh
Tomorrow Never Dies – Pierce Brosnan
The Thomas Crown Affair – Renee Russo
In the Line of Fire – Clint Eastwood
Where Eagles Dare – Richard Burton
Zulu – Stanley Baker
The Guns of Navarone – Peter Yates
Breaking Away – Dennis Quaid
The Right Stuff – Ed Harris
The Rock – Sean Connery
The Longest Day – Richard Beymer
West Side Story – Ernest Lehmann
North By Northwest - The first one

This week’s flick of the week (yes I realise it has been a while!) takes us with Burt Lancaster from his role as gossip columnist JJ Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success, to his role as Sgt Milton Warden in the multi Academy Award winning From Here to Eternity.

Lancaster is a star who really wasn’t that big a star, and yet he had a career most actors would kill for. From his first role in The Killers to his last notable role in a film – in Field of Dreams, there is 43 years of work in films like Sweet Smell of Success, Run Silent Run Deep, Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Rainmaker, Elmer Gantry, Judgement at Nurmeburg… and that only gets us to 1961. However, only once in his career was he listed in the Quigley Poll of Top 10 Money Making Stars. The poll has been going since 1932, and is a pretty good marker of who are the main draw cards to films. That such a giant of the film industry only was in the Top 10 once is rather bizarre given that even Paul Hogan was able to get listed twice in the 1980s. 

The year Lancaster was in the top 10 was 1956 – the year in which he starred in Trapeze with Tony Curtis and The Rainmaker with Katherine Hepburn:

1. William Holden
2. John Wayne
3. James Stewart
4. Burt Lancaster
5. Glenn Ford
6. Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis
7. Gary Cooper
8. Marilyn Monroe
9. Kim Novak
10. Frank Sinatra

The next year he was in Sweet Smell of Success and Gunfight at the OK Corral, but he dropped out of the list – replaced by the likes of Rock Hudson, Pat Boone and Elvis Presley. So he was a guy who was as dependable as a rock (certainly more so than Hudson), but never really among the top stars – never really up there with say John Wayne. If he were an AFL player he’d be more the Tyson Edwards – 300 gamer, but no all-Australian appearances – rather than a Gary Ablett, Chris Judd or Andrew McLeod.

(As an aside the Top 10 of 2010 was:
1. Johnny Depp
2. Angelina Jolie
3. Robert Downey, Jr.
4. Matt Damon
5. Steve Carell
6. Tom Hanks
7. Denzel Washington
8. Leonardo DiCaprio
9. George Clooney
10. Anne Hathaway

Which goes to prove that even when you combine Number 1 and 2 in the same film, it doesn’t mean it will be any good)

With Burt, you knew what you’d get: a guy who would not embarrass himself in the a scene with a great actor, and when in lesser films (eg Airport) he’d give the film some gravitas. Bugger the Quigley Poll – they guy was a giant, and he sits nicely in the Hollywood Hall of Fame – not top echelon maybe, but he would’ve got in on the first ballot.

In From Here to Eternity he has notionally the lead role of Sgt Warden, who has a “torrid” affair (for the 1950s at least) with his commanding officer’s wife – Deborah Kerr. The film was an adaptation of what was seen to be an unfilmable book written by James Jones. Unfilmable because the book is pretty well replete with “Fuck” on every page, features homosexuality, brutal beatings in an Army stockade, a love affair with a prostitute, a useless officer whose incompetence is rewarded with a promotion, and a woman who is unable to have children because she caught gonorrhoea from her cheating husband, the useless officer. So yeah, that’ll play well in middle America!

Bear in mind as well, the film code in use at the time was pretty strict compared to now – and we’re talking relative to a code at the moment where The King’s Speech was rated R because is uses the F word too often.

How to fix this? Well the brothel and prostitutes become a club and girls who talk and dance with the men, the homosexuality is gone, so too the gonorrhoea, in place the wife is the one with a past, the officer now gets demoted, and the entire quarter of the novel that is set in the stockade is banished from the screen.

So yeah, “adaptation” is a very loose term.

It would be good to see the book given a proper adaptation, but I doubt even now it’d be done faithfully.

Given the changes it would have been easy for the film to have been a dud: luckily for us, the cast was brilliant.

Lancaster was perfectly cast as Sgt Warden. He looks like someone whom could be described, as he is in the film, as “the best soldier I ever saw”. He exudes about as much masculinity as anyone in the 1950s could, and the roll in the surf with Kerr – brief though it is – is among the most iconic Hollywood film images.

There’s also Frank Sinatra in his Oscar winning role of Angelo Maggio. Pretty much playing himself he resurrected his career. Prior to the film his career seemed over; afterwards he became Frank Sinatra, King of Hollywood, and leader of the Rat Pack.

The female roles are played by Kerr and Donna Reed both playing against their type as, respectively, the wife and the quasi- prostitute. Kerr is a bit matronly for the role of Karen Holmes – she doesn’t really strike me as someone for whom Warden would risk his career – she never quite seems the type to engage in this type of conversation with Warden:

Karen Holmes: I never knew it could be like this! Nobody ever kissed me the way you do.
Sergeant Milton Warden: Nobody?
Karen Holmes: No, nobody.
Sergeant Milton Warden: Not even one? Out of all the men you've been kissed by?
Karen Holmes: [giggling] Now that'd take some figuring. How many men do you think there've been?
Sergeant Milton Warden: I wouldn't know. Can't you give me a rough estimate?
Karen Holmes: Not without an adding machine. Do you have the adding machine with you?
Sergeant Milton Warden: I forgot to bring it.

Donna Reed though is excellent in her Oscar winning role as Alma 'Lorene' Burke, the girl who is pretending to be a society girl, but in fact comes from a poor upbringing, and who falls for the absurdly named Private Robert E Lee Prewitt, played by Montgomery Clift.

Lancaster and Kerr may have the iconic scene in the surf; Sinatra and Reed may have the Oscars, but this film is all Clift’s. The oft told story is that Lancaster was so intimidated by Clift’s screen presence that prior to their first scene together he was shaking with fear. True or not, it certainly is believable because Clift conveys an intensity that few other actors have ever been able to achieve on the screen.

His role is Pvt Prewett, the “thirty year man” who transfers from the bugle corps to the rifle company but whom refuses to box in the regiment boxing competition because he once blinded a guy in a fight.  As punishment the company boxers put him through the wringer (though in a much nicer way than in the book). His only escape is Lorene whom he goes AWOL to be live in a kind of pretend marriage, only to return to the unit when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

Clift had an odd career. He turned down the lead role in Sunset Blvd, that was played by William Holden, the lead in High Noon played by Gary Cooper, the lead in Somebody Up Their Likes Me that gave Paul Newman his start, and also Dean Martin’s role in Rio Bravo. As an actor in the 1950s you could have done a lot worse than accept all the film role Clift turned down. Yet even without those roles, and with perhaps only 5 or 6 truly memorable roles, he remains an icon – perhaps an icon for tortured souls – to whit the beautiful REM song on their Automatic for the People album, “Monty Got a Raw Deal”.

He was the first method actor to arrive in Hollywood: he was in Red River and The Search in 1948 – Brando only appeared in a film in 1950. His personal life was dominated by drug addiction –exacerbated after a car crash in 1956 – and the usual facade needed to be observed by gay/bisexual actors at that time. His closest friend was Elizabeth Taylor, with whom he appeared in A Place in the Sun in 1951. He died early – at the age of 46, by which time it had been a good 6 years since he had done any acting of note. His career is the pure bright star – less than a decade of strong performances, but the type of actor other actors aspire to be.

His best performance is here as Prewitt, the bugler who loves the army although the army sure as hell doesn’t love him. Prewitt the “hardhead” who refuses to buckle under pressure. Prewitt, the guy who sticks up for his mate Maggio and who revenges his death by killing the sadistic Sgt “Fatso” Judson (played by Ernest Borgnine) in a knife fight. Prewitt, who flees the army to set up a love nest with Lorene, but whose loyalty to the army has him running back when war begins.

I watch the film really to just watch Clift. Quite often now I’ll fast forward the scenes with Lancaster and Kerr because they seem somewhat flat by comparison – almost like TV melodrama (though not quite). My favourite scene is this of Prewitt playing the bugle the night after Maggio’s death – he was beaten to death by Fatso while in the stockade. It shows that while Prewitt may have professed love to Lorene, his real bond was with his fellow soldiers and the men of the army – as Warden says at the end – he loved the army more than any soldier he knew. I love the way the other bugler looks at the bugle when Prewitt hands it back to him – as though he knows he’ll never play at that level.

This film also contains one of my favourite lines from The Simpsons. In the episode “Boy Scouts’n’ the Hood” where Ernest Borgnine appears as himself, he introduces himself to a group of boys:

Ernest: Hiya!  I'm sure you kids know me best as Sergeant Fatso Judson in "From Here to Eternity".
         [The kids cheer]. 

This week’s flick of the week takes us from the rip-roaring music of Elmer Bernstein from The Great Escape to his jazz-soaked score of Sweet Smell of Success.

Using Elmer Bernstein as the link is a bit of a cheat, because he has according to imdb, 240 credits as a composer, and so I could have gone anywhere with him.

Sweet Smell of Success had a long gestation. It was originally a novella by screen writer to be Ernest Lehmann. Lehmann (who I used as the link from North by Northwest to West Side Story) is possibly the greatest screenwriter in the history of Hollywood (didn’t win an Oscar of course) wrote the screenplay, but had to pull out due to illness and the duties were given to dramatist Clifford Odets.

Odets in the 1930s helped found Group Theatre a theatre collective that practised the art of “method acting” (though it wasn’t called that, then). Odets as the main playwright of the group wrote such plays as Awake and Sing! Waiting for Lefty and Goldenboy. His style involved an almost overwrought language of the street, and his politics were decidedly left wing.

He testified before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC) and named names – though only those who had already been named. He thus was not blacklisted, but reportedly he suffered great guilt from his testimony.

He was parodied in the 1989 Coen Brothers film Barton Fink.

He also went through Lehmann’s working script, tore it down, rebuilt it and created one of the great screenplays in American film.

The story involved press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) who does all he can to worm his way in to the life (and thus pages) of newspaper columnist J. J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster, modelled on Walter Winchell). Hunsecker uses Falco to do his dirty work – including getting rid of Steve, the jazz musician boyfriend of Hunsecker’s sister, because Hunsecker doesn't like him (and also because he pretty well doesn’t want anyone to have his sister). Falco tries to twist Hunsecker into saving Steve’s career, but it all goes wrong, as could only occur in this tale of New York at its most seedy and gin soaked.

The influence Odets’s testimony before the HUAC also hangs over the plot which involves the naming of names in Hunsecker’s column, framing Steve for things he didn’t do – including being a communist. It is political without actually being so.

The film also crackles with amazing dialogue that you figure stars of today would kill for:

J.J. Hunsecker: What's this boy got that Susie likes?
Sidney Falco: Integrity - acute, like indigestion.
J.J. Hunsecker: What does that mean - integrity?
Sidney Falco: A pocket fulla firecrackers - looking for a match! [grinning]
Sidney Falco: It's a new wrinkle, to tell the truth... I never thought I'd make a killing on some guy's "integrity."
…
Sidney Falco: Watch me run a 50-yard dash with my legs cut off!
…
Rita: What am I, a bowl of fruit? A tangerine that peels in a minute?
…
Sidney Falco: The cat's in a bag and the bag's in a river.
…
J.J. Hunsecker: I'd hate to take a bite outta you. You're a cookie full of arsenic.

Truth be known, stars back then killed for it. Tony Curtis’s biggest roles to date had been playing Houdini in “Houdini” and Tino Orsini in “Trapeze” – next to Burt Lancaster. Lancaster, who had been nominated for an Oscar in From Here to Eternity was able to claim status as a “serious actor”, but Curtis was a matinee idol, and desperate to get a meaty role. The studio didn’t want him to have it – figuring it’d hurt his fan-base of teenage girls. In the end he got it, and it was a good thing too. Despite being mostly known for his lightweight roles, this one was right in the wheelhouse for the New York raised Bernard Schwartz, and this, along with his role in Some Like it Hot, is his best work.

Lancaster also does great work – the venom that he spits at Falco is potent – the way he says “match me Sidney” that makes no secret he views Falco as little more than a thing to be used and abused according to his whim. Lancaster had an odd career: lots of dross, but a handful of top drawer films – this is one of his best.

Bernstein gives the film a great jazz-based score that creates an indelible 1950s flavour. It is one of those films which would also be a crime to see colourised – it’s a black and white town, where the smoke drifts around the nightclubs and each line is delivered with a cruel bitterness drowned in gin.

It’s not a feel-good film. It sits nicely with another great work of the era The Hustler that tells of the lives of people lived mostly at night.

At the time, like many great films, it was ignored mostly by the critics and the audience. The winner of Best Picture that year was Bridge on the River Kwai and while I love that film, this at the very least should have been nominated. Odets as well should have been nominated. That year however the Best Screenwriting Oscar went to Pierre Boulle despite not writing the screenplay of The Bridge on the River Kwai. Boulle wrote the novel on which that film was based – the two writers who did write the screenplay were Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson – both of whom had been blacklisted by the HUAC.

Previous Flicks of the Week:

The Great Escape – Richard Attenborough
Elizabeth – Geoffrey Rush
Pirates of the Caribbean – Johnny Depp
Platoon – Willem Dafoe
Inside Man – Clive Owen
Gosford Park – Robert Altman
The Player – Tim Robbins
Bull Durham – Kevin Costner
Field of Dreams – Ray Liotta
Goodfellas – Samuel L Jackson
Pulp Fiction – Frank Whaley
Swimming with Sharks – Kevin Spacey
Working Girl – Sigourney Weaver
Aliens – Bill Paxton
Apollo 13 – Ron Howard
American Graffiti – Richard Dreyfus 
The Graduate – Dustin Hoffmann
All the President’s Men – Jason Robards
Once Upon a Time in the West – Henry Fonda
Mister Roberts – Jack Lemmon
Some Like it Hot – Billy Wilder
Witness for the Prosecution – Marlene Dietrich
Touch of Evil – Orson Welles
The Third Man – Trevor Howard
Brief Encounter - David Lean
Lawrence of Arabia – Claude Reins
Casablanca – Humphrey Bogart
The Big Sleep – Howard Hawks
His Girl Friday – Cary Grant
Charade – John Williams
Schindler’s List – Liam Neeson
Love Actually – Emma Thompson
Sense and Sensibility – Ang Lee
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Michelle Yeoh
Tomorrow Never Dies – Pierce Brosnan
The Thomas Crown Affair – Renee Russo
In the Line of Fire – Clint Eastwood
Where Eagles Dare – Richard Burton
Zulu – Stanley Baker
The Guns of Navarone – Peter Yates
Breaking Away – Dennis Quaid
The Right Stuff – Ed Harris
The Rock – Sean Connery
The Longest Day – Richard Beymer
West Side Story – Ernest Lehmann
North By Northwest - The first one

This week’s Flick of the Week takes us with Richard Attenborough and his role as advisor to Queen Elizabeth in Elizabeth to his role as Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett (Big X) in John Sturges’ World War II classic, The Great Escape. 

Last week when I bemoaned the lack of historical accuracy in Elizabeth I wrote that I was a bit of a film hypocrite on the issue. Sure enough here we have a film that strays a fair bit from the script. This film about the greatest ever attempted escape from a Nazi Prisoner of War Camp had a hell of a lot of exciting reality to deal with – but in true Hollywood style is gave it a little oomph.

Firstly the events are contracted, and secondly the Americans have a much bigger role than in reality. On both issues I have to say I don’t give a damn.

Yes we can read in Australian Paul Brickhill’s  excellent book (he also wrote The Dam Busters and Reach for the Sky) on the escape that the Yanks were involved but were certainly much more minor players, and no Americans escaped because they were transferred to a separate compound just before the escape. 

And of course no one tried to jump the Swiss border on a motorcycle.

But for some reason it just doesn’t matter to me.

I can understand people disliking the fact that the Yanks get a bigger role, but this film certainly doesn't put the Brits and other Commonwealth soldiers in the shade (like say a modern WWII POW film like Hart’s War). Perhaps because Englishman James Clavell co-wrote the screenplay, the Non-Americans get their due: Bartlett as Big X is definitely in charge of the show and Gordon Jackson as his MacDonald “Intelligence” is the Scot who keeps everyone in order. Plus for us Aussies, there’s the Sedgwick the Manufacturer (not totally convincingly played by James Coburn). There are only three yanks, and in reality only two get much screen time – James Garner as the Scrounger, Hendly, and Steve McQueen in the Steve McQueen role, Hilts, the Cooler King.

My history with this film goes back a long, long way. It is not the first “grown-up” film I ever saw – The Sound of Music gets that title. But my first viewing of this was a seminal moment in my life. On seeing not only was I enthralled with this film, but I am pretty sure from this moment on I was enthralled by movies. I just loved every single thing about it – from Elmer Berstein’s amazing score, to the planning of the escape, the tension involved, the horror at the murders, the exhilaration of Hilts trying to get into Switzerland. It is also most likely the film I have watched the most (not including all the many, many Pixar movies I have watched by virtue of being a parent!).

Everything (yes even Coburn’s accent) just fits perfectly. If you’re going to have a bird-watching forger who goes blind, why who else could play it but Donald Pleasance? You need a mono-sibylic Polish tunnel digger? Charles Bronson is your man.

The history of course is glamourized – POW life was not nearly so easy as the film depicts – Brickhill writes of the gnawing hunger which all felt most the time – and how this affected the escape as well – starving men don’t have a great deal of energy. But this is more a product of its time, where gritty realism wasn’t the done thing.

The film has a number of indelible moments – Hilts in the cooler with his baseball, the discovery of the tunnel “Tom”, the escape itself, the stuff up by MacDonald, the execution of the men, Hilts’s jump… Many have received the ultimate pop-culture compliment of being parodied in The Simpsons.

It is easy to dismiss the film as just an action film, but so much of it is done so well that it demands attention. Quentin Tarantino in the 2002 Sight and Sound poll of the 10 Greatest Movies of All-time, put it in his top 12 (also included in his list were The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Rio Bravo, Taxi Driver, His Girl Friday, Rolling Thunder, They all Laughed, Coffy, Carrie, Dazed and Confused, Five Fingers of Death, and Hi Diddle Diddle – an eclectic list to be sure – and no, I don’t know why he listed 12 and not 10). The way the film is edited and shot is so completely foreign to what an action movie looks like now that it seems a relic. Firstly the pace is much, much slower. Hand-held camera? What’s that? The music swells, but it is a score, not a soundtrack. And here’s the real kicker – the entire thing is a monumental stuff-up. Two Hundred and fifty POWs were meant to escape, in the end only 76 got out, and of them only 3 got back to England. Fifty were caught by the Gestapo and murdered (one of the crimes for which Hermann Goering was tried at Nuremburg).

That ain’t happening in any film made now. You think history was tinkered with back in 1963? Pah, made now, the entire escape plan would be the work of Hilts – he’d get it all organised – Bartlett would be his helper perhaps. The Forger, Manufacturer, the two Tunnel Kings, Intelligence? Gone. Played by nobodies in small parts. Hendly as smart guy who knows how to get things? Hilts can do that himself – after all the star must be the star – give him everything. If the screenwriter is particularly dopey, or is pushed around enough by the star we’ll have a flash back to the Hilts and his wife. Heck the whole bloody film will probably start from Hilts getting shot down, and him arriving at the camp a year later with the biggest reputation in the entire POW camp system for escaping.

Do they escape? Well maybe not – Hilts in a bit of pathos would most likely die helping Bartlett get across the border. The fifty? Not murdered, but perhaps killed in a shoot out with the Germans.

And 172 minutes? Well that might be the one thing that doesn’t change, but Michael Bay would make sure as hell a lot more of those minutes were used showing the motor bike chase.

Ah yes, I can see it now, fade to black, try not to throw up in to your popcorn bucket.

That is why this film succeeds. Yeah the final bit with Hilts on the bike is bullshit, but it’s not superhuman bullshit, and it fits with the character, it never goes too over the top, and most of all – he fails. The rest of the film though is played straight. It doesn’t turn into an Alistair Maclean film (as much as I love those) because it always has as that end result the fifty getting murdered.

It is perhaps the only action film based on a war crime. It succeeds because not only is the film done to entertain, it is also done to honour the dead. The film thus has a heart that is lacking in so many action films today – films where the main purpose seems to be to hopefully make enough money so the sequel will get green lit.

Were The Great Escape made today it’d be up for Best Picture – and treated as a drama. I have to say, looking at what won in 1963 – Tom Jones, and what else was nominated: America, America; Cleopatra; How the West was Won; and Lilies of the Field not only should it have been nominated for Best Picture that year (hell Elmer Bernstein didn’t even get nominated), it should have won. 

Here’s a few scenes of Bartlett and MacDonald (there’s not much of it on YouTube):

This week’s Flick of the Week takes us with Geoffrey Rush from his role as Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean to his work as Sir Francis Walsingham in Elizabeth.

We here in Australia get rather excited when there is talk of a foreign actor portraying one of our heroes or villains. Mick Jagger’s role as Ned Kelly back in 1970 still gets a mention in shuddering terms (though that might be mostly because Mick Jagger obviously was not put on this planet to act). But spare a thought for the English. They have a movie about their greatest Queen, and an Aussie plays her. Not only that another Aussie plays her advisor Walsingham. And not only that, they both do the job so well they get them back for a sequel. Think also of poor old Robin Hood – twice now played by Aussies – and in the latest incarnation the same bloody actress who saw fit to usurp the throne with her portrayal of Queen Bess also played Maid Marion!

The problem of course for the Brits is their heritage is so damn long it’s hard for them to keep hold of it. They could hardly say that because they are based on English plays no foreigner should play the lead in a Shakespeare film .

At least they can ask that they get the accents rights.

I have written about this film before – as part of my “Oscar is always wrong” series, but that was back in July 2009, so bugger it, let me write of this now (it helps me get to the flick of the week I want to get to next).

When writing of Elizabeth, first one must always acknowledge the travesty of the Oscars. Look, I love Shakespeare in Love – it is a joy that I have no real problems with having won Best Picture – especially as it beat the ponderous pro-America Saving Private Ryan. But Cate Blanchett losing to Gwyneth Paltrow is one of the worst crimes of Oscar history. It’s up there with  Denzel Washington’s Malcolm X losing to Al Pacino’s work in Scent of a Woman or Singin’ in the Rain losing to The Greatest Show on Earth (actually it didn’t lose to it – it wasn't even nominated!)

A lot of ink has been spilt on how good is Blanchett’s performance but it probably only needs to be said that she pretty much has killed the role for any other actress for a good generation or two. Taking on the role now in any film or TV series is a guaranteed way to have yourself referred to in sentences as “she’s good but she’s no Cate Blanchett”. She takes Elizabeth from a free spirited girl to a monarch; and not just any monarch but the most steely hearted female monarch that ever was. And she does it believably and tragically, bit by bit you see her character change, and struggling against the changes as well.

The film itself is one I don’t altogether love. I do love watching Blanchett and Rush put on an acting class. I don’t mind Joseph Fiennes playing Shakespeare Robert Dudley (watch this and Shakespeare in Love back to back and see if you can tell Fiennes’s portrayals apart), but the fact that this is a history with so little reference to facts I find rather ruinous to my enjoyment. 

The treatment of Elizabeth’s story is so distant from reality that it is pretty much “based on the life of” rather than a retelling. Imdb.com describes the multitude of historical inaccuracies as “Details of some historical characters and events have been changed to fit the dramatic narrative”. Well yes, that is nice. So changed have they been it would be as if someone were to write a screenplay on the life of JFK where he was assassinated on the orders of Marilyn Monroe and Bobby Kennedy.

The film’s narrative arc revolves around Elizabeth and Dudley’s relationship and his eventual treasonous act of converting to Catholicism and supporting the Duke of Norfolk in his attempt to overthrow Elizabeth. Very tragic it is – and Fiennes does nicely explaining why he did so:

Lord Robert: Madame, is it not plain enough to you? It is no easy thing to be loved by the Queen.

The only problem is that it is all complete tosh. As we find in Wikipedia:

The real Robert Dudley did not betray Elizabeth, and remained a loyal subject until his death, nor did Elizabeth ever end their close friendship, as is implied here.

Similarly, Dudley is shown in the film as converting to Catholicism when in fact he was a staunch Protestant (of the type that would later become termed as Puritan), making such conversion unthinkable.

Meh – small details. I guess this is the type of film Tony Abbott would write if he were to write it “in  the heat of discussion”.

It’s why I haven’t bothered to watch the sequel – Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I was pretty ignorant of Elizabeth’s early years, but I know enough about the period in which the sequel is set to wish to avoid more “dramatic licenses”.

I’m not a pedant about such things – heck I know most representations of history are compressed for dramatic license. I know an American character will be in a film for no reason other than it will help sell the film to American audiences. But surely there was enough drama in Elizabeth’s life to not have to make stuff up. Or maybe I’m just a crotchety old sourpuss who can’t enjoy a bit of fun. (Actually I am more a film hypocrite as you’ll see with the next Flick of the Week!)

1998 was an interesting year to have this and Shakespeare in Love out at the same time – both featuring Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush and the character of Elizabeth.

What the two films also have in common is the subsequent careers of their respective directors. Since this film Shekhar Kapur has done:

Passage (2009/I)

New York, I Love You (2009) (segment "Shekhar Kapur")

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)

The Four Feathers (2002)

That ain’t exactly an overflowing of brilliance (or quantity). The director of Shakespeare in Love,  John Madden, has similarly gone on to, umm well on to this:

The Debt (2010/I)

Killshot (2008)

Proof (2005)

Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001)

Yep, I haven’t bothered with them either (I watched about half of Captain Corelli one night on TV).

But let’s not be churlish, not everyone is Spielberg or Weir (two other directors nominated for Best Director that year), and if you don’t mind a bit of historical laxness, this film is a thoroughly good couple of hours entertainment – especially as you are in the presence of acting genius.

This scene also shows Rush and Blanchett together in performances that are as good as you can get. Rush wasn’t even nominated for Best Supporting Actor, he was for his Shakespeare in Love role – a much more hammy performance – he should have been nominated for both, and won for this. James Coburn in Affliction? Oh geez.

Best scene:

Sir Francis Walsingham: Your Grace is arrested. You must go with these men to the Tower.
Norfolk: I must do nothing by your orders. I am Norfolk!
Sir Francis Walsingham: You were Norfolk.
Sir Francis Walsingham: [shows him his own signature on the treasonous letter from Rome]
Sir Francis Walsingham: The dead have no titles.
Sir Francis Walsingham: [approaches Norfolk] 
Sir Francis Walsingham: You were the most powerful man in England. And you could have been greater still, but you had not the courage to be loyal, only the conviction of your own vanity.
Norfolk: So cut off my head, and make me a martyr. The people will always remember it.
Sir Francis Walsingham: No... they will forget.

Previous Flicks of the Week:

Pirates of the Caribbean – Johnny Depp
Platoon – Willem Dafoe
Inside Man – Clive Owen
Gosford Park – Robert Altman
The Player – Tim Robbins
Bull Durham – Kevin Costner
Field of Dreams – Ray Liotta
Goodfellas – Samuel L Jackson
Pulp Fiction – Frank Whaley
Swimming with Sharks – Kevin Spacey
Working Girl – Sigourney Weaver
Aliens – Bill Paxton
Apollo 13 – Ron Howard
American Graffiti – Richard Dreyfus 
The Graduate – Dustin Hoffmann
All the President’s Men – Jason Robards
Once Upon a Time in the West – Henry Fonda
Mister Roberts – Jack Lemmon
Some Like it Hot – Billy Wilder
Witness for the Prosecution – Marlene Dietrich
Touch of Evil – Orson Welles
The Third Man – Trevor Howard
Brief Encounter - David Lean
Lawrence of Arabia – Claude Reins
Casablanca – Humphrey Bogart
The Big Sleep – Howard Hawks
His Girl Friday – Cary Grant
Charade – John Williams
Schindler’s List – Liam Neeson
Love Actually – Emma Thompson
Sense and Sensibility – Ang Lee
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Michelle Yeoh
Tomorrow Never Dies – Pierce Brosnan
The Thomas Crown Affair – Renee Russo
In the Line of Fire – Clint Eastwood
Where Eagles Dare – Richard Burton
Zulu – Stanley Baker
The Guns of Navarone – Peter Yates
Breaking Away – Dennis Quaid
The Right Stuff – Ed Harris
The Rock – Sean Connery
The Longest Day – Richard Beymer
West Side Story – Ernest Lehmann
North By Northwest - The first one

This week’s Flick of the Weeks takes us with Johnny Depp from his bit part as Learner in Platoon to his role of Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

A funny thing happened when Pirates of the Caribbean came out: everyone suddenly realised that Johnny Depp was the biggest star going around – a guy who could act, but also could carry a blockbuster.

Prior to POTC, Depp was pretty much most known in film as the go-to-guy for Tim Burton. He was the guy who had a chance at major teen-fandom with 21 Jump Street and turned it down. He was the guy who had been engaged to a string of Hollywood actresses – Sherilyn Fenn, Kate Moss, Jennifer Grey and Winona Ryder (the latter of course the reason for his “Winona forever” tattoo, that is now famously “Wino forever”. 

He was well known, but he was edgy, on the outer, more at home in a film that would make people think “huh?” than it would have them lining around the block to see.

Here’s his US box office prior to POTC:

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl……..$305,413,918
Once Upon a Time in Mexico………………………………………………..$56,359,780
Secret Window………………………………………………………………………..$48,022,900
Finding Neverland………………………………………………………………….$51,680,613
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory……………………………………….$206,459,076
The Libertine………………………………………………………………………….$4,835,065
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest…………………………$423,315,812
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End……………………………..$309,420,425 
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street……………..$52,898,073
Public Enemies……………………………………………………………………….$97,104,620
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus……………………………….$7,689,607
Alice in Wonderland…………………………………………………………….…$334,191,110

Talk about doing one for money and one for art. And yet even the ones he does for art – Finding Neverland, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Sweeny Todd, Public Enemies do more money than did his films before POTC.
What’s up next for Depp? A thriller with Angelina Jolie (just about the female version of Depp) The Tourist (out in December – expect it to do very well), then a decidedly odd animated film called Rango (directed by Gore Verbinski how directed POTC), then a film based on a novel by Hunter S Thompson (The Rum Diary).

And to follow up that bit of weird, indie fun? Why strap yourselves in me hearties, it’s Pirates of the Caribbean 4 – the first of the series to not have Orlando Bloom or Keira Knightly (it does have Rush of course) .  

Wherever his career takes him from here, it is hard to see him faltering. Unlike Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise you expect him to be able to make the transition from star to older, supporting actor easily. Because he is a guy who made a career out of appearing in interesting films, he’ll be able to keep doing it for many years to come.
Previous Flicks of the Week:
Platoon – Willem Dafoe
Inside Man – Clive Owen
Gosford Park – Robert Altman
The Player – Tim Robbins
Bull Durham – Kevin Costner
Field of Dreams – Ray Liotta
Goodfellas – Samuel L Jackson
Pulp Fiction – Frank Whaley
Swimming with Sharks – Kevin Spacey
Working Girl – Sigourney Weaver
Aliens – Bill Paxton
Apollo 13 – Ron Howard
American Graffiti – Richard Dreyfus 
The Graduate – Dustin Hoffmann
All the President’s Men – Jason Robards
Once Upon a Time in the West – Henry Fonda
Mister Roberts – Jack Lemmon
Some Like it Hot – Billy Wilder
Witness for the Prosecution – Marlene Dietrich
Touch of Evil – Orson Welles
The Third Man – Trevor Howard
Brief Encounter - David Lean
Lawrence of Arabia – Claude Reins
Casablanca – Humphrey Bogart
The Big Sleep – Howard Hawks
His Girl Friday – Cary Grant
Charade – John Williams
Schindler’s List – Liam Neeson
Love Actually – Emma Thompson
Sense and Sensibility – Ang Lee
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Michelle Yeoh
Tomorrow Never Dies – Pierce Brosnan
The Thomas Crown Affair – Renee Russo
In the Line of Fire – Clint Eastwood
Where Eagles Dare – Richard Burton
Zulu – Stanley Baker
The Guns of Navarone – Peter Yates
Breaking Away – Dennis Quaid
The Right Stuff – Ed Harris
The Rock – Sean Connery
The Longest Day – Richard Beymer
West Side Story – Ernest Lehmann
North By Northwest - The first one

This week’s flick of the week takes us with Willem Dafoe from his small role as Captain John Darius in Inside Man, to his breakout role as Sergeant Elias in Oliver Stone’s seminal Vietnam War film, Platoon. 

Dafoe has certainly made a career of turning up in some very good films. He is a bit of a go to guy when you need someone who is serious but also a little bit unhinged. The guy’s characters always seem to have a past. Oddly, his role of Elias runs somewhat counter to his current persona. Elias is “a crusader” to quote the other Sgt in the platoon – Sgt Barnes (played by Tom Berenger in the best thing he’s ever done). Were the film being cast today it is unlikely that Dafoe would be considered for Elias (ignoring the age issue). Defoe now has that nasty aspect that would have you expecting Elias to go on a killing spree at any moment rather than philosophising about war. Berenger meanwhile would not be cast because he has milked this role to death in all those God-awful Sniper films.

Would Charlie Sheen be cast in the lead role? Er well probably not. Were they to go back in time, more likely the role would now go to Johnny Depp who has a bit part – though Sheen is well cast.

It’s easy to forget the impact Platoon had when it came out. After The Deer Hunter, with its odd depictions of Russian Roulette, and Apocalypse Now with its madness that makes it utterly compelling, but hardly realistic, cinema was ready for a film to treat the Vietnam War with some realism. When it was released it packed a punch that had the media (especially in America) talking about how watching it was an almost cathartic process for Vietnam Vets. It certainly pulled no punches and there are many scenes that leave you gasping. I was always a bit bemused when Saving Private Ryan came out, and how reviewers made a big deal about how it depicted war, as though Platoon (and many other excellent war films) had never been made.

For Aussie Vietnam Vets the film likely had an impact as well – but it certainly does not depict their experience – The Odd Angry Shot did that job. Aussie soldiers in Vietnam for example were not dope smokers – and certainly not while on patrol. (By the way, my old colleague from James Cook Uni, Janine Hiddlestone has an excellent study on the impact on the stereotype of the American experience in the Vietnam War on Australian veterans). But just having the war so discussed and visible was a huge step – and as the film was only released in Australia in 1987 it coincided somewhat with the veterans’ welcome home parade held in Sydney in 1987 October of that year.

The film of course was written and directed by that mad genius of the baby boomer era, Oliver Stone. For a short while there he was the pre-eminent director in Hollywood from his amazing Salvador, through Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, the indulgent The Doors and then the magnificent JFK (regardless of if you believe the theories, Stone directed the hell out of that film). Then things started to get a bit fuzzy – Heaven and Hell was, well I’ve watched it only once, and don’t really want to go back, and Natural Born Killers has plenty of fans, but for mine it was a film before its time, and I don’t think that time will ever come.

There are some great and very intense scenes in the film – the massacre of the village, Elias’s death (a take that was so perfectly done  by Dafoe they used it even though the fake blood packets didn’t fire as planned – you see him react as though shot, but no blood is seen), and the final battle. It deservedly won Best Picture – though it wasn't a strong year – hell Crocodile Dundee got nominated for Best Screenplay. 

The film has always resonated pretty strongly for me. When I first saw it I saw it twice in a week and it was one of those films which I quickly came to know all the dialogue. In 1989 when I was in Japan I met a group of other exchange students – some of whom were from Canada. The night prior to our meeting Platoon had actually been on TV. As we were walking around the temples that we were sightseeing that day I mentioned that I had watched it and one of the Canadians said he had as well, and suddenly we were quoting the entire script back to each other.

When such a thing happens you just know you have met a friend for life, and so it has turned out to be. (You also know everyone else in the group is looking at both of you as though you are rather deranged.)

1989, was an odd time – the cold war ended and the threat of world war seemed gone for good. We were just old enough to feel some sort of connection with the characters in the film, but knew as well that neither of us were ever going to have to worry about being drafted to go kill someone for some unknown reason. It was a year in which so much happened that for some it seemed nothing could be the same again – Francis Fukuyama for example would write an essay called “The End of History”

Our generation – that terribly named Generation X – to a very large extent grew up without war. The Gen X war films are Buffalo Soldiers – a film about bored soldiers with no war to fight, or Jarhead – about Desert Storm that was over so quickly the snipers didn't even get to shoot. This is not say no soldiers died in Desert Storm, but overwhelmingly the vision for people of that war was just of a smart missile going through a door. Infantry? Grunts? The long drawn out years like Vietnam? The protests? That would not happen then; its time would come again though.

By September 2001 my generation was at least in the mid-twenties; many over thirty, and joining to go fight was neither realistic, nor a concern from most. Of course my generation had no say over any of the timing of all of this, though I like to think that we were so obsessed by the baby boomer period – so determined to repudiate all of it we just wouldn’t have stood for the whole let’s go off and fight a long drawn out war game. We knew in our rebellious teenage years that we were pretty well rebelling against not having much to rebel about (try going to uni and the best you can do is go for a march against HECS and see how fired up you can get). In the end you knew it was nothing of any real consequence – and given the general apathetic nature of the generation, a war just seemed to smack of effort that was well beyond us. 

Perhaps I just think too much about this film. But whenever I watch it and see the opening title card with the passage from Ecclesiastes of “Rejoice O young man in thy youth...”, I think of my youth in 1989 when quoting dialogue from a war film was fun and I knew I’d never have to worry about going into battle.

Previous Flicks of the Week:

Inside Man – Clive Owen
Gosford Park – Robert Altman
The Player – Tim Robbins
Bull Durham – Kevin Costner
Field of Dreams – Ray Liotta
Goodfellas – Samuel L Jackson
Pulp Fiction – Frank Whaley
Swimming with Sharks – Kevin Spacey
Working Girl – Sigourney Weaver
Aliens – Bill Paxton
Apollo 13 – Ron Howard
American Graffiti – Richard Dreyfus 
The Graduate – Dustin Hoffmann
All the President’s Men – Jason Robards
Once Upon a Time in the West – Henry Fonda
Mister Roberts – Jack Lemmon
Some Like it Hot – Billy Wilder
Witness for the Prosecution – Marlene Dietrich
Touch of Evil – Orson Welles
The Third Man – Trevor Howard
Brief Encounter - David Lean
Lawrence of Arabia – Claude Reins
Casablanca – Humphrey Bogart
The Big Sleep – Howard Hawks
His Girl Friday – Cary Grant
Charade – John Williams
Schindler’s List – Liam Neeson
Love Actually – Emma Thompson
Sense and Sensibility – Ang Lee
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Michelle Yeoh
Tomorrow Never Dies – Pierce Brosnan
The Thomas Crown Affair – Renee Russo
In the Line of Fire – Clint Eastwood
Where Eagles Dare – Richard Burton
Zulu – Stanley Baker
The Guns of Navarone – Peter Yates
Breaking Away – Dennis Quaid
The Right Stuff – Ed Harris
The Rock – Sean Connery
The Longest Day – Richard Beymer
West Side Story – Ernest Lehmann
North By Northwest - The first one