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: CASQUE D'OR (Golden Marie) (Jacques Becker, 1952)

Jacques Becker only directed 12 feature films (and two halves - he quit one and was a replacement on another).  Despite this, he made three classics: the gangster film TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI, the prison escape film LE TROU and the Belle Epoque underworld romance CASQUE D'OR.

The film rightly won Simone Signoret her first BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress, she would go on to win two more.

She plays free-spirited Marie, whose lover is in a criminal gang run by venal Félix Leca who secretly desires Marie.

When the gang and girlfriends visit an outdoor dance hall, gang member Raymond meets Georges who he was in prison with once but Georges is now going straight working for a carpenter.  Marie and Georges are instantly attracted to each other, triggering a chain of events which brings tragedy to all.

Serge Reggiani and Claude Dauphin lead an excellent supporting cast.

Shelf or charity shop? Now in the limbo of a plastic storage box, CASQUE D'OR is worth keeping.  Jacques Becker had been Jean Renoir's assistant director on nine films in the 1930s including PARTIE DE CAMPAGNE (in which he also briefly appeared) and in CASQUE D'OR's opening scene in the outdoor dance hall and the later rural sequence where Marie and Georges escape Paris for a few days, you can see his influence.  Beautifully invoking Impressionist imagery both in town and country scenes, the film failed at the French box-office but was one of the main reasons why Becker was championed by the later French New Wave directors. One to treasure... especially for the way Becker lifted his grim final sequence with a touching coda.