Some British films. For more Pressburger and Powell films, see January 11, 2024.

49^th Parallel (1941), directed by Michael Powell, screenplay by Emeric Pressburger. Among other things, the film is a travelogue, taking us across Canada from west to east, from north of Churchill, Manitoba to Winnipeg. At one point, characters walk from Winnipeg to Banff where they enjoy ‘Indian Days.’ These characters are a group of German sailors who have been stranded in Canada after their U-Boat has been sunk in Hudson’s Bay. They are trying to make it across the 49^th parallel to the U.S. because the U.S. is still neutral in 1940. This provides the simple plot. These peripatetic characters meet a cross-section of Canadians from German Hutterites to First Nations people, to Scots, French Canadians, and English. The Canadians are invariably nice. The German sailors, with one exception, are not nice. As the action goes along quite a number of people are killed. To accentuate the action, we have the rousing music of Ralph Vaughan Williams. This is the only time I have seen the name of the composer in the cast list at the film’s beginning. The cast includes such stalwarts as Laurence Olivier as Johnnie the Trapper (using a pronounced French accent and wearing the requisite checked shirt), Eric Portman as Lieutenant Hirth, the fanatic leader of the German sailors, Anton Walbrook as Peter, leader of the Hutterite colony, Glynis Johns as Anna, a young woman in this colony, Leslie Howard as Philip Armstrong Scott, chronicler of First Nations history, and Raymond Massey as Andy Brock, a Canadian soldier. By the way, Raymond Massey’s brother Vincent (first Canadian-born Governor General – 1952-1959) provides the opening voice over narration. The film’s editor is David Lean. 49^th Parallel is an early wartime propaganda film, but it is so much more. The characters are rounded and the story compelling. Having German sailors as protagonists is a bold stroke. Yes, these sailors are cruel, violent, and fanatic (with that one exception). They are also the characters we follow from beginning to end.

 

The Red Shoes (1948), directed by Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell. Powell has remarked: “For ten years we had all been told to go out and die for freedom and democracy; but now the war was over, The Red Shoes told us to go out and die for art.” This film that uses a story by Hans Christian Andersen to inform its plot examines the life in art, art as taking precedence over all else. Yes, ballerina Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) and composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring) fall in love and attempt to make a life together, but this attempt is doomed to fail because of the pull of art, and because of the powerful influence of Svengali-like head of the ballet company, Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook). What impresses most in this picture is the fabulously colourful cinematography of Jack Cardiff and the almost surreal sets and designs of Hein Heckroth. Red, blue, and green, but especially red, are intense in their pull. They draw us into a painterly world of art as life itself. When asked why she wants to dance, young Victoria replies: “Why do you want to live?” These people live for art; art is life for them. Here art is collaborative. We may have the romanticized conductor and the prima ballerina, but behind the scenes are a bevy of designers, craftspeople, makeup artists, and so on who are necessary to the final production. This is like film, really! This film, like the ballet it depicts, is a lavish production; it will dazzle your eyes. The central dance sequence, the titular Red Shoes ballet, joins cinema and dance in a surreal expression of the possibility of art. It is beautiful to the point of hallucinatory. This dance sequence, and others in the film, are gorgeous. The performances are believable. Everything works.

Crackerjack (1938) – aka The Man with 100 Faces), directed by Albert de Courville. This pleasant British comedy/crime caper begins aboard an airplane where a robbery takes place. The robbers are after diamonds. They accomplish their daring and novel feat only to find that the diamonds they were after are not among the loot. But those diamonds were on that plane. What happened? It seems master thief ‘Crackerjack’ outwitted the thieves. Not only did Crackerjack steal the diamonds right in front of the thieves, but he also, like a modern day Robin Hood, uses the ill-gotten gains to help the needy. Once back on solid ground, one Jack Drake (Tom Walls), aka Crackerjack, meets with old flame Baroness von Haltz (Lilli Palmer) and romance flourishes. He also insinuates himself into a costume ball held by the wealthy Mrs. Humbold (Muriel George), only to steal Mrs. Humbold’s very expensive pearls. And he steals them right from round her neck. As one of the titles of this film indicates, Crackerjack is a man of disguises and he uses these to elude capture. Did I mention that he is also a successful author who turns his own capers into fiction for the common reader? This is all good fun. Lilli Palmer is always a delight and she wears some lavish gowns. Tom Walls is an unlikely leading man, but somehow this works. Brisk and bright, this film is well worth a visit.

Hobson’s Choice (1954), directed by David Lean. This film opens with an eerie night scene inside a boot shop somewhere in the black country of Victorian England. It is dark and spooky, with unsettling sounds. Soon a dark figure appears, and then stumbles into the shop. This is the inebriated Hobson, proprietor of the shop. His eldest daughter, Maggie (Brenda de Banzie) appears and helps him off to bed. Thus begins Hobson’s Choice, a delightful comedy that never fails to surprise, just as this opening scene surprises us. The story has to do with what the Victorians called “The Woman Question,” and at the forefront are Hobson’s three daughters. Maggie is 30 and, according to her father Henry Hobson (Charles Laughton), too old and too plain to marry. She thinks otherwise. Breaking the class barrier and contemporary conventions, Maggie sets out to marry Henry’s best bootmaker, William Mossop (John Mills), and begin her own business with William, a business in direct competition with her father’s. As she says, she has the brains and William has the talent. In short, this is a film that focuses on a strong and intelligent woman who defies convention and wins. As for her inebriate father, he descends into an alcoholic haze until rescued by this same daughter who, in the film’s third act, saves him from himself by offering him – yes – a Hobson’s Choice. Everything here is crisp and impressive: the acting, the sets, the cinematography, the sound, the script. You will also see a young Prunella Scales (you might remember her as Sybil Fawlty) as the youngest daughter, Vicky. 

 

The Third Man (1949), directed by Carol Reed. What to say about this oh so dark film noir. I cannot imagine not having seen this film. Its striking angles and shadows and images and spirals and spider like wires and hellish sewers beneath the streets of war-torn Vienna and charismatic Harry Lime lurking in the shadow of a street corner with a cat rubbing his leg and a zither sounding will stay in the mind. Robert Krasker’s cinematography delivers the essence of noir. Grahame Greene’s script examines the moral decline in post war Europe. Reed’s direction is potent. The acting is fine with Joseph Cotton’s Holly Martins performing the innocent abroad act nicely, Trevor Howard’s Major Calloway looking dapper in a tam and trench coat, Alida Valli’s Anna Schmidt effectively cool and closed (her departure at the end is chilling), and most memorably Orson Welles’s Harry Lime insinuating himself into the lives of innocents he manages to ruin. Welles is hardly in the film, although Harry Lime permeates all that goes on, but his brief appearance steals the show. Harry is the personification of the banality of evil, and the scenes of him scurrying through the sewers like a scared rat are powerful. This is as good as it gets in movie making. The scene high above ground in the Ferris wheel when Harry justifies his abhorrent racket in diluted penicillin chillingly stamps the moral collapse that is perhaps not just a post-war phenomenon. 

 

Cottage to Let (1941 – aka Bombsight Stolen), directed by Anthony Asquith. Here is a chipper wartime comedy/mystery starring the likes of John Mills, Michael Wilding, Carla Lehmann, and Alistair Sim. A number of people gather at a Scottish house that is being used for a military hospital and to house a couple of child evacuees. A downed pilot, Lieutenant Perry (John Mills), is being cared for here by nurse Helen Barrington (Carla Lehmann), daughter of the cottage’s owner. Young evacuee, Ronald (George Cole), fancies himself a Sherlock Holmes-type detective, and he goes about sleuthing. Then we have the mysterious Mr. Charles Dimble (Alistair Sim), who has rented the cottage not knowing it was co-opted by the military. Others involved in the goings-on include the Butler, the cook, scientist extraordinaire and owner of the house, John Barrington (Leslie Banks), his assistant Trently (Michael Wilding) and a few others lurking about. One of these several people is an agent of the Reich and member of a local Fifth Column cell. Which one? We have fun learning who the bad guy or girl is. Despite the fun, the film brings a serious eye to nefarious activities on the home-front. Sprightly, quick-witted, and engaging, A Cottage to Let is an efficient, well-directed film.

 

The Browning Version (1951), directed by Anthony Asquith. This is a film of great restraint, restraint in its action, in its camera work, in the emotions of its characters (for the most part). It tells the story of English school-master and teacher of classics, Andrew Crocker-Harris (Michael Redgrave). Early in his career, Crocker-Harris was a brilliant scholar and idealistic teacher who had begun a translation of Sophocles’s Agamemnon, a translation he never completed. In his own life, Crocker-Harris has his Clytemnestra in his wife Millie (Jean Kent). She has already killed him, Crocker-Harris says to fellow teacher and his wife’s lover, Frank Hunter (Nigel Patrick). Most of Crocker-Harris’s students dislike him and make fun of him when not within his watchful eye. One student, young Taplow (Brian Smith) does show some compassion, even giving his glum teacher a copy of Robert Browning’s translation of Agamemnon as a retirement gift. This sends Crocker-Harris into a round of sobbing, his only open display of emotion in the film. This is a film of intense feelings held in by stoic people trying to maintain decorum. Redgrave’s performance is nuanced and convincing. Asquith allows things to move along fluidly giving all his attention and ours, to the players. He offers a master class in how to bring a stage play to film.

 A fifth by Ray.

The Stranger (1991), directed by Satyajit Ray. This is Ray's final film; he died in 1992. The film tells the story of a long-lost uncle who returns to meet his niece after a 35 year absence. He has been out of communication with any family members since 1968, 32 years ago. He arrives on his niece's doorstep a few days after the niece has received a letter announcing his return. The niece has no memory of this uncle, and her husband is sceptical that this person is, in fact, her uncle. Once he arrives the family make several efforts to establish whether this stranger is truly the person he claims to be. Much of the action takes place in the family's living room where a selection of family friends comes to test the new arrival, and these tests become occasions for reflections on the nature of civilization, identity, politics, the class system, materialism, and so on. We might be reminded that the philosopher is often, if not always, a stranger to others. Ray's characters are attractive in their puzzlement, their humour, their humanity. Perhaps the key to these characters is the young son, Satyaki, whose openness, innocence, and desire to learn give him a special relationship with the Stranger. This is a quiet, yet intense film that suggests the simple "forest life" is the good life, and that all the so-called civilized values devolve into warfare, division, and an unfair separation of peoples into haves and have-nots. The final scene in the country brings Ray back to the world of his Apu trilogy made over thirty years before The Stranger. Told with delicacy and gentleness, this is a story for our times. I might add that the colours in this film are dazzling.

 Four by Satyajit Ray.

The Music Room (1958), directed by Satyajit Ray. The film opens with the sound of Indian classical music alongside the sound of European classical violins, and the juxtaposition introduces the theme of music, clash of cultures, and change. Change is perhaps at the forefront here as we soon enter the fading world of a zamindar (feudal land owner) who lives in the past while being confronted by the present and future at every turn. Much of the film takes place inside the zaminder’s crumbling mansion, itself a reminder of culture clash in its colonial splendour, and inside the failing mind of the feudal lord who refuses to accept change. His obsession is with music, and the film contains performances of Indian classical music and dance that take place, for the most part, in the opulent music room with its huge chandelier. In order to maintain position over his crass neighbour, a self-made man who embraces modernity (electricity, automobiles), the zamindar (Chhabi Biswas) is willing to spend all the remaining money, and his wife’s jewels, in order to continue presenting famous musicians in his ornate jalsaghar (Music Room). The final dance sequence in the Music Room is stunningly effective. Throughout the film we have symbolic touches: the small model boat, the white horse, the elephant, the automobile leaving behind a large dust cloud, the sound of music, the mansion, the encroaching river, the hookah and the cigarette, the huge mirror, the wall of portraits, and of course the chandelier. All of these touches are delivered with subtlety and lightness. The final shots show the dimming of the candle light alongside the beginning of sunrise. This is a masterful film from a masterful film maker.

 

The Big City (1963), directed by Satyajit Ray. This is Ray’s first film set in modern day Calcutta, and it begins with a shot of a trolley antennae sparking on its high wire as it moves along. The image let’s us know that something electric is about to happen. What that something is pits traditional ways with an emerging modernity that includes housewives finding work outside the home. The story focuses on Subrata Mazumbar (Anil Chatterjee), his wife Arati (Madhavi Mukherjee), and their extended family who live in cramped quarters and on the edge of poverty. Much of the film is shot in medium close-ups and close-ups that accentuate the tightness of the family dwelling both in terms of space and standard of living. Finding themselves in need of financial help, Arati decides to look for work, and she finds it selling knitting machines. It turns out she is good at her work and she soon finds herself moving up in her company. Meanwhile Subrata loses his job at a bank, making Arati’s income even more important for family survival. A lipstick tube, paper currency, a mirror all chronicle Arati’s emerging independence and sense of self-worth. The film, despite the rather closed-in camera work has a thrilling sense of life. We get to know this family, father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, son, sister-in-law well. We also get to know Arati’s boss, Himangshu (Haradhan Bannerjee). The film examines the economic divide in this city. It also notices racism in its depiction of the Anglo-Indian woman Edith (Vicky Redwood) who is treated badly at work. She finds a friend in Arati. This is a film that deals with difficult and important issues, and at the same time gives us characters we can like and even admire. 

 

The Coward (1965), directed by Satyajit Ray. Screen-writer Amitabha Roy (Soumitra Chatterjee) finds himself stranded in a small town. Local tea magnate, Bimal Gupta (Haradhan Bannerjee) offers to put him up for a night. When Amitabha meets Mrs. Karuna Gupta (Madhavi Mukherjee), he finds himself face to face with his girlfriend from some years ago. He still love this woman who he had hesitated to marry in the past. The film focuses on this reunion and the failure of Amitabha to come to terms with his past failure of nerve. Along with Akira Kurosawa, Jean Renoir, and Yasujiro Ozu, Satyajit Ray stands out as one of the great humanist film makers. What makes this film worth seeing is its understanding of human beings, their foibles and weaknesses and strengths. Here Madhavi Mukherjee delivers another strong portrait of a wife whose strength, stoicism, and talent remain despite a patriarchal system that places women as secondary to their husbands and partners. We saw her earlier in The Big City (1963), in which she plays a wife who goes out to work because her husband becomes unemployed. Here she is a dutiful wife who sets aside her painting in deference to her husband. Now her gift for art finds an outlet in drawing the household servants. In this closet drama, Ray manages to explore class and gender and the human condition.

 

The Hero (1966), directed by Satyajit Ray. Most of the film takes place on a train travelling to Delhi. The main character is film star, Arindam Mukherjee (Uttam Kumar), who is on his way to Delhi to receive an award. He is the main focus, suffering, as he does, from an existential crisis. We learn his back story through flashbacks and we learn something of his emotional crisis through his dreams. These sequences, both flashbacks and dreams, are handled masterfully. We also meet others on board, most importantly the magazine editor, Aditi (Sharmila Tagore) who “interviews” the famous film star, and who finds herself in a strangely compelling relationship with him. Others on board are a variety of people who are either star-struck or disapproving of film actors. There is also an advertising man who tries to get a commitment from a business man by using his wife as a lure. For her part, the wife desires to become a movie star. The plot is not complicated, although the human beings in this plot are. I kept thinking of the many other films that take place on board a train. This one is excellent. As always, Ray’s interests lie in humanity. His use of the train is fluid and seamless and he never makes us feel cramped as his camera moves through the corridors and into and out of compartments. I was reminded of Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited (2007) in the use of space and the dream sequences. The Hero is an impressive film.