Flickers in Time

Stairway to Heaven (AKA A Matter of Life and Death)
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Written by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
1946/UK
The Archers
First viewing/The Collector’s Choice DVD
#202 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Conductor 71: One is starved for Technicolor up there.[/box]

Parts of this fantasy were just magical. I was almost embarrassed for the film in other parts.   I need to give this one another chance since I have found that Powell and Pressburger films tend to grow on me.

RAF bomber pilot Peter Carter is bringing his battered plane back to England in a thick fog.  All of the crew has bailed out or died save him.  He is preparing to jump without a parachute from the burning hulk.  During his last minutes on board he talks to June (Kim Hunter), an American air traffic controller.  They immediately bond and fall in love.

After bailing out, Peter finds himself inexplicably alive on a beach.  He meets up with the grief-stricken June who is bicycling home from work.    They begin their romance. Meanwhile, the other world has noticed that it is one soul short.  Conductor 71 (Marius Goering) made a mistake in the fog.  The wry victim of the French Revolution is sent to convince Peter to do his duty and die.

Peter refuses, saying that he has superior rights to those of heaven since he fell in love due to their error.  Peter’s strange behavior causes June to contact her friend Dr. Reeves (Roger Livesey), a neuroscientist.  Dr. Reeves believes Peter to be suffering from a brain injury causing visual and auditory hallucinations.  He equally believes that to Peter these hallucinations are real and it is vital that Peter win in his dispute with heaven.  The story culminates in Peter having brain surgery while simultaneously arguing in his case in the heavenly court.  With Raymond Massey as heavenly Prosecutor and Kathleen Byron as an angel.

This is one instance in which my practice of listening to the commentary before watching the film may have really let me down.  The commentator goes into great detail about how this film was intended to mend fences between Britain and America, where people were questioning the value of an alliance with a holder of colonies, after the war.  The union of Peter and June symbolizes this. This is not made overt in the film but knowing this may have made the trial scene more painful that necessary.

On the other hand, this has some really special effects and innovative cinematography, particularly in the transitions between the Technicolor of earth and the black-and-white of heaven, and some beautiful images and good acting.  This was Jack Cardiff’s (Black Narcissus) debut as a Director of Photography.

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Beauty and the Beast (La belle et la bête)
Directed by Jean Cocteau
Written by Jean Cocteau from a story by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont
1946/France
DisCina
Repeat viewing/Criterion Collection DVD
#197 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] The Beast:  Love can turn a man into a Beast.[/box]

This is one of the few “art” films I can really get behind.

A merchant has three daughters and a son.  Son Ludovic is a wastrel and two of the daughters are vain and arrogant.  But daughter Belle (Josette Day) adores her father and uncomplainingly acts as servant girl to him and her horrible sisters.  The household is completed by the seemingly ever-present Avenant (Jean Marais), Ludovic’s companion and suitor for Belle’s hand.  But Belle rejects all of Avenant’s proposals, preferring to care for her father.

The merchant has been waiting in vain for one of his ships to come in.  He gets the glad tidings that the last has indeed arrived and sets off to the port.  But when he gets there, his creditors have seized the contents and he is penniless once more.  He is sent off into the night to return home.  On the road, he chances upon a very strange and magical estate.  As he leaves the grounds, he plucks a rose, the only gift requested by Belle.  As soon as he does so, he is confronted by a Beast (also Jean Marais) who tells him the penalty for rose theft is death and that the merchant will die in three days unless he can convince one of his daughters to take his place.

The merchant returns home and tells his tale.  Belle secretly steals away to take her father’s place.  The Beast treats her as kindly as possible and says he will trouble her only at the dinner hour when he will continue to ask her to be his wife.  This arrangement does not last long as Belle gradually gets used to his bestial ways and begins to have pity for him.  But she continues to long for home and he finally agrees to allow her to return for one week.  He informs her that if she does not come back to him he will die of grief.  As a sign of his trust in her, he gives her the key to his treasure.

Belle is pure of heart.  The same cannot be said about her siblings or Avenant who proceed to steal the key and falsely persuade her to delay her return.  Anyone familiar with the fairy tale already knows the ending.

Cocteau creates a complete and beautiful fantasy world without computers or much money in a France still reeling from WWII. Indeed the cinematography, art direction, and special effects are the highlight of the film.

Each time I see it, I forget how much humor there is.  I just love those rotten sisters!  I also love that there is an underlying Freudian coming of age story without any psychiatry.  I see the tale of Belle as a young girl’s eventual surrender to the Beast (sex) in men and herself. She resists Avenant and can only accept him by going through the ordeal with the Beast.  Far-fetched?  Seems more obvious to me each time I see it.  All those scenes with the out-of-control Beast in Belle’s bedroom seem to bear me out.  Absolutely a classic.

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My Darling Clementine
Directed by John Ford
Written by Samuel G. Engel and Winston Miller from a story by Sam Hellman based on a book by Stuart N. Lake
1945/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#204 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box]Wyatt Earp: Mac, you ever been in love?
Mac: No, I’ve been a bartender all me life.[/box]

If you are not looking for action, this is about as close to perfection as a Western comes.

Although Ford claimed that Wyatt Earp explained the whole thing to him, this is a highly fictionalized account of the events leading up to the Gunfight at the OK Corral.  Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and his brothers are driving a herd of cattle to California when they meet up with Old Man Clanton (a truly scary Walter Brennan) and his sons.  Clanton offers to buy the herd at rock-bottom prices.  Earp refuses to sell.  That night, while Wyatt and two of his brothers go to nearby Tombstone to get cleaned up, the Clantons help themselves to the herd and kill the youngest Earp boy.

Wyatt has no proof and accepts the very dangerous job as Marshall of Tombstone to get it and his revenge.  He makes friends with legendary gunslinger Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), a big deal around town.  His relations are not so good with Holliday’s girl, the fiery Chihuahua (Linda Darnell).

Then Clementine, Holliday’s lady love from older, better times comes looking for him.  Doc cannot bear to have her see what has become of him.  Wyatt takes an instantaneous liking to the pretty, refined Easterner.  The rest of the movie follows the love triangle, or is that quadrangle?, and the events leading up to the final confrontation with the Clantons.  With Ward Bond as an Earp and Alan Mowbray as a boozy itinerant actor.

Take away the plot and leave only the characters and scenery and you still have one fantastic movie.  With Ford it’s the little things that count.  I love the shots of Mature’s face as he listens to Hamlet’s soliloquy, Fonda’s stiff-legged dancing, and so much more.  The whole thing has a lonely, elegiac feeling befitting another time when the good guys won but at a terrible cost.

Ford always brought out the very best in Fonda and I find Mature to be such a sadly underrated actor.  Darnell is in her fake “Jane Russell” mode and not at her best.  Brennan reportedly hated working with Ford so much that he never did it again.  Despite or because of the animosity, he gives one of his best performances.  Highly recommended.

The Criterion DVD has an excellent commentary by a Ford biographer.

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Great Expectations
Directed by David Lean
Written by David Lean, Ronald Neame, Anthony Havelock-Allen, etc. from the novel by Charles Dickens
1946/UK
Cineguild
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#203 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Mr. Jaggers: Take nothing on its looks, take everything on evidence. There is no better rule.[/box]

The first half of this film is one of the great Dickens adaptations and it is visually gorgeous throughout.

Young orphan Pip (Tony Wager) is being raised by his mean sister and her kind blacksmith husband Jo Gargery (Bernard Miles).  One day, as he is visiting his parents’ grave in a cemetery near the river, he chances upon a convict, Magwich (Finlay Curry) who scares the daylights out of him.  The convict demands a file and some food on threat that a “young man” will eat Pip’s liver.  More out of pity than fear, Pip comes through with the goods.

A little later, Pip is summoned by the rich, eccentric Miss Havesham (Martita Hunt) to come to her house and play.  On arrival, Pip is greeted by the dismissive and insulting but beautiful Estella (Jean Simmons).  It is lifelong love at first sight for Pip, despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that Estella vocally looks down upon the boy as “common”.  Miss Havesham, an aged bride who has not seen the light of day since her jilting, encourages Pip’s longing.  Pip continues to visit the house until he needs to start his apprenticeship with Jo.  Thereafter, he returns each year to collect a generous birthday present.  Estella, by this time, has been sent to finishing school in France.

The pivotal event in Pip’s life occurs when he is in his late teens.  An anonymous benefactor has established a fund to allow him to go to London and become a gentleman. Pip, who has been dreaming of finally winning Estella, jumps at the opportunity.  In London, he is taken in hand by lawyer Jaggers (Francis L. Sullivan) and is given over to share rooms with one Herbert Pocket (Alec Guinness, in his first credited performance), who teaches him social graces.

Pip is reacquainted with Estella (Valerie Hobson) when she returns from France.  She refuses to flirt with him, as she does with all others, and tells him she has no heart.  Pip persists in his infatuation.  Then a second earthquake turns all Pip’s expectations upside down.

I’m a bit of a Dickens nut and I love the source novel about a boy who has to learn the hard way to take life at face value.  Its story about how we need to learn to be grateful for  what we have resonates with me.

This film is a feast for the eyes.  I especially like the early scenes in the graveyard, which convey so perfectly the terrors of a child but the whole thing is beautiful. As story telling, I find the second half dealing with Pip’s adulthood falls short of the first.  This is a fault shared with the novel but the casting didn’t help.  For one thing, John Mills is too old for the part and, for another, there is no way Jean Simmons could grow up to be Valerie Hobson and, if she had, Hopkins’s Estella was far too compassionate to be the same person.  Still, I looked forward to seeing this and look forward to seeing it again and again.

Great Expectations won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White.  It was nominated in the following categories:  Best Picture; Best Director; and Best Writing, Screenplay.

Clip – Opening sequence