Post by london777 on Dec 7, 2018 2:17:51 GMT
I better make an effort with this Brit Noir thread before I get any more menacing posts from near the Arctic Circle.
Fortunately, hitchcockthelegend has done most of the work for me. I cannot improve on his review of Cast a Dark Shadow (1955) dir: Lewis Gilbert so I will just add a few random thoughts.
hitchcockthelegend's review of Cast a Dark Shadow
Lewis Gilbert rose from a humble East End background to become the epitome of the British film establishment, as writer, director and producer. Although he could turn out very competent, sometimes very good (but never great) movies in various genres, he thought his three Bond films represented the pinnacle of his career. His character dramas, like Alfie, Shirley Valentine, or Educating Rita, were marred by sentimentality, while his war films were too reverential.
I do not think he had it in him to make a Film Noir. The genre is inherently subversive but Gilbert was an establishment figure, eventually a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. I see the present movie as a continuation of the Agatha Christie tradition of murder stories, though darker and edgier than was allowed in pre-war movies.
Janet Green had written two very fine and innovative "social problem" noirs, Sapphire (1959), which tackled racism, and Victim (1961), also with Dirk Bogarde and which dealt with homosexuality, but the director of those two was the brilliant Basil Dearden. Gilbert was no Dearden so maybe the conventionality of our movie was down to him. There are hints that there may have been a lot more in the story originally. For example, when someone finally gets round to investigating our hero's past, they find that he was accused as a child of an (unspecified) assault upon a younger boy, but the script hastily moves on. Sunbathing on the beach, Bogarde is enjoying a muscle-building magazine with near naked male models. But he is clearly capable of performing his marital duties satisfactorily, because when he attempts to move to the spare room, his (older) wife (Margaret Lockwood) stops that, saying "I did not marry you for your company".
The script was by John Creswell from Janet Green's play "Murder Mistaken". Curiously, The BBC made a TV movie the very next year under that title, in which Margaret Lockwood played the same part. How odd. I wonder if she played it just the same?
Green must have been aware of Emlyn Williams famous play "Night Must Fall", filmed in 1937 with Robert Montgomery. It concerns a young, charming, working-class psychopathic murderer who worms his way into the trust of an old lady. It was remade in 1964 with Albert Finney in the lead and Karel Reisz directing. Mona Washbourne played the part of the old lady, as she does in Cast a Dark Shadow, while Kathleen Harrison appeared in the 1937 version as the cook.
Cast a Dark Shadow has a bravura opening before the titles with Edward and Monnie on the ghost train. This is in horror movie style and one shot where Edward's eyes shine in the otherwise pitch-blackness is brilliant, making him seem demonic. But the rest of the film shows that, to misquote Monty Python, he is not the Devil, just a very naughty boy. The film takes another course, as a drawing-room murder mystery which too often reveal its stage origins. All very predictable until Margaret Lockwood enters the story. She is terrific, surely her best-ever role. And she has all the best lines:
Lockwood: We buried my poor Albert six months ago.
Bogarde: What was the matter with him?
Lockwood: He was dead!
In the original play the victim and the nemesis were played by the same actress. I presume they were sisters and that the nemesis combined the roles played by both Lockwood and Kay Walsh. I guess that would work better on the stage than on the screen, where the much older sister would have to wear a lot of make-up. And the film provides great parts for three actresses rather than one.
At times the film seems more black comedy than Noir. We enjoy Edward's ingenuity and single-mindedness but there is little sense of danger. The interplay between Bogarde and Lockwood is electric as they manoeuvre for position, but the denouement is banal and absurd. I take off a mark for that. 6.5
I loved the seaside scenes (Brighton and the South Downs) with Britain still looking seedy and impoverished some time after the war.
Although the titles "introduced" Lita Roza, sadly she never appeared on screen again. She was the UK's top band singer for a decade and could sing torch songs as well as any American, but it must have been a terrible burden to her that her best-selling record remained "How Much is that Doggie in the Window?". Odd how movies of that period would pause events to feature a night-club number, especially when, as here, the singer is not otherwise a character in the story. Who noticed that her song "Leave Me Alone" is an English version of the theme song from the French Noir classic "Touchez Pas au Grisbi" (1954) dir: Jacques Becker, from the previous year?
Lockwood was wise not to fall for Bogarde's property scam supposedly based on a new cinema to be built. Cinemas were closing hand over fist in that decade as working families could now afford television.
During the decade the two major cinema chains had embarked on a programme of cinema closures. The Rank Organisation closed 79 of its cinemas in 1956 and Associated British Picture Corporation closed 65 a year later. In 1951, cinema admissions had stood at 1,365 million in Britain; by 1960, the figure was down to 500 million.
I guess Edward's con-man skills were confined to wooing.
Fortunately, hitchcockthelegend has done most of the work for me. I cannot improve on his review of Cast a Dark Shadow (1955) dir: Lewis Gilbert so I will just add a few random thoughts.
hitchcockthelegend's review of Cast a Dark Shadow
Lewis Gilbert rose from a humble East End background to become the epitome of the British film establishment, as writer, director and producer. Although he could turn out very competent, sometimes very good (but never great) movies in various genres, he thought his three Bond films represented the pinnacle of his career. His character dramas, like Alfie, Shirley Valentine, or Educating Rita, were marred by sentimentality, while his war films were too reverential.
I do not think he had it in him to make a Film Noir. The genre is inherently subversive but Gilbert was an establishment figure, eventually a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. I see the present movie as a continuation of the Agatha Christie tradition of murder stories, though darker and edgier than was allowed in pre-war movies.
Janet Green had written two very fine and innovative "social problem" noirs, Sapphire (1959), which tackled racism, and Victim (1961), also with Dirk Bogarde and which dealt with homosexuality, but the director of those two was the brilliant Basil Dearden. Gilbert was no Dearden so maybe the conventionality of our movie was down to him. There are hints that there may have been a lot more in the story originally. For example, when someone finally gets round to investigating our hero's past, they find that he was accused as a child of an (unspecified) assault upon a younger boy, but the script hastily moves on. Sunbathing on the beach, Bogarde is enjoying a muscle-building magazine with near naked male models. But he is clearly capable of performing his marital duties satisfactorily, because when he attempts to move to the spare room, his (older) wife (Margaret Lockwood) stops that, saying "I did not marry you for your company".
The script was by John Creswell from Janet Green's play "Murder Mistaken". Curiously, The BBC made a TV movie the very next year under that title, in which Margaret Lockwood played the same part. How odd. I wonder if she played it just the same?
Green must have been aware of Emlyn Williams famous play "Night Must Fall", filmed in 1937 with Robert Montgomery. It concerns a young, charming, working-class psychopathic murderer who worms his way into the trust of an old lady. It was remade in 1964 with Albert Finney in the lead and Karel Reisz directing. Mona Washbourne played the part of the old lady, as she does in Cast a Dark Shadow, while Kathleen Harrison appeared in the 1937 version as the cook.
Cast a Dark Shadow has a bravura opening before the titles with Edward and Monnie on the ghost train. This is in horror movie style and one shot where Edward's eyes shine in the otherwise pitch-blackness is brilliant, making him seem demonic. But the rest of the film shows that, to misquote Monty Python, he is not the Devil, just a very naughty boy. The film takes another course, as a drawing-room murder mystery which too often reveal its stage origins. All very predictable until Margaret Lockwood enters the story. She is terrific, surely her best-ever role. And she has all the best lines:
Lockwood: We buried my poor Albert six months ago.
Bogarde: What was the matter with him?
Lockwood: He was dead!
In the original play the victim and the nemesis were played by the same actress. I presume they were sisters and that the nemesis combined the roles played by both Lockwood and Kay Walsh. I guess that would work better on the stage than on the screen, where the much older sister would have to wear a lot of make-up. And the film provides great parts for three actresses rather than one.
At times the film seems more black comedy than Noir. We enjoy Edward's ingenuity and single-mindedness but there is little sense of danger. The interplay between Bogarde and Lockwood is electric as they manoeuvre for position, but the denouement is banal and absurd. I take off a mark for that. 6.5
I loved the seaside scenes (Brighton and the South Downs) with Britain still looking seedy and impoverished some time after the war.
Although the titles "introduced" Lita Roza, sadly she never appeared on screen again. She was the UK's top band singer for a decade and could sing torch songs as well as any American, but it must have been a terrible burden to her that her best-selling record remained "How Much is that Doggie in the Window?". Odd how movies of that period would pause events to feature a night-club number, especially when, as here, the singer is not otherwise a character in the story. Who noticed that her song "Leave Me Alone" is an English version of the theme song from the French Noir classic "Touchez Pas au Grisbi" (1954) dir: Jacques Becker, from the previous year?
Lockwood was wise not to fall for Bogarde's property scam supposedly based on a new cinema to be built. Cinemas were closing hand over fist in that decade as working families could now afford television.
During the decade the two major cinema chains had embarked on a programme of cinema closures. The Rank Organisation closed 79 of its cinemas in 1956 and Associated British Picture Corporation closed 65 a year later. In 1951, cinema admissions had stood at 1,365 million in Britain; by 1960, the figure was down to 500 million.
I guess Edward's con-man skills were confined to wooing.