A Tale of Two Cities.

Written in 1859 and originally published in weekly instalments between April 1859 and November 1859 Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities was set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution and depicts how when the French proletariat got sick of the way aristocracy was treating them they decided that the best response was to execute the lot of them by chopping off their heads using the guillotine! Dickens story set out the social parallels between Paris and London but unfortunately the British did not have the use of the guillotine and to this day are still putting up with the shite served up by their rich overlords.

 

The handsome Sydney Carlton. 

Following four silent film adaptations of Dickens story the first talky was in 1935 directed by Jack Conway and starred Ronald Colman and Elizabeth Allan and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. In 1980 there was a TV adaptation that starred Chris Sarandon, Peter Cushing, Alice Krige and Billie Whitelaw. But between the two we had A Tale of Two Cities made at Pinewood in 1958. Directed by Ralph Thomas and produced by Betty E Box. The Rank Organisation movie starred Dirk Bogarde as Sydney Carlton with Dorothy Tutin as Lucie Manette.

 

Stephan Murray, Dorothy Tutin, Bogarde and Athene Seyler.

This is affectively a love story set against the storming of the Bastille with Bogarde's character making the ultimate sacrifice for the girl he loves so that she can live happily ever after with his look-alike rival. Some critics have commended Bogarde's performance as his best to date, which is not surprising as most of his career changing performances, other than Hunted (1952) came after A Tale Of Two Cities. Mine you the 38 year old actor did look extremely handsome as Carlton, a young lawyer who hates himself and seems to have a death wish slowly killing himself by consuming large quantities of alcohol! Dorothy Tutin (Savage Messiah 1972) does not have to put much effort into her role but there are some stand out performances further down the pecking order including Donald Pleasance as an unctuous spy, Christopher Lee as a sadistic aristocrat and Rosalie Crutchley as a sort of Madame guillotine character who gets a lot of pleasure arranging for the aristocracy to meet there deserved end. Also in attendance among the host of British actors is Cecil Parker as a banker, Athene Seyler as Tutin’s over protective companion and Stephan Murray as Tutin’s father - whose speedy recovery from 18 years in the Bastille is something to be marvelled at!

 

Rosalie Crutchley as 'Madame Guillotine'

Made completely in a studio does not help to make this the most realistic ‘revolutionary’ film you have ever watched with some scenes so underplayed that the excitement is completely non-existent. But is does pick up in the second half, which is probably more to do with the first half being so soporific and certainly is not a stand out movie in the career of one of Britain's greatest actors.

Cul-de-Sac.

Among distinguished company that included Joseph Losey, Francois Truffaut and Michelangelo Antonioni, Roman Polanski was a European Director that made three films in the UK during the British cinematic boom period of the 1960's. The first was the very sinister, but critically acclaimed, Repulsion (1965), which starred Catherine Deneuve who plays a repressed woman who retreats into a deranged world of her own. Because of the films success he was allowed to make the second of the three, Cul-de-Sac (1966), the third being the spoof Hammer film Dance of the Vampires (1967) which was said to be rather disappointing, although personally I have never seen it so I reserve my judgement for a latter date. Polanski did return to the UK to make a further films including the blood thirsty Macbeth in 1971. This followed the death of his then wife Sharon Tate who was murdered by the followers of Charles Manson in August 1969 along with four other people at the notorious 10050 Cielo Drive.

 

The moody Donald Pleasence plays the effeminate George....

Described as a psychological thriller, but more of a hilarious black comedy Cul-de-Sac is the story of two failed gangsters on the run after some botched skulduggery that's never explained. They end up on an Island that is cut off by the tide twice a day. Living on the island is George an effeminate ex businessman with a completely shaved head and a pair of steel rimmed classes that adds to his obvious neuroticism. Sharing the castle is his beautiful French wife Teresa. A bored, flirtatious young woman who has obviously not got a lot of time for her husband and you can't help thinking that she is quite pleased to have the company. That is until the situation deteriorates and thereafter begins a dangerous battle of nerves.

 

....with his flirty wife played by the tragic Francoise Dorleac.  

The script for this rather original movie was collaboration between the well known French born screenwriter Gerard Brach and Polanski. The title refers to the 'hole' that the two gangsters had got themselves into. It was originally planned to make the film in Eastern Europe but because of contractual details was made in Northumberland, England on Holy Island in Lindisfarne Castle. The Castle was an ideal location for this story with its coastal road that gets flooded twice a day and people can actually get stranded there. The script was adjusted to fit this setting and not staged as originally intended in a standard domestic house; incidentally furniture used in film was actually part of the Castle.

 

Gangster number 1 (Lionel Stander)

First cast was Donald Pleasence as the husband George. Pleasence was a problem with his constant mood swings and railing against the director requirements insisted on shaving his head every morning! Tests were carried out to cast Teresa; with lots of aspiring young actresses auditioning. The choice was wide, Polanski eventually settling on Catherine Deneuve sister Francoise Dorleac[1]. In the scene where Dorleac has to swim in the sea, not only could she not swim but also following the second take she nearly froze to death! Iain Quarrier a social friend of Romans from the swinging London scene who was known to indulge in a little 'dope' plays "Christopher". The film also features William Franklyn, Robert Dorning and Jacqueline Bisset. But the main problem Polanski had was casting the role of Dickey, the main gangster, eventually settling on the American ‘hard man’ Lionel Stander after seeing him on TV. But the American was not an easy man to work with, difficult, lazy and believed he knew it all, also he did not get on with Dorleac but at the time of filming he did have a heart problem that no one knew about on set! Casting the second gangster was a synch. Albi is played by Jack MacGowran who has been described by the director as ‘a dedicated actor’, a man with endless amounts of patience who nearly froze to death in one scene where the Morris Minor gets flooded and his wet suit leaked.

 

Gangster number 2 (Jack MacGowran) 

It was without doubt a very difficult shoot, lack of money and therefore time, the weather was terrible having to contend with snow, sleet, hail and heavy rain and the tides was a problem never seemingly coming at the right time of the day. Roman Polanski is well known for working his actors extremely hard and the temperamental nature of some of the cast did not help. Towards the end of the shoot the situation was becoming critical, with pressure from producers on Polanski to get the movie finished as soon as possible. I don’t believe Cul-de-Sac was really meant to be a commercial film, made more to reflect Polanski’s taste in movies with an emphasis on atmosphere and character, but an original, rather enjoyable picture that does not look or feel like any other movie thanks largely to Polanski’s direction and Gilbert Taylor’s black and white cinematography.

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[1] Dorleac was killed in a car accident on the 26th June 1967.

Wake in Fright.

When I first got married in the late sixties you could get an assisted immigration passage to Australia for a tenner, you had to stay there, I believe, for two years, following which you could return without incurring any addition charges for the original trip. This scheme was to encourage people to move to the continent to find work and set up a home, you needed no qualifications! We got as far as getting the forms from Australia House in the Strand, London but when it came down to it my new wife would not leave her family so in the end we never went, something I regretted, that was until I saw Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright (1971), filmed on location at Broken Hill New South Wales in the Australian outback and at the Ajax Film Centre Sydney in January 1970 which would have been around the period we would have been living there, if our original plan’s had come to fruition.

 

Its the beginning of the Christmas holidays for John Grant....

The films story, based on a novel of the same name by Kenneth Cook and adapted by Even Jones, is one of the most unsavoury tales I have ever had the displeasure to sit through! It not that it’s a bad film it just reflects a particularly bad light on one of our crown colonies and the people that resided there.   

 

....stops off at the Yabba where he meets the local law enforcement officer Jock Crawford....

DOP Brian West opens the proceedings with a high level pan shot of a single railway line running through Tibooda a starkly desolate stretch of the outback with a school on one side of the track and bar with a lodging house attached on the other. It’s at these lodgings that the teacher stays while teaching a mixed age classroom during term time. We join John Grant (English born actor Gary Bond) on the last day before the school breaks up for the Christmas holidays and discover that he intends to join his girl friend back home in Sydney for the six-week holiday period. To this end he catches a train to Bundanyabba. ‘The Yabba’, as its fondly known to its inhabitants, is described by the cabby, that brings him in the town to spend his stopover before catching his flight home, as “friendly place where there’s plenty to see and enjoy”, probably a little over stated. This rather wild dusty town mainly seems to consist of bars and gambling dens full of men who seem to do no more than loose their money and drink exceptionally large quantities of beer! The local police chief Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty in his last screen appearance before his death in May 1971) encourages our teacher to consume vast quantities of alcohol and introduces him to the ‘two-up’ lounge where he looses all his vacation money! He ends up in the house of John Hynes and his miserable looking daughter Janette (Sylvia Kay), completely broke. 

 

....looses all his money in the Two-Up lounge....

Following this we witness John Grants decent into despair, plumbing the very depths of his existence. We get to meet some of the local residents he spends time with and we learn the details of their sad existence. Janette Hynes invites Grant to go for a walk in the bush and seduces him; we meet the alcoholic doctor played by the always-creepy Donald Pleasance who the frustrated Janette regularly has kinky sex with!  Then there are the two drunken hunters Dick (Jack Thompson in his first screen role) and Joe with whom Doc Tydon and a very drunk Grant go on a barbaric Kangaroo killing spree.   

....seduced by Janette Hynes....

What you really notice is how alcohol affects all these rather nasty people, nothing else really matters but to drink and get drunk, one character remarking with some surprise that John Grant would ‘rather talk to a women than drink’  ‘well he is a teacher’ relies another. But we watch how these grubby, sweaty and unpleasant individuals have a marked affect on the teacher. It’s a film that actually makes you feel dirty and you can’t wait to have a shower after watching it.

 

....and meets Doc Tydon.

Quoting Russian writer Anton Chekhov ‘Don’t judge the characters, just what they do’ Where as far as John Grant is concerned he does things during this lost weekend which he never thought he was capable of. Nick Cave called it ‘the best and most terrifying film about Australian existence’ I would change that to read ‘the best and most terrifying film about an Australian’s existence.’ How a perfectly respectable schoolteacher can change for the worse in such a short period of time. This movie demonstrates that extremely well and all credit to the director and Gary Bonds acting. It also underscores the relationship between men when women are in short supply, at times substituting wrestling/fighting for closeness and touching.

 

The kangaroo hunt begins....

There were no stunt men used in the making of this film meaning that all the actors did their own stunts. The extras used in the gambling scenes were actual people that run and took part in the ‘two-up’ lounge. It is alleged that the killing of the kangaroo’s was not carried out for filming purposes but these scenes were actual hunters and the footage was virtually a ‘documentary’ of a real killing spree. Something that still courses controversy to this day, of which I’m not surprised! 

 

....and John Grant reaches the end of his lost weekend!

Kotcheff has been credited with reviving the Australian film industry with this movie and despite this important film being lost for many years has been restored and is now regarded as a cult movie. Based on a digital restoration completed earlier that year it was finally released on both Blu-ray and DVD in 2009. Which gave an opportunity for this grim and brutal film to be seen by a far wider audience than ever before.

The Shakedown.

Renown Pictures Ltd, which were originally founded by George Minter in 1938, is a Production and Distribution company that revives British classic movies and whose restoration of British B-movies is exceptional giving the viewer a chance to see rare films in clarity beyond reproach. And it’s done it again with The Shakedown (1959), another ‘missing’ B-movie which boasts a solid story, played out with a strong cast and could easily be mistaken for the main feature at 89 minutes with an exciting pace that does not falter from start to finish.

 

Augie Cortona (Terence Morgan) instructs one of the models. 

Written and directed by Toronto born John Lemont who entered the film industry in 1935 and worked with the Army Film Unit during WW2. His first feature film was not until 1954 and his best-known is the crime drama The Frightened City (1962) that stared a pre-Bond Sean Connery as a villain. He also worked a great deal in Television.

 

Jessel (Donald Pleasence) 

As far as I’m aware this is the first time that The Shakedown has appeared anywhere on DVD. It stars Terence Morgan (Tread Softly Stranger 1958) as a crook called Augie Cortona who is due for release from prison and shares a cell with a petty crook called David Spelligue (Bill Owen There Was a Young Lady 1953, Dancing With Crime 1947).  Before Augie was incarcerated he run a call girl racket in Soho, London’s red light district. Grassed up by his disloyal partner Goller (a foreign looking Harry H Corbett!) who now runs all of Augie’s previous rackets – but the released jail bird wants them back, or at least to find away of getting back at his ex partner. To this end he robs two of Goller’s henchmen of their latest takings, the proceeds of which are more than enough to set up a photo-modelling agency with Jessel (Donald Pleasence Hell is the City 1969) a professional photographer, who Augie met quite by accident in a public house! 

Thats no way to treat an ex alcoholic! 

Is our ex pimp going straight? Chief Inspector Bob Jarvis (Robert Beatty) certainly does not think so and puts an undercover officer in to the studio. But unbeknown to both the police and Augie, Goller has also placed a plant in the agency. Augustus Cortona’s hard shell falters when he falls for one of the studio’s high-class models Mildred Eyde (the stylish B-movie queen Hazel Court) and starts up a courtship.

 

Augie's courtship of Mildred Eyde (Hazel Court) 

Well shot, this gritty realistic black and white movie is a must for crime film lovers and ‘is possessed of a gumption worthy of the best American B-movie and a welcome alternative to those prim and stodgy British films that are mistakenly called classics’[1] A rather risqué film with its hint of nudity and an indication of elicit sex. It also manages to capture the same sordid and gritty feel of Michael Powell’s classic Peeping Tom (1960), which is praise in its self.

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[1] James Oliver – Offbeat