DVD/150: THIS HAPPY BREED (David Lean, 1944)

In 1939, Noel Coward wrote THIS HAPPY BREED about a working-class family; he starred in the play, which played alternate performances with his more debonair comedy PRESENT LAUGHTER, but by the time the film was made, the role went to Robert Newton.

David Lean, who had co-directed the previous year's IN WHICH WE SERVE with Coward, here was sole director for the first time. he also adapted the play with his Cineguild colleagues Anthony Havelock-Allan and Ronald Neame who also was the cinematographer.

In 1919, Frank and Ethel Gibbons move into a Clapham terraced house with their three children Queenie, Reg and Vi, Frank's shrill spinster sister Sylvia and Ethel's opinionated mother Mrs Flint, and over 20 years we follow their happinesses and tragedies against the events that shaped the period.

Frank learns their neighbour is army pal Bob Mitchell whose sailor son Billy soon loves Queenie.

Shelf or charity shop?  A shelfer.  Although Coward's view of his working-class characters has a patronising tone, he knows how to make the main characters 'pop' and while David Lean had concerns about directing actors - on IN WHICH WE SERVE Coward handled the actors while Lean did the action sequences - he needn't have worried with such a talented cast, and he whips the action along at pace. Robert Newton.s performance has not dated well but Celia Johnson is wonderful as the loving but moral Mrs Gibbons, a performance which won her the US National Board of Review award for Best Actress.  While all the characters seem to take turns saying "There'll be trouble and no mistake" or "Well I'm sorry I'm sure!", there are stand-outs from Amy Veness as Celia Johnson's formidable mother, Stanley Holloway is always a delight as salt-of-the-earth neighbour Bob, John Mills gives a better-than-usual performance as sailor Billy - the only cast member from the original play - and Kay Walsh, who was married to Lean at the time, is excellent as the snobbish Queenie, a Clapham Bovary who yearns for a better life.

DVD/150: IN WHICH WE SERVE (Noel Coward / David Lean, 1942)

When producer Anthony Havelock-Allen approached Noel Coward in 1941 to make a patriotic film, Coward picked the Navy, and a fictionalised account of the recent sinking of his friend Lord Mountbatten's ship HMS Kelly.  Such a blatant propaganda piece shouldn't work - but it does.

Coward's name appears seven times in the opening credits!  He produced and wrote it, starred as the patrician Captain Kinross and composed the unmemorable score.

More importantly, first-time director Coward realised that while he could handle directing actors, he would be - ahem - all at sea with the action sequences so he gave a young editor his first chance at directing, David Lean.

An uncredited Leslie Howard announces at the start "This, is the story of a ship" and we follow the life of the fictitious HMS Torrin from construction to it sinking, watched by it's survivors as they cling to a raft.  As they wait for rescue, strafed by enemy planes, Kinross, Petty Officer Hardy and Seaman 'Shorty' Blake remember their lives back home..

Shelf or charity shop?  A definite shelf.  As I said, Coward and Lean's film stands the test of time and class snobbery to be a genuinely moving look at Briton at war.  Noel Coward won a special Academy Award citation for the film and one can imagine the effect it had on it's audience at the time. Wonderfully photographed by Ronald Neame - getting in soggy training early for his later THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE! - and Lean's editing keeps the film always moving forward.  Although Coward's writing for his working-class characters always verges on the Dickensian, it does lead to some memorable performances: Coward is his ramrod, debonair self which makes for an odd Captain but what a joy to see him in his clipped prime while among the crew, there are three actors who I usually dislike but here all deliver fine performances: John Mills as cheeky chappy 'Shorty', Bernard Miles as the stoic Hardy and the film debut of Richard Attenborough, as a stoker who abandons his post.  Keeping the home fires burning are the luminous Kay Walsh as Freda, 'Shorty's shy young wife, Joyce Carey as Hardy's no-nonsense wife Kath - her last scene is particularly moving, and the sainted Celia Johnson as Kinross' wife Alix.  This was her first feature film and, despite an accent you can etch glass with, she is magnificent, especially in her one-take speech about her acceptance of the third presence in their marriage, the Torrin. 

DVD/150: RYAN'S DAUGHTER (David Lean, 1970)

RYAN'S DAUGHTER's critical mauling so disenchanted David Lean that he took 14 years to make another feature film - surely time heals everything?

Not really.  I have seen worse, but RYAN'S DAUGHTER is a small love story stretched to breaking on Lean's over-sized canvas.

After DOCTOR ZHIVAGO's success, MGM happily financed screenwriter Robert Bolt's take on MADAME BOVARY - need an Irish coastal village?  Build one!  Irish weather drab?  Move filming to South Africa! 

What it needs are performances to match the glorious Oscar-winning cinematography by Freddie Young; sadly not with this cast.

Rosy Ryan, bored with village life in County Kerry, marries her former teacher Charles Shaughnessy expecting passion but he is emotionally unexciting.

She finds sexual awakening with a shell-shocked English Major from the local garrison.  But it's 1916 and the village supports the IRA.

When their affair is discovered. Rosy and Charles face the villager's fury...

Shelf or charity shop?  At the moment it's very touch and go - the unhappy filming seems to have seeped into every sprocket-hole.  Robert Mitchum gives a quietly impressive performance as Charles but offscreen he grew to hate Lean's willingness to let his cast sit around while he waited for perfect weather conditions. Sarah Miles - Mrs Robert Bolt at the time - gives a frustratingly thin performance as Rosy; you almost side with the villagers' dislike!  The main casting flaw is Christopher Jones as Major Randolph - hilariously, Lean cast him after seeing his previous film only to discover he had been dubbed.  Likewise his awful performance here was dubbed during the editing.  He and Miles detested each other which does not make for great screen chemistry.  The story goes that Jones refused to film the pivitol lovemaking scene with her so Mitchum secretly drugged him making him near-comatose on set.  John Mills' Oscar-winning turn as the mute village idiot is now embarrassing to watch with Lean's attempts to give him profundity particularly thick-eared.  His winning for Best Supporting Actor is all the more annoying given the excellent performances of Trevor Howard as the cantankerous Father Collins and Leo McKern as Rosie's double-agent father. Truth be told, the best performance in the whole film is the wonderful Irish actress Marie Kean as the spiteful town shop-keeper.  Despite the critical mauling, the film still made money. 

DVD/150: HOBSON'S CHOICE (David Lean, 1954)

Some films are never as you remember them...

I remembered HOBSON'S CHOICE, Harold Brighouse's 1916 play of a Manchester shoe-shop, as an extended Victoria Wood sketch, but it's so much more.

Lean directed 16 films over 42 years but only two comedies, BLITHE SPIRIT and HOBSON. Made in the first half of his career; there was no room for laughs in his later epics.

Henry Hobson runs his Salford shoe-shop mainly from the local pub drinking with friends, but it is actually managed by oldest daughter Maggie - unpaid of course.

Patronised as a 30 year-old spinster, Maggie has ambitions for a husband and her own business; both personified in Willie Mossop the shop's cobbler - what he lacks in education and gumption, is compensated by his wonderful creations.

Willie is swept along by Maggie's plans but how will Hobson react to losing Maggie and gaining a business rival?

Shelf or charity shop? A surprising 'shelf'.  David Lean directs with a wonderful eye for detail and a superb sense of place; you know exactly the world that Hobson, Maggie and Mossop exist in, aided immeasurably by Jack Hildyard's lustrous cinematography and Malcolm Arnold's rollicking score.  Charles Laughton is wonderful as Hobson, the would-be patriarch who is bested at every turn by Maggie. The camera loves him - and he loves it, but Lean keeps him reined it, letting him off the leash for his pixilated drunken scene, chasing the moon's reflections in rain puddles. Brenda de Banzie was a touch too old for Maggie but with her usual flinty directness is perfect for the 19th Century independant woman and the characterful cast includes Richard Wattis, John Laurie, and 22 year-old Prunella Scales as the youngest sister.  As always, I had issues with John Mills - his gormless Willie Mossop gets old very soon, but, after a wonderfully played solo scene where he procrastinates about going to bed on his wedding night, he is ok.

DVD/150: GREAT EXPECTATIONS (David Lean, 1946)

There had already been two films of Dickens' novel but David Lean's version has reigned supreme ever since, despite two more screen adaptations and six TV versions.

Lean had only seen a 1939 stage version, written by Alec Guinness who also played Herbert Pockett.  Seven years later, Lean cast him in the same role; he also cast that production's Miss Haversham, the wonderful Martita Hunt.

Lean wrote the film script with his producers Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan, other writers included Cecil McGivern and Lean's actress wife Kay Walsh who wrote the final scene.  It's a text-book adaptation.

Academy Awards deservedly went to Guy Green's cinematography and John Bryan's art direction; they deliver a believable world with a wonderful sense of place, the desolate Kent marshes of Pip's unhappy childhood, the bustling Chancery Lane of his life as a 'gentleman', the gothic decepitude of Miss Haversham's crumbling mansion.

Shelf or charity shop?  A definite keeper - it's a classic for a reason.  Lean's subtle direction works wonders with his wonderous cast: Guinness (in his first major screen role) is delicious as Herbert Pockett while John Forrest is perfect as teenage Herbert, Martita Hunt's magnificent ruin of Miss Haversham, Finlay Currie's scary but dignified Magwitch, Francis L Sullivan's Jaggers, the conceited spite of Jean Simmons' young Estella and Anthony Wager's sad young Pip.  Valerie Hobson is well cast as the brittle older Estella while John Mills - although too old for the role - is a personable Pip.

In the past week I have been to the National Film Theatre (BFI South Bank m'arse) twice - yes Constant Reader, just like the old days.

First off it was to see a little-seen Michael Redgrave film from 1939 A WINDOW IN LONDON directed by Herbert Mason. I had not heard of the film - it doesn't even rate a mention in Alan Strachan's biography of the actor - but it turned out to be an intriguing little gem.
It's quite remarkable to consider how quickly Redgrave had established himself - A WINDOW IN LONDON was filmed only five years after he made his professional stage debut and in that time he had become a star of classical revivals with seasons at Tyrone Guthrie's Old Vic and with John Gielgud's company at the Queens Theatre.

He had left Gielgud's season early to make his film debut starring in Hitchcock's 1938 classic thriller THE LADY VANISHES and his film career took off immediately - in 1939, the year he made A WINDOW IN LONDON, he also starred in two Carol Reed films: CLIMBING HIGH with Jessie Matthews and THE STARS LOOK DOWN with Margaret Lockwood as well as A STOLEN LIFE with Elisabeth Bergner. Oh and starred in the premiere production of T.S. Eliot's THE FAMILY REUNION... and all this while aged 31.

In A WINDOW TO LONDON, he plays Peter, a crane operator working on the building of the new Waterloo Bridge. His wife Pat (Patricia Roc) is a night-time switchboard operator in Dolphin Square so they hardly see each other. One morning when his tube train goes overground, he sees a man stabbing a woman through an open window. He races to the house with a handy policeman to discover what Peter saw was an illusionist Zoltini (Paul Lukas) practising a trick with his wife Vivienne (Sally Gray) who is also his glamorous assistant.

The press report the incident and Vivienne's smarmy agent friend manages to get them a booking through the resultant publicity but Zoltini's hair-trigger jealousy leads to yet another argument and she storms out midway through the act - straight into Peter who has come to see their act. Needing an escape from the world, Peter takes her - ahem - up the crane and he gives way to her sultry charms. She takes him to a swanky party at the agent friend's apartment but finds she has left her bag at the crane. The obliging Peter goes to fetch it only to find the vengeful Zoltini waiting for him...
Peter and Zoltini have fistycuffs which results in Zoltini's plunge from the bridge. What now for our hapless hero? Will Peter face the gallows for murder? What of his marriage now he is under the spell of Vivienne? There are two more neat twists to the plot before all is resolved.

Although the characters become little more than pawns to the screenwriter's fevered plotting, the winning performances of the four leads have won you over as their lives spiral out of control and keep you onside despite the twists and turns of the last act. Patricia Roc is a trifle insipid as the nice girl but Mason wisely concentrates on Redgrave, Lukas and in particular Sally Gray in the main. Sally Gray makes a memorable femme fatale and one can quite imagine how the sex-starved Peter would fall for her sultry charms. It's a shame she is not as well-known as she should be.

The film has a wealth of London locations and it was intriguing to see the building of Waterloo Bridge with the open vistas on each side of the Thames. The film was shown with a 1944 short film LONDON TERMINUS which covered a day at Waterloo Station. It was quite fascinating seeing the main concourse looking not that different from it does today but to see little details lost to us now such as the timetable being changed by a long pole closing the wooden slats with the names written on them and the surprise of seeing a news cinema inside the concourse. It made for a hugely enjoyable Friday evening double-bill.

The second trip was to see Ronald Neame's 1963 screen version of Enid Bagnold's play THE CHALK GARDEN which had the all-star cast of Deborah Kerr, John & Hayley Mills and Edith Evans.
Bagnold's play - which was given such a memorable production at the Donmar in 2008 - was adapted by John Michael Hayes (who wrote the screenplays for four Hitchcock films including REAR WINDOW) but very little of what makes the play so remarkable remains in the film. Where the play is primarily about the war of wills between the eccentric but formidable Mrs. St. Maugham and the governess she has employed to manage her wilful grand-daughter Laurel, the film moves the focus to the governess Miss Madrigal and Laurel thus making it an amiable teen rights-of-passage film instead of something deeper.

It's not that the performances are at fault although I have never been a particular fan of either Kerr or John Mills. Edith Evans deserved her Academy Award nomination for her stately performance and Hayley Mills shows that she was a child actress who really could hold her own against the best adult performers. It's not even that the film itself is bad - Ronald Neame's direction is measured and manages to sustain the underlying tension as to what is the secret of Miss Madrigal's past. It's just a bit smothered by the standard Ross Hunter high-gloss production.

It's just a letdown that the play could not have been adhered to more - Edith Evans would probably have won the Academy Award if the adaptation had included Mrs. St. Maugham's final showdown with her daughter who arrives to take back her daughter.

The screening was introduced by Julie Harris who designed the costumes for the film. Now in her late eighties, it was a delight to hear her recollections on the making of the film and a quick shufty at her filmography shows that her next two films were A HARD DAY'S NIGHT and CARRY ON CLEO - how versatile can you get!