Monthly Archives: July 2015

The Browning Version
Directed by Anthony Asquith
Written by Terrence Rattigan
1951/UK
Javelin Films
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

Andrew Crocker-Harris: I may have been a brilliant scholar, but I was woefully ignorant of the facts of life.

This excellent tale of mediocrity and redemption features a fantastic performance by Michael Redgrave as a sort of anti-Mr. Chips

Andrew Crocker-Harris (Redgrave) has taught Latin and Greek to unappreciative lower-5th-form students at a posh English public school for the past 18 years.  His classes are dry as dust and he is a stickler for discipline. Most of the boys hate him.  His reputation is in stark contrast to the upper-5th-form science teacher Mr. Hunter who keeps his class laughing and enthusiastic through exciting experiments and banter.  Mr. Hunter is having an affair with Crocker-Harris’s chronically dissatisfied wife Millie.

The story takes place over a couple of days at the end of term.  Crocker-Harris has been suffering from a heart ailment and has resigned to take up a less stressful position at a less prestigious school in Northern England.  The aurhtorities will not make an exception to the time-in-service rules to grant him his pension, though they have done so in the past for another teacher.  Furthermore, Crocker-Harris is asked to give his farewell address before the speech of a very popular and much-junior football coach who is also leaving the school.  The authorities want the speeches to “build to a climax.” He is reminded more than once that he was one of the most promising teachers ever hired by the school following his graduation from Oxford.

Crocker-Harris is having a very bad day and it keeps getting worse.  His successor innocently informs him that he is known behind his back as Himmler.  His wife takes special pleasure in being as hurtful as possible.  He loses his composure more often perhaps than in the entire previous 18 years combined.  Then a student gives him an unexpected going-away present and things begin to change.  With Wilfred Hyde-White as the headmaster.

I love Michael Redgrave and this is undoubtedly his finest screen performance.  He is absolutely brilliant at conveying emotion through a stoic exterior.  The drama is compelling and deeply moving.  Most highly recommended.

The Criterion DVD has an informative commentary by film historian Bruce Eder.  He views the story through the lens of Terrence Rattigan’s homosexuality, seeing it as sort of a screed against heterosexual marriage.  I didn’t see that aspect the first time through but it makes some sense given the way in which the plot is resolved.  Much more important, however, is the character arc traced by Redgrave’s character.

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A Christmas Carol (AKA Scrooge)
Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst
Written by Noel Langley from the story by Charles Dickens
1951/UK
Renown Pictures Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

Spirit of Christmas Present: [quoting Scrooge] Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

This movie will always be my favorite version of Dickens’ story of redemption at Christmastime.

Everybody know the story but here goes anyway.  Ebenezer Scrooge (Alistair Sim)  is a hard-hearted old miser who thinks Christmas is a humbug.  He can barely stand to let his beleaguered clerk Bob Cratchit have a single day off for the holiday.  He believes neither in charity nor in celebration.

One Christmas Eve a miracle happens.  Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his equally miserly deceased business partner Jacob Marley.  Marley’s spirit has been condemned to wander the earth carrying a heavy chain built up of his own greed because he did not live as part of humanity while he was alive.  The ghost cautions Scrooge that he will suffer the same, or worse, fate if he does not mend his ways.

Marley says he will send three spirits of Christmas to help in Scrooge’s reformation and disappears.  Scrooge is then visited by the Spirit of Christmas Past, who shows him how he got to be the miserable creature he is, the Spirit of Christmas Present, who shows him how the rest of the world is celebrating Christmas in their hearts, and the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come, who shows him the bleak future that awaits him if nothing changes.  Scrooge awakens with Christmas in his heart.  With Hermione Baddeley as Mrs. Cratchit, Ernest Thesinger as an undertaker, and Patrick Macnee as the young Jacob Marley.

It was such a treat to catch back up with this one!  Sims is a phenomenal Scrooge. There is enough of humanity in him even at his worst that you totally believe in his redemption.  I remember being really scared by some of the scenes as a child.  The worst was the one where the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come points at Scrooge’s grave.  It’s still effective film making and even a bit scary now I have grown.  This version also features some really nice traditional music and special effects.  Highly recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97PwRDfHBlg

Trailer

Early Summer (Bakkushû)
Directed by Yasujirô Ozu
Written by Kôgo Noda and Yasujirô Ozu
1951/Japan
Shôchiku Eiga
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Mr. Ozu looked happiest when he was engaged in writing a scenario with Mr. Kogo Noda, at the latter’s cottage on the tableland of Nagano Prefecture. By the time he finished writing a script, after about four months’ effort, he had already made up every image in every shot, so that he never changed the scenario after we went on the set. The words were so polished up that he would not allow us even a single mistake. — Chisû Ryû[/box]

Yasujirô Ozu was at the height of his powers when he made the three films in which Setsuko Hara starred as a young woman named Noriko.  This is perhaps lesser known than the other two – Late Spring and Tokyo Story – but is just as good.

Three generations of the Mamiya family live in the same household.  They are grandmother and grandfather, their son Koichi (Chisu Ryô), daughter-in-law and two grandsons, and unmarried daughter Noriko (Hara).  Noriko is a modern sort of 28-year-old and helps with the expenses by working in the city as a secretary.  Koichi is a physician.

Noriko’s boss and everyone else who knows her think it is high time for her to get married. The boss has what seems to be the ideal candidate in mind.  Noriko’s parents and brother are enthusiastic about the match but Noriko is skillful at dodging any discussion about the matter.

Then Noriko accepts a marriage offer from an unexpected quarter and the household is thrown into a mild uproar until everybody gets used to the idea.

I love this film.  It all seems just like real life to me despite the exquisitely contrived compositions.  It takes about an hour for the marriage drama to arise.  Before that the story is more or less just a snapshot of daily life.

This is another film on Ozu’s favorite topic, which is not in fact marriage, but the dissolution of the Japanese family.  We are treated to an especially moving denouement in this one as the hoped-for marriage will mean that all the people in the household must go their separate ways.  The Criterion DVD has an excellent commentary by Ozu scholar Donald Richie.

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The Woman in Question (AKA “Five Angles on Murder”)
Directed by Anthony Asquith
Written by John Cresswell
1950/UK
J. Arthur Rank Organization/Javelin Films/Vic Film Productions
First viewing/Hulu

[box] In England when you make a movie, even the weather is against you. In Hollywood the weatherman gets a shooting schedule from all the major studios and then figures out where he can fit in a little rain without upsetting Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer too much. — Anthony Asquith[/box]

Here is another take on the Rashomon theme for 1950 with five versions of the character of a murder victim.  Not an entirely successful treatment, but interesting.

A small boy discovers the strangled body of his mother’s lodger Agnes AKA “Madame Astra” (Jean Kent) in her London flat.  Scotland Yard has very little to go on and begins by inquiring into the life and associates of the victim.  They begin with landlady Mrs. Finch (Hermoine Baddely) who tells the story of a “real lady” who, like her, is worrying about a chronically ill husband and is beset her horrible sister and an awful American caller.

We then get the story as told by the sister and the American (Dirk Bogarde)d, both of which portray a malicious harridan.  Then we hear from a couple of very different admirers, middle-aged pet shop owner Mr. Pollard who did odd-jobs for her and Irish seaman Michael Murray who hoped to marry her.  Just about all of these people had reason to hate the woman and the different interviews also reveal clues to the murder mystery.

This is actually more of a gimmick for telling a murder mystery story rather than anything more profound.  That being the case, one would hope that the mystery itself would be more intriguing.  I guessed the identity of the culprit fairly early on and didn’t care much who did it actually. Your mileage may vary.  Dirk Bogarde certainly could do a convincing American accent.