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Reviews
The Outlaw (1943)
Could this rubbish film ever be taken seriously?
Utter drivel from start to finish, of a level of amateurishness one would have thought impossible in 1940s Hollywood, this mess comes across as a stilted silent movie overlaid with a preposterously cartoonish score - jokey bits, endless rehashings of the second theme of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony, dramatic jolts, all of it louder than the dialogue - and an ostensibly straightforward love-rivalry between Doc Holliday and Billy the Kid concerning Jane Russell's cantilevered and padded breasts. Except it all plays out instead as a gay love triangle with Pat Garrett panting after BIlly and the latter smitten with his "father figure" Doc. Bizarre, abysmally acted and mortifying to have to watch.
The Ceremony (1963)
Interesting misfire
What no-one seems to have noticed is how utterly in hock to Orson Welles' "The Trial" this film is, with its very elaborate "artistic" direction, brooding atmosphere of menace and general sense of claustrophobic gloom. Harvey, an actor noted more for his vanity than actual ability (other than that of using well-connected older women to further his career) here sets himself up in full Welles mode: star, producer, director.
In the event, his direction is much the most striking thing about the whole film, because it is for the most part terribly acted - Sarah Miles and Harvey himself in particular - loosely constructed and with the same kind of overly-insistent sub-classical musical soundtrack as "The Trial" (Gerard Schurmann - my one-time neighbour - in this Harvey film, Remo Giazotto's egregious fake Albinoni grinding away in the Welles). Poor old Jack MacGowran and Murray Melvin pop up in weird roles doing their usual schtick - pixillated priest, "sensitive" (i.e. Gay) youth - and Robert Rietty does his usual quadruple duty (as in "The Trial") dubbing voices galore.
But it does have a very definite, albeit second-hand from Welles, look about it, with endless bizarre camera angles and suffocating close-ups. You could even make a case for Robert Walker Jr. Giving a very decent impression of Anthony Perkins' befuddled Josef K. So basically the whole thing's a highly derivative mess: but derived from an actual masterpiece, and sometimes therefore oddly effective almost in spite of itself. Worth a squint.
Down to the Sea in Ships (1949)
Astonishing performance
Virtually all the reviews on this site get it right; this is a most unexpectedly excellent little film, made with high care and craft, and superbly acted. But the lynch-pin of the whole emotional triangle that sits at the heart of this film is Dean Stockwell's absolutely astonishing performance as Jed, torn between his crusty old grandfather (Lionel Barrymore) and a reluctantly involved new recruit charged with teaching the boy (Richard Widmark).
Hollywood history is littered with precocious child stars, most of whom never made the transition to adult roles. But I don't think I've ever seen a performance of such startling insight and intelligence as Stockwell gives here, aged 12. It's an object lesson in clarity of diction, speed of delivery, subtextual emotion, thoughtfulness and utter integrity that would be the envy of any adult performer. That a child of just 12 should show such ability is little short of miraculous; and really should be much better known and appreciated by the wider film critical community.
The Traitors (1962)
A visual document of long-lost London
It's one of those old B pictures with a lot of location shooting in London, which now makes for rather more compelling viewing than the film itself (which is very similar in feel and treatment to Sidney Lumet's altogether superior "The Deadly Affair" from five years later).
The cinema which features extensively and in which one of the spies meets his end is neither of those mentioned in previous reviews. It is actually the Grange Cinema on High Street KIlburn, dating from 1914 and Grade II listed, as a result of which is therefore still there, albeit now functioning, as so many do, as a third-world evangelical church.