DVD/150: SHIP OF FOOLS (Stanley Kramer, 1965)

Although Stanley Kramer's films were popular and 'liberal', they now feel heavy-handed and humourless, the attempts at profundity land with a thump.

SHIP OF FOOLS is GRAND HOTEL afloat: a cross-section of people reflecting their society and as we are on a boat from Mexico to Germany in 1933, the rise of Nazism permeates the air.

SHIP OF FOOLS is important as it was Vivien Leigh's last film as the lonely divorcée Mary Treadwell.

Apart from Vivien, the best performances are from Oskar Werner as the exhausted ship's doctor and Simone Signoret as La Contessa, a Cuban politician's former mistress en route to prison in Tenerife.  While curing her opium addiction, they fall in love for the brief time they have.

Nominated for eight Academy Awards, Europeans Werner and Signoret were recognised as was Michael Dunn as the film's dwarf 'narrator' - it won for Cinematography and Art Direction.

Shelf or charity shop?  For Vivien and Simone it's a keeper.  Kramer had known about Vivien Leigh's precarious mental health when he hired her but a recent downturn into manic paranoia caused problems with other cast members but despite flare-ups with Kramer, Signoret and Lee Marvin - who shared most of his scenes with her - they all sympathised and showed understanding. This febrile quality to Vivien's performance really stands out in the film - in particular her sudden frantic Charleston in an empty ship's corridor and the following scene where, staring in her mirror, she gives way to her fears of ageing alone, at one point, she brightens up and flashes a coquettish smile and the years fall away and you can see her as Scarlett O'Hara again, charming her suitors on the Tara veranda.  She died two years later of tuberculosis.

DVD/150: THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS STONE (Josė Quintero, 1961)

Acclaimed Broadway director Josė Quintero made one film, an adaptation of Tennessee Williams' first novel.

Ten years after her Blanche Dubois in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, Vivien Leigh delivered another memorable Williams heroine in Karen Stone, a former actress living in Rome after a year of widowhood.

Hiding from friends and having lost her nerve for the stage, Karen drifts through days in an apartment by the Spanish Steps.  She is further unnerved by a young vagabond who seems to be watching her...

Drawn into a circle of wealthy emigres, she meets Magda, an ingratiating German Contessa who procures young men for them, living off their financial gifts.

Knowing of Karen's wealth, Magda introduces her to the charming but shallow Paolo but Karen suspects the truth and keeps him at arm's length.

She eventually succumbs but Paolo treats her with disdain. Karen is again alone but knows destiny awaits her...

Shelf or charity shop?  She had a spring, now she has a shelf.  A bit of an over-looked film, I have always enjoyed it and find it's enigmatic ending haunting. Vivien Leigh had been away from the screen for six years, unlike her character she was being a success on stage, but also suffering from recurring manic depressions that plagued her as well as her divorce from Laurence Olivier.  She gives a wonderfully nuanced performance: lost, rueful, disdainful and desperate and looks glorious, glowing in her Balmain couture.  Sadly Warren Beatty gives a skin-deep performance and is effortlessly outshone by Lotte Lenya, earning her Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress with a performance of glittering malice.  The extraordinary supporting cast include Coral Browne as Helen's friend Meg who knows her too well, Jill St John is great as a sly Hollywood starlet, silent screen actress Bessie Love as Karen's bossy dresser and it was the last film of Ernest Thesiger, best remembered as the eccentric Dr Pretorius in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. 

DVD/150: CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA (Gabriel Pascal, 1945)

The most expensive British film flopped badly at the box office, and no more Shaw adaptations were filmed during his lifetime.

Yet there are pleasures: John Bryan's sets, Oliver Messel's costumes and the cinematography of Freddie Young, Robert Krasker, Jack Hildyard and Jack Cardiff.

Stewart Granger is a dashing Apollodorus, and the cast includes Basil Sydney, Cecil Parker, Frances L Sullivan, Ernest Thesiger and Flora Robson, going over the top as Cleopatra's murderous nurse Ftatateeta and looking like Scary Spice...

Milling around are Stanley Holloway, Leo Genn, Michael Rennie, John Laurie, and 16 year-old Jean Simmons - unseen are Roger Moore, Renée Asherson and Kay Kendall. 

Claude Rains has the right avuncular air as Caesar but his wry performance gets somewhat lost among the columns.

Vivien Leigh is gloriously kittenish as young Cleopatra and grows into an imperious Queen, but filming proved tragic as she miscarried after falling on-set.

Shelf or charity shop?  Shelf for Vivien.  It is a bit of an acquired taste - and the Shavian dialogue is an uneasy fit with several action scenes - but it is such a curio it is worth the climb. Poor Vivie, the miscarriage heralded the first of her bi-polar depressions which dogged her career and life from this moment.  But showing the courage that also marked her life, she and Olivier appeared on stage in 1951 with their own repertory company playing both CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA on alternative days in London and New York - a Herculean feat for the fittest performer.

 

DVD/150: WATERLOO BRIDGE (Mervyn LeRoy, 1940)

1939: Colonel Roy Cronin stands on Waterloo Bridge, remembering his lost love Myra... 

In her first film after GONE WITH THE WIND, Vivien Leigh was unhappy acting opposite Robert Taylor having wanted Olivier instead.  But his lightweight performance allows her to shine and they both later said it was their favourite film.

Roy and ballerina Myra meet sheltering from a WWI air-raid and he later sees her dance.  Despite the ballet mistress' orders, they meet after the performance and fall instantly in love.

Roy is ordered back to France before they can marry and a desolate Myra is sacked by the ballet mistress along with her friend Kitty for defending her.

Myra reads that Roy has been killed and, unemployed and depressed, joins Kitty in prostitution.

While working Waterloo Station, Myra meets Roy - still alive and still in love...

But, tragically, Myra is too honest to forget her shame...

Shelf or charity shop?  A definite shelf for my luminous Vivien.  Although not a success on Broadway, Robert E Sherwood's play was filmed in 1931 starring Mae Clarke and also a ropey remake in 1956 with Leslie Caron.  LeRoy's film is perfect Hollywood melodrama with marvellous photography and music and a fairly good representation of London.  Robert Taylor doesn't attempt the Scottish accent his character should have but he is inoffensive and leaves the way clear for Vivien's wonderful performance, it is amazing to think she was only 27.  There is fine support from Virginia Field as the ever-realistic Kitty, Maria Ouspenskaya as Madame Olga, Lucille Watson as Taylor's upper-class mother and, in one scene and a thimble-full of lines, Ethel Griffies is glorious as a harridan landlady - Griffies is now remembered as the sceptical ornithologist Mrs Bundy in Hitchcock's THE BIRDS.

DVD/150: THAT HAMILTON WOMAN! (aka LADY HAMILTON, Alexander Korda, 1941)

Of the three films Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier made together, THAT HAMILTON WOMAN is the most watchable but it's obvious patriotism almost sinks it today.

Filmed in Hollywood in just five weeks, Korda made propaganda depicting Britain fighting a war against a European aggressor.  So what if Bonaparte was French?  It's patriotism that counted! 

Churchill's favourite film was made on a reduced budget although the lavish art direction by Vincent Korda belies it.

Destitute alcoholic Emma Hamilton is thrown in a Calais jail and she recalls her life in flashback.

As young Emma, it feels at times like Vivien was told "Just do it like you played Scarlett" as she pouts and teases her way into the dour Lord Nelson's affections but she is a total delight and rises to Emma's lonely end.

She deserves her top-billing; sadly Olivier's Nelson is as animated as the Trafalgar Square statue.

Shelf or charity shop?  A keeper for glorious Vivien who, despite Olivier's stolidness, makes their scenes together spark.  The standouts in the supporting cast are Gladys Cooper as Nelson's neglected wife Lady Frances and Sara Allgood as Mrs Cadogan-Lyon, Emma's gauche social-climbing Irish mother.