Popular Features
100 Years of… Mud and Sand
Before Laurel and Hardy there was Laurel and Laurel, and in 1922’s Mud and Sand we get to see Stan Laurel’s original silent-movie partnership at work. The film is a longish short (40 mins) spoofing the Rudolph Valentino hit Blood and Sand, the story of a poor Spanish toreador who hits the big time and has his head turned by the wiles of a vampish older widow. Tragedy ensues. Turned out within three months of Valentino’s all-action spectacular – one of the biggest films of the year – Mud and Sand’s target is obvious, with Stan Laurel playing the slick-haired accidental toreador hero and irresistible love icon Rhubarb Vaselino. (The on-screen intertitles call him … Read more
Cape Fear
It’s compare and contrast time. Max Cady, a psychopath recently out of stir after a long stretch for rape, sets out to terrorise lawyer Sam Bowden who he believes withheld information about his case at the trial which resulted in him going down. The original, directed by cult British director J. Lee Thompson in 1962, starred Robert Mitchum as the avenging psycho (a role he’d perfected in 1955’s Night Of The Hunter) and Gregory Peck as the apparently decent lawyer. Both turn up again in cameos in Martin Scorsese’s remake, in which things aren’t quite so clear cut. This time around Bowden (now played by Nick Nolte) is a lousy lawyer, and a … Read more
100 Years of… Master of the House
More than just a miserable face, arthouse darling Carl Theodor Dreyer could also churn out the hits. Master of the House is one such, a counter to the suggestion that he was just an austere Dane interested only in the beauty of human suffering – see The Passion of Joan of Arc or, much later, Ordet, for plenty of that. Madly successful at the box office, Master of the House is, as near as you got from Dreyer, a Hollywood entertainment, telling a story with a clear beginning, middle and end, emotional arcs, good guys and bad guys, fairly realistic performances and a moral at the end that you can actually see coming from … Read more
Zorro: Who Is That Masked Man?
The Mexicans like their heroes the way they like their tacos – with cheese. Enter Zorro. Cue mask, cape and ludicrous pencil moustache Next time you’re in London, try the Robin Hood Zorro restaurant in Hammersmith. This oddly conceived English/Mexican hybrid serves an equally odd drink called the Robin Hood Meets Zorro cocktail. A mouthful to order and a hell of a thing to drink, it contains tequila, gin and beer. The menu doesn’t say it’s served with a bucket, but it probably should be. What is it about Zorro that seems to bring out the naffness in … well, everything? It was not always thus. Dial back to the mists of the … Read more
Popes on Film
When I first wrote this intro Pope Benedict had just hung up the red papal slippers. Now, revisiting it 12 years on, Francis has come and gone and now Pope Leo XIV is the Vicar of Christ in Rome. It sets the mind a-wandering. Who are the great popes of cinema? Oddly, this is a harder question to answer than you might think. For starters, there are many films that feature a pope at the edge of the action but very, very few are actually about the supreme pontiff himself. Though the pope is held in contempt in some quarters, he tends to get a rather easy ride in the movies, possibly because … Read more
Jean Reno: The Bulletproof Star
In a long career that’s seen him starring in films good, bad and spectacularly terrible, the public’s affection for French icon Jean Reno has never wavered. How does he do it? Big guy. Woolly hat. Stubble. Shades. Round shades. Dark round shades. Doesn’t say much. Kills people. Sensitively. Ask a roomful of people to come up with a word or two about Jean Reno and that’s pretty much what you’d get. You might also get French. Likes his dinner. And cool. Very cool. But what about versatile? Best known for playing loners, hitmen, tough guys, individuals who don’t say much because they don’t have to, to most people Reno is that French guy … Read more
100 Years of… The Adventures of Prince Achmed
You don’t, in the normal run of things, expect a rape scene in old-time animation, but that’s what you get in 1926’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the breakthrough for Lotte Reiniger, a pioneer in her field, artistically and technically. It tells the story of the an eastern prince who steps in to help his sister after an ugly African sorcerer makes a play for her. For his trouble the brother is whisked away on a magic flying horse, to a faraway realm where Princess Pari Banu, ruler of the spirit world of Wak Wak, beguiles him with her naked beauty. And he responds with the aforesaid rape. Unless I am very much … Read more
100 Years of… Dr. Mabuse the Gambler
An important film rather than a good one, at four and a half hours Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler) is simply too unwieldy to qualify as a quality movie and yet it regularly ranks up there with the best of them, bolstered by the reputation of its director, Fritz Lang, who, whisper it, could turn out some real rubbish when his mind wasn’t on his work. Dr. Mabuse the Gambler is not rubbish though. And in spite of the reservations about its length, this silent behemoth from 1922 is a remarkable document in many ways, though a heavy one, in which Lang lays down the template for all the bad … Read more
100 Years of… Blood and Sand
1922’s Blood and Sand was Rudolph Valentino’s third big hit movie in two years and it deserved to be. A grand, well-appointed, beautiful-looking, subtly-acted adventure rippling with themes and sub-themes and with properly fleshed-out side characters, it’s got more going on under the hood than at first appears. Famous Players-Lasky (later to become Paramount) had been caught on the hop by Valentino’s success and insisted that he carry on with the schedule already mapped out for him – which is why you’ll find a number of B movies sprinkled along the way between The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, his breakthrough, and Blood and Sand. Though Valentino was hot stuff (and knew it), … Read more
100 Years of… The Ten Commandments
Cecil B DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, so good he made it twice. This is the original 1923 version, which came about after DeMille held a public competition asking for suggestions as to what he should make next, maximum shock and awe being the big idea. The winning entry started with the line “You cannot break the Ten Commandments – they will break you,” and that was that as far as De Mille was concerned, a theme and a challenge all in one. He shot some of it in two-strip Technicolor, while the rest of it was tinted, as was common at the time. That’s all gone now; restorations come in a standard black and white. … Read more
100 Years of… La fille de l’eau aka The Whirlpool of Fate
Nothing wrong with a nepo baby if they’re actually any good. La fille de l’eau (aka The Whirlpool of Fate, sometimes known as The Girl of the Water) is Jean Renoir’s first feature film, shot when he was 31, using Paul Cezanne’s property as a location and financial assistance from the estate of his own dad, the painter Pierre-Auguste (flogging one of dad’s paintings often came in handy in the early days). What he gives us is a lyrical and beautiful film harking back to the Impressionist/Post Impressionist style of Renoir Sr, Cezanne et al and forward to Renoir Jr’s own deliciously pretty films of the 1930s. What you don’t get is much … Read more
100 Years of… The Gold Rush
Charlie Chaplin’s most famous film, the one he wanted to be remembered by, is The Gold Rush. It was not only sensational then but it’s amazing how well it holds up now. Fashionable though it is to be slightly down on Chaplin these days, The Gold Rush is the one doubters should see – inventive, dramatic and funny, it’s well made enough to convince all but the most prejudiced. I’d urge the Criterion version on you if you’re going to shell out for a physical copy. It contains the 1925 silent original and also the 1942 re-release, which Chaplin re-edited, rescored and overdubbed with a narration (an approximation of newsreel bombast done by … Read more
