And Lo, there came amongst us another great English film with a wondrous British cast. 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' was a film I heard great things of but what clinched it for me was the thought of another performance by Judy Dench. As most Baby Boomers with parents, I have watched hours of 'As Time Goes By' and come to love the Judy Dench persona but the 'J.Edgar' Dench was a different kettle of fish altogether. A darkness emanated from that woman that was chilling and made the madnes of J.Edgar almost touching by comparison.
I also covet any film with Penelope Wilton in it since her frail and dear Mrs Hamly in 'Wives and Daughters'. She is the very antithesis in this and managed to take on a physical vigour which was a knockout by comparison. Maggie Smith is fabulous and Bill Nighy moving and funny with a speech to make you cry if ever there was one. And who has not had his ill advised advice about 'Bargaining in foreign parts'? It all takes place in India where Celia Imrie, Tom Wilkinson and Ronald Pickup confront their fates.
We are all moving in into this shadowland and dealing with it with as much of our better natures as we can muster. Here are a few fellow travellers with a bit of insight along the way.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Dead Funny
Looking about for a cheering film for a friend in trouble, I came upon a boxed set of Alec Guiness' films which included 'The Ladykillers'. Shot barely ten years after the end of WW2, the film centres around an old lady living in a charming but bomb damaged house near a railway tunnel.
The fifties produced a flowering of british films which sprang up despite the drabness still shrouding London and the leading character, Mrs Wilberforce is one of its rare, exotic and completely charming blooms. Every day she turns on her tap(cold water only),bangs the pipes with her hammer(hanging by ribbon),and fills the enormous kettle which she puts on a gas stove. Despite living in a damaged house with several floors considered unsafe by the surveyor, she is keen to rent out the liveable space to the disgraceful bunch of seasoned british actors (Guiness,Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers, Danny Green)who turn up to apply for it. With a woman like this, they hadn't a chance.
Katie Johnson had been working on stage since 1894 and had just the right pair of steely,rose coloured glasses guaranteed to out do the most extravagant comic. She walked away with the film and was greatly mourned when two years later, she 'upped and died' as my father put it. Perhaps she is a good model for the current decade. Neither she nor her character appeared full of pills or self pity and let's hope her death was not the passing of another era.
The fifties produced a flowering of british films which sprang up despite the drabness still shrouding London and the leading character, Mrs Wilberforce is one of its rare, exotic and completely charming blooms. Every day she turns on her tap(cold water only),bangs the pipes with her hammer(hanging by ribbon),and fills the enormous kettle which she puts on a gas stove. Despite living in a damaged house with several floors considered unsafe by the surveyor, she is keen to rent out the liveable space to the disgraceful bunch of seasoned british actors (Guiness,Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers, Danny Green)who turn up to apply for it. With a woman like this, they hadn't a chance.
Katie Johnson had been working on stage since 1894 and had just the right pair of steely,rose coloured glasses guaranteed to out do the most extravagant comic. She walked away with the film and was greatly mourned when two years later, she 'upped and died' as my father put it. Perhaps she is a good model for the current decade. Neither she nor her character appeared full of pills or self pity and let's hope her death was not the passing of another era.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Rich man, Poor man?
I had no idea how this was going to turn out, cherishing a long love of Alec Guinness work. My memory of his 'Smiley' seemed unassailable and Gary Oldman a bit of an odd choice but if ever there was an actor who grabbed a role and ran with it, it is Oldman in this.
He is surrounded by a stellar cast of English actors, John Hurt, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Tom Hardy and many more, moving through the grimy air of cold war Europe. If it was possible to feel the chill radiating from the grim little apartments and squalid streets the superb camera work does it for you...thats over and above the wrecked lives and entrenched sexism. Nevertheless they still managed to sqeeze in some of the glamour and glitz of those days as I remember them.
There is a sense of ever present threat and also the feeling that WW2 was not long over and memories and hard times not gone yet. Sex and alcohol seem to have taken the the place of love and the love that dared not speak its name, dared only be underground or gone. Women are whores or saints. Its not a musical.
Near the end, when they are closing in on the rat in the ranks you see how the 'team' pull together in an almost balletic sequence of threat and intimidation which took my breath away. And like a fool I had not realised why they called the character 'Smiley'. I do now. Oldman glides through these scenes with the same amiable appearance he has used to comfort and entertain.
If you want to see what a Cold War can do to those who are set up to prevent a warm one, see 'Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy'. And see if you can spot 'Le Carre' in his cameo role.
He is surrounded by a stellar cast of English actors, John Hurt, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Tom Hardy and many more, moving through the grimy air of cold war Europe. If it was possible to feel the chill radiating from the grim little apartments and squalid streets the superb camera work does it for you...thats over and above the wrecked lives and entrenched sexism. Nevertheless they still managed to sqeeze in some of the glamour and glitz of those days as I remember them.
There is a sense of ever present threat and also the feeling that WW2 was not long over and memories and hard times not gone yet. Sex and alcohol seem to have taken the the place of love and the love that dared not speak its name, dared only be underground or gone. Women are whores or saints. Its not a musical.
Near the end, when they are closing in on the rat in the ranks you see how the 'team' pull together in an almost balletic sequence of threat and intimidation which took my breath away. And like a fool I had not realised why they called the character 'Smiley'. I do now. Oldman glides through these scenes with the same amiable appearance he has used to comfort and entertain.
If you want to see what a Cold War can do to those who are set up to prevent a warm one, see 'Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy'. And see if you can spot 'Le Carre' in his cameo role.
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