Change Your Image
AngieGPinto
Reviews
Three Came Home (1950)
Interesting but slow
I watched this film today on the More 4 Channel. This channel has to its credit been showing various films recently from the 40s and 50s and this week it seems to be concentrating on the lesser known war films.
This film interested me because I lived as a child through World War II and its effects are still with us. I have seen Claudette Colbert in other films - two with John Wayne - which were very enjoyable comedies -and she is a sensitive actress and quite watchable.
This portrayal of life in a Japanese concentration camp was lacking the kind of realism seen in the film, A town like Alice.
No doubt in the 1950s - pre-Psycho, Edward Scissorhands, and, The Exorcist, it would have been contrary to good public taste and the then filmographic aesthetic to have portrayed the violence and degradation more graphically. Nevertheless, the harshness of the captors was presented at times forcibly even if in somewhat muted tones.
What may one ask was the relevance of the relationship between the Japanese Colonel and Mrs Keith? Was this an attempt at 'realpolitik' - to give substance and support to the rehabilitation of the excruciatingly cruel Japanese by the USA in Japan in the post war reconstruction period, by showing that not all the Japanese were totally barbaric?
Nothing is shown as to why the Japanese soldiers are so brutal nor why everyone has to bow to them. The Japanese soldiers were themselves brutalised during their training and could be beaten for minor infringements - harsh and brutal treatment being the norm for them in training meant that they would do the same to prisoners.
It seems inconceivable that towards the middle of the 20th Century that a nation could believe that its emperor was a God. How could this be?
So this film was not put in its full historical context. Nothing was shown also of what was happening outside the confines of the Camp. And, one had nothing to give one a sense of time historically - no information for example, the outcome of the Battle of Midway, from the happenings elsewhere in this theatre of war, was admitted. Only towards the very end does the Japanese Colonel refer to his wife and children's being killed in Hiroshima, and the atom bomb is not mentioned. Was this also for political reasons?
Had I not been interested in learning something more about the history of this period by watching the film, I would have switched to another channel as it was hardly, 'gripping stuff' - and it lacked excitement.
It is not the sort of film I would watch again unless compelled to as part of a film studies course. I would, however, like to see more films in which Claudette Colbert acted.
B. Michael James 19th July 2006
His Kind of Woman (1951)
An enjoyable film that called to mind Key Largo
I enjoyed watching this film on television recently. In particular, I was interested in noting the acting of Vincent Price who often plays characters with ambivalence - either in the conflict between their dominant traits or in the dualistic nature of their motivation.
Reflecting on the film, its storyline is comparable with that of Key Largo since it concerns the return of a former gangster to the USofAmerica. It has, of course, a humorous side to it, which, Key Largo does not, and it is generally played in a more lighthearted vein. In that it suggests some kind of facial transplant for Raymond Burr, it also calls to mind another Bogart film, where he speaks off camera until his facial reconstruction is complete. Raymond Burr, also remains hidden for much of this film.
I enjoyed Burr's performance. He was capable of expressing great darkness of character in this kind of role, and appears as a powerful and commanding actor - something I feel is lost in his later TV work.
Whereas Key Largo is about the eventual triumph of good over evil by the courageous acts of a lone individual, this film is more concerned with entertainment and being a vehicle for its stars to be exhibited. Who after all is the outstandingly courageous individual in this film - Mitchum, Price, or, Russell? Whereas it is made distinctly clear in Key Largo that an individual if courageous enough and prepared to sacrifice his or her life, good will triumph over evil, the 'message', in this film is opaque.
Despite its not making the powerful ethical and moral statement of Key Largo, it is certainly infinitely better fare for the television viewer than the super-soft soaps and reality shows.
Some actors have attractive personalities and one enjoys watching them in what they do irrespective of what it is - as long as it is done with truth and conviction - and Robert Mitchum is one such who appeals to me, as is Vincent Price, as I mentioned above.
I also like seeing Jane Russell as in real life she is a very nice person - she mostly plays positive personalities and that is uplifting.
All in all, watching this film was time well spent.
Legend of the Lost (1957)
Very Disappointing for a John Wayne Film
The film was broadcast one afternoon last week and as I like John Wayne's acting generally, and, like to see work he had done outside of the Western genre, I decided to watch this film.
It was interesting only in that it showed Timbuktu in Mali and made me look up this city on the Internet. Timbuktu has a very interesting history, as it was the centre of the salt trade. Also it is near the Niger river, and, it has had a very mixed raciala and cultural history. I felt the actors worked hard with the script but the kind of approach to sex and love in the film was very unrealistic and rather Victorian, in my opinion. It was not disinterested enough merely to be narrative, and, not emotional enough to be challengingly melodramatic, as, for example, the Gregory Peck/Jennifer Jones, Duel in the Sun.
I was surprised to learn that the film was directed by Henry Hathaway as other films directed by him that I have seen have been enjoyable.
I felt the latter part of the film was far too slow moving. There was a far more interesting film set in the desert in World War II, a British film, Sea of Sand, which was not that full of incident but it seemed true to life. It was interesting as Richard Attenborough acted in it and had the role not of the leading officer but an ordinary soldier, and it showed realistically that death was an everyday hazard for the ordinary person in a war zone.
The most honest dialogue - admittedly possibly archaic in form and language in today's terms was that in 'This Happy Breed' by Noel Coward. The characters were extremely well constructed and family life of a lower middle-class kind was very well described.
Had the honesty and directness of these two British films been scripted into the Legend of the Lost, it would have been more challenging.
The Quiet American (2002)
Did not grip and maintain attention
I watched this film this evening but found it hard to become very involved. In part I think this was due to the lack-lustre performance of Michael Caine - he was very bland and surely in a film which moves at such a slow pace one needs a lead actor with a stronger presence - I was thinking of a Sean Connery or an Harrison Ford type.
I did not see the film in terms of the romantic relationships - the young lion challenging and displacing the older one - but in terms of the decadence and collapse of French colonialism and the tragedy of replacing one colonial power with another. In a political sense the film reflected the tragedy of Vietnam in not being able to establish a democratic government but rather to being forced to follow an extremist authoritarian communism regime or to be dominated by an opportunistic puppet regime driven and supported by the CIA and other agencies to extend and maintain USAmerican military and capitalist interests.
With the French losing their grip on maintaining colonial rule, a power vacuum was created and thus their were two contenders for power, one the communists with their rigid ideology and ruthless methods of gaining and maintaining power, and, two, opportunistic puppets like General Tay supported by right wing USAmerica.
The film probably attempted to do too much - perhaps if it had focused on the political issues and made them clearer it would have been better - or if it had sought to examine only the sexual relationships -as how women are used by men in a situation where they have little power of their own - so there were too many threads perhaps and they became entangled and it was difficult to untie the knots and make sense of it all.
Reading the book would probably clarify some points not made clear by the film.
So my main query was, 'What was this film all about?'- to indicate the reasons for the Vietnam war - to show the insidious presence of these Quiet Americans and the havoc they provoke and for which they fail to take responsibility? Or was it merely about the predicament of a woman who has to rely upon a man for a decent life? The characters are rather sad - none is very heroic - all are sinners - perhaps this is Greene's main theme - if the human beings were better in themselves, everything else would be better - or in despair he shows that we are all in the soup up to our necks and all we can do is sweat it out until our demise.
Perhaps someone else could clarify this for me???
Black Narcissus (1947)
Does not reveal underlying ethos of religious life.
What seemed to me to be most absent from this film was the prayer life of the sisters. They were not seen in the chapel in community prayer nor in private prayer. Thus, there is something unreal in this film in that it is not based upon an intimate knowledge of the life of the true religious. It does admittedly show that obedience is part of the Rule but what the underlying Rule is in not giving any real amplification.
Thus the film is not in any way a comment on the religious life - except in a very negative way - that all these sisters were there by default and have been failures in their previous secular lives - but merely deals with how disparate characters are unable to form a community because of their lack of connectedness and the lack of good leadership from their superior.
Part of the failure of this community may be construed to have happened because of cultural difference. Here is a group of Anglican nuns out of place and out of joint in an Asian culture.
If one wished to explore the nature of the failure of a group to form into - to use modern psychological parlance - an effective team - why use a convent as the mise en scene and nuns as the main characters? The film and its writers indicate to me a great lack of the intimate knowledge of religious life and any true understanding of why a person would seek to give their life to God in this way. It would seem from this that the writers and film-makers are not Christian and prayerful persons themselves and have little or no direct knowledge of God and more especially of Jesus Christ through prayer and living out His Gospel. It is in fact, an irreligious film.
The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss (1936)
Seeking further information
I found the film interesting as it was set in London where I currently live and showed the London of my father and mother's young adulthood. I was born shortly after WWII began (7th November 1939) and I recall a few things about war, chiefly trying clean my father's brass buttons on his RAF uniform - he was a flight engineer but also had air gunner and then observer/navigator badges. I sometimes think how life was like for him growing up in the 1930s and it was mostly a hard time as the film reflects as Cary Grant finds it hard to get a job. My father died relatively young and I as I had moved away from home - Pembrokeshire - by the time I began to think about asking him about his early life and later war time experiences, sadly, he was dead.
I would like to have more detailed information on the film in terms of where it was shot - and if it was a British production - as it seems to be as the credits on the cheap DVD I got recently cite Empire Films - and the USofAmerica never formally claimed an empire although Bush currently is seeking to control the Western World and terrorise the rest-why Cary Grant appears in it. The 'mise en scene' reminds me very much of the Alfred Hitchcock Film, Blackmail, and thus I expected it to have been made much earlier - say 1931 - 32, as by 1936, filming had improved in terms of quality of visual presentation - in Go into your Dance, for example, there is a wonderful tracking shot across a bar/ dance hall/night club, as there is in Shall we Dance, when FA & GR enter the bar on the ship, so this film in comparison seems very badly shot in terms of camera technique and editing.
The DVD I got seems to be of a 16mm print, as was on I got from Tescos on Second Chorus - however, there may be a better quality DVD available - but that can't save an overstretched storyline. However, it is interesting to see quasi socio-dramas like this to see how the film makers saw society and how the film going public liked to see themselves, perhaps. Most ordinarily people in the 1930s were lesser educated than today and probably very naive and complacent about their situations - in the scene where the old car mechanic gets the sack my automatic thought was, where is his union representative?
I found it hard to get any information at all and took a long time to get to this website. I entered The Amazing Adventure into the AOL search engine and this particular film did not appear - so I have had to take a lengthy circuitous route to find what information you have.
In contrast when I looked up Kevin Costner's Adventures of Robin Hood, I was able to get a lot of information, most interestingly about the places the film was shot, one being St Bartholemew's Church in SE London - and I intended to visit this as its interiors are very different from the more usual perpendicular style - but I have not yet got around to doing this.
anyway, 'thank you for the information you have provided - which was much better than other sites.
B. Michael (Kilometres) James aka Penvronius Miles Cambrensis