Flickers in Time

Chariots of Fire

Harold M. Abrahams: If I can’t win, I won’t run!
Sybil Gordon: If you don’t run, you can’t win.

This film is more than its iconic Vangelis score.

The film is set in the period leading up to the 1924 Paris Olympic Games.  Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) is the son of a wealth Jewish financier and can run like the wind.  He is part of a strong track team at Cambridge University.  He is acutely aware of his outsider status and runs to prove something to his comrades and himself.  He also fits in by being a star in Gilbert and Sullivan productions at his school.  He eventually meets and falls in love with actress Sybil Gordon (Alice Krige).

Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) could not be more different from Abrahams.  He is a devout Christian who aims to become a missionary to China.  But he also runs like the wind and believes he was given his talent for the glory of his God.

Both men are training for the Olympics.  Abrahams is so intent on becoming a champion that he hires professional trainer Sam Mussabini.  Both men head off to the games where drama awaits.

I clearly remember first seeing this on a plane.  The experience was memorable because the plane landed before it was finished!  I did eventually see the film and enjoyed it.  The rewatch did not disappoint.  This is a handsomely produced look at sportsmanship back at a time when gentlemen pursued glory on the field.  Very entertaining.

Chariots of Fire won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Costume Design, and Best Original Score.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Holm) and Best Film Editing.

Diva

A triumph of style over substance.

The setting is a very hip and artsy contemporary Paris.  A young postman/messenger idolizes opera soprano Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelnmenia Wiggins Fernandez).  Hawkins has long refused to record her performances. So the postman records a performance surreptitiously.  Afterwards, he goes back stage, meets her, and steals her dress.  He returns to his stupendously cool Paris loft.

A little later he meets a super-cool Vietnamese teenager and strikes up a relationship with her even though she shares the even more stupendous loft of a philosopher? writer? brooding hipster?.  A prostitute tosses another tape into the postman’s moped saddlebag.  This tape is relentlessly pursued by French hit men and their employer.  The tape of the singer is relentlessly pursued by West Indian? Taiwanese? pirates.

Obviously, I found the plot hard to follow.  But this is an example of the “cinema du look” movement and the production is the thing here.  The film certainly delivers in terms of its beautiful art direction, cinematography and score.  So it is an enjoyable watch though not one that I would seek out again particularly.

An American Werewolf in London

David: I will not be threatened by a walking meat loaf!

Comedy and horror are an uneasy mix.  This works better than it has any right to.

David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) are American college students and best friends who are spending their summer vacation in Europe.  Currently they are backpacking through the English moors.  It is a desolate area and they get out of the cold by entering an isolated pub called The Slaughtered Lamb.  They do not receive a warm welcome from rhe curiously standoffish patrons and barkeeper.  Nor do they get answers about the pentagram on the wall.

It is a moonlit night.  The boys hit the trail again in the rain and promptly get lost.  They then start hearing a howling that makes them very nervous.  This presages a violent attack that leaves Jack dead and David wounded.  The next time he is seen, David is awakening from a coma in a London hospital.  Things go downhill from there.  The only bright spot in David’s life is pretty nurse Alex Price (Jenny Agutter).
I last saw this on original release and was not wowed.  This time around I liked it much much more.  The makeup and effects are out of this world and the comedy melds nicely with some real horror.  But my favorite part is the soundtrack, which contains many songs about the moon.  Recommended.

Rick Baker won the Academy Award for Best Makeup, the first time this award was given.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Marion: You’re not the man I knew ten years ago!
Indy: It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage.

Still thrilling after all these years.  I had forgotten how sharp the screenplay is.

It is 1936.  Indiana Jones is an archeology professor.  In his off time, he searches for historically significant relics.  This is dangerous work but Indy is proficient with the bullwhip and is incredibly lucky at all times.  We begin the story in an old Amerind temple where Indy snags a cursed solid gold fertility statue, escaping from collapse of the temple and poison arrows by the narrowest of margins.

He is visited by some officials who say that Hitler is obsessed with the original Ark of the Covenant which he believes will endow the owner with incredible powers.  The US Government wants to deny him that prize.  Indy immediately recognizes the significance of this and prepares to leave for the Kathmandu, the last known location of his old professor who possesses a vital clue needed to discover the Ark.

During this visit, Indy must perforce meet again with his professor’s daughter, ex-flame Marion (Karen Allen).  The father is dead and she has the clue.  Despite her cold reception, danger brings them back into each other’s arms.  She will be his partner in his future adventures, in addition to serving as a damsel-in-distress.

The action continues in Egypt where many more incredible adventures await.  The whole thing is capped off by an explosive finale.

This remains a ton of fun.  Movies like this one and Star Wars came as a breath of fresh air to movie lovers who were stuck with a lot serious and depressing material in the seventies.  The screenplay is wonderful in blending fantasy with wit and romance.  The score is classic.  I kind of like that the sets remind me of something out of a theme park.  It emphasizes the escapist tone of the whole thing. Easy to see why this would get the kind of sequels it did.

Raiders of the Lost Ark won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Sound.  It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Cinematography.  John Williams got gypped, though I suppose he got quite enough awards during his career.