Whiskey Galore! (1948)

Whiskey Galore!  (aka Tight Little Island)(Alexander Mackendrick, Charles Crichton, 1949) The island of Todday in the West Hebrides is dry. It's 1943 and with the world at war, rationing has drained the last drops of whisky out of the sodden land. Scots without whiskey are restless. So, it's no wonder that among the younger set, thoughts have turned to romance. Schoolmaster George Campbell (Gordon Jackson) is trying to woo Catriona Macroon (Gabrielle Blunt), one of the daughters of shopkeeper Joseph Macroon (Wylie Watson), despite his religious mother's strong disapproval. Macroon's other daughter, Peggy (the ever-charming Joan Greenwood), is being courted by Sergeant Odd (Bruce Seton), of the Home Guard, charged with keeping the island safe from attack, and bringing a rather unwelcome sense of regimentation to island life. The older folks, well, they're just trying to get by, but, without any whisky, a general pall has descended on the island. Tea is all well and good, but the strict rationing has taken its toll on tempers because of the temperance.

So, it must seem like manna from heaven, when the SS Cabinet Minister runs aground in a heavy night-time fog. A couple of the islanders try to lend assistance, and learn from the stuck crew that the ship's cargo consists of 50,000 cases of whisky. No help is requested; none is desired. The ship begins to take on water and the crew abandons ship, leaving it to the salvage folks to take care of the cargo. But, the prospect of 50,000 cases of whiskey instills in the island a severe sense of...volunteerism. Plans are immediately made to see if the citizenry can "lighten the load" of the ship—in the spirit of helping the war effort (you understand).

To the head of the Home Guard, Captain Paul Waggett (Basil Radford), the duty is clear: as property of Her Majesty, the cargo must be under the guard of their forces and must not be interfered with until the authorities deal with the situation. To him, it is as if the Germans themselves have sunk the Cabinet Minister and any thought of touching the cargo would be tantamount to treason. He orders Odd to set up a 24 hour watch on the ship to make sure that it is safe and secure.

There's a little complication, of course. Macroon reminds Odd that a bridegroom, before his nuptials, must host a rèiteach—a communal get-together—at which whisky, traditionally, is served. No whisky, no marriage (traditionally). This creates a bit of a conflict of interest for Odd, as he does want to get married, duty or no duty. So, when word gets to him that the locals may make a "reconnaisance" of the ship, he conspires with them to complete his charge, but also let them sail out to the ship. Both Odd and the locals are determined to keep Waggett ignorant of anything that might transpire.

Hi-jinks ensue. 

 

Whiskey Galore! had a difficult production history: It was the first picture produced by Ealing Studios to feature considerable location filming and, owing to that, the budget was more of an investment than had been previously produced. Weather conditions were not exactly ideal and led the film to go over-budget and over-schedule (a full five weeks on a 10 week shoot!). Also, director McKendrick was working with a fairly inexperienced crew and came away thinking it looked more "like a home movie." Not only that, McKendrick was more in sympathy with the Home Guard commander, rather than the rapskallion islanders.

Ultimately, the film was "saved" in post, due to some re-editing and extra footage, all done by Charles Crichton. And it's delightful, full of little winking touches and the sort of local color designed to melt audiences' hearts. Mckendrick, despite the experience, went on to direct some of the great British comedies, like The Man in the White Suit, The Ladykillers, and (in the States) Sweet Smell of Success. Crichton had a long career, directing The Lavender Hill Mob all the way to his last film, A Fish Called Wanda (in 1988).

The Ipcress File

The Ipcress File (Sidney J. Furie, 1965) The first of the "alternate Bond" films that came out in the 1960's to take advantage of the "spy craze" of movies while also setting itself apart. 

It would be a bit more difficult for this one to do the latter, seeing as how the main producer is Harry Saltzman, one of the duo making the Bond films, and cribbing many of that series' essential crafts-people—Production Designer Ken Adam, Editor Peter Hunt, Composer John Barry, and Sound supervisor Norman Wanstall—to create this "kitchen-sink" version of Bond. Michael Caine stars as the unnamed protagonist in Len Deighton's novel, but dubbed "Harry Palmer" in the movie adaptations. Bespectacled and lower-class, he's a sergeant in the defense ministry doing surveillance work when his less-than-ordinate attitude makes him a suitable candidate for a particular job.

Deighton's novel was stripped to essentials and the movie-makers went to work.

The issue at hand that Palmer is investigating involves the abduction and brain-washing of critically needed scientists and so the movie starts with a pre-credit sequence that relies on a visual sleight-of-hand as the "minder" for one of these specialists, Radcliffe, after putting his charge on a train, rushes back to give him his left-behind camera only to find another man in his place—the scientist has been abducted. The next shot shows the "minder" dead and discarded in the train station.

This is just the sort of "teaser" that Harry Saltzman was known to come up with in the Bond series—notably the sequence where James Bond is stalked and killed by an assassin in From Russia With Love (only to find that "James Bond" is an imposter used in a training exercise in a Russian assassin camp). That sequence makes no sense—why provide a "James Bond" mask for the victim and how valid is such an exercise if the target is not the same man (and who would volunteer for such duty??). But it's a suspenseful start, visually, and whets the audience's expectations that things may become deceptive...if illogical. The Ipcress sequence does the same thing, while also doing the thing with few words of dialogue except the most perfunctory of pleasantries.

Palmer is assigned to replace the dead security agent to track down the source of the "brain-drain"—16 scientists have already been kidnapped. He is handed over from Col. Ross (Guy Doleman) to Major Dalby (Nigel Green), who will handle the internally sensitive operation. Along the way, Palmer will be tracking an Albanian named Grantby (Frank Gatliff), tangle with his bodyguard, launch a seemingly worthless raid on a hide-out, get framed for the murder of two observing CIA agents, sees a colleague get killed, and get a lot of stick about not filling out the proper forms. And he'll get a little too close to the operation behind it all when he himself gets abducted.  

It's a different sort of spy thriller, despite having some of the familiar trappings. Lines are drawn between class, with a clear difference between Palmer's stuffy superiors and the scruffy, cock-sure Palmer—"Insubordinate. Insolent. A trickster. Perhaps with criminal tendencies" reads his "B107" dossier. But, perhaps, that's a good thing, as whatever has been tried in the past doesn't seem to be working.

And it's different than anything the Bond-artisans had done for that series. Locations in Ipcress are grubby, not spotless vacation-spots. Adam's sets are not spacious cathedrals of class and chrome, but tight little spaces for warehousing. Hunt's editing has no punchy cuts but, instead, lets things play out naturally. And as for the music, where the James Bond Theme (arranged by Barry, it should legally be admitted) has momentum, Barry's cimbalom-threaded theme for Ipcress ambles and skulks.

But, it's Furie's direction that differentiates. Given his cast of actors, Furie concentrates on the mise-en-scéne, one of the most ostentatious examples of a directorial hand waving at the audience. Round about the time in the movie when Palmer begins working for Dalby, the world we see becomes filled with obstruction and obfuscation, the subject of the scene shadowed, obscured, crowded and sometimes isolated by foreground objects that get in our line of sight. 

What starts out as a conceit of literal "undercover" presentation almost becomes a running gag as Furie makes us look over, under, around and through all manner of windows, furniture, people, and buildings. A sidewalk fight scene (normally front and center in any action film) is obscured by its vantage point from the interior of a car—there's no one in it, so it's not some personal point of view of a character in the film. We begin to get accustomed to looking down through transoms and lampshades. At times, the gambit becomes laughable, as we start looking at scenes through desk in-boxes. And it's finally taken to the extreme when we're confronted by the close-up of a ringing telephone, which—when its hand-set is picked up and answered—reveals a government functionary behind it.

This is madness. But there is method to it, if an obvious, hardly secret one. It puts us in the frame of mind of Palmer, having to seek out the answer to the government's problem while having to contend with the obstructions of man—and by extension, bureaucracy—to find the particular answer of a tree hidden in plain sight by a frustratingly obscuring forest. For the remainder of the film, there will be the occasional image that has nothing in front of it, but it will be rare, and a bit of a shock.

It's a visual clue to what is going on in the plot, a wink to the audience. But, it also has a quality of the times, a "pop-art" sensibility—it is "the swingin' '60's", after all—that would inform most of the decade's spy-films, less than in the visual presentation/direction than in the art direction and set design of lesser entries in the genre.

The Ipcress File is definitely, defiantly, of the times, while setting itself apart. "Insubordinate. Insolent. A trickster."

Hell Drivers

Saturdays are "Take out the Trash" Day

Hell Drivers (Cy Endfield, 1957) British feature directed by blacklisted American director Endfield—and the first to carry his actual name and not a pseudonym*—about the rough and tumble day-to-day of short-haul truckers, battling deadlines and each other to try and meet quota and be top-driver hauling ballast (gravel) on sub-standard equipment at speeds that are break-neck, even under the best of conditions. Each driver has to make at least twelve loads a day; if they don't, they're fired. Competition is so fierce that the other drivers aren't above sabotaging each other's rigs. Work-place harassment is just part of the job and a way of life.

Into this demolition derby come Joe Yately (Stanley Baker)—call him "Tom"—who's just served a year stretch in prison and is trying to make a new honest life for himself. A position is open at Hawlett's Trucking after a driver has gone through a bad accident and although the manager, Cartley (William Hartnell) is reluctant, his secretary Lucy (Peggy Cummins of Gun Crazy) intercedes on his behalf. Tom is taken on a training run and does okay, despite near-collisions with a couple of other drivers.

The other drivers are a motley crew: there's Scottie (Gordon Jackson), Ed (Wilfrid Lawson), Dusty (Sidney James), Tinker (Alfie Bass), and Johnny (Sean Connery), all rough types who aren't above intimidating Tom—it's all in fun, after all. More receptive is Gino (Herbert Lom), an Italian (Herbert Lom?) who's in love with Lucy and wants to give the new driver a chance.

Less friendly is Red (Patrick McGoohan), the driver foreman, who always sits at the head of the table—as a rib, the drivers let Tom sit at the head and Red knocks him off his chair when he enters the room. Red is the most reckless of the drivers, does eighteen runs a day winning him a gold cigarette case, and lets it be known that no—no one—will take that case away from him, even if he has to cripple the driver to do it.

The first thing you notice, given hindsight, is the cast, early in their careers, and before they achieved their biggest success in the 1960's. Sure, there's Connery and McGoohan (who'll ride the 1960's spy-craze), but there's also Jackson from "Upstairs, Downstairs," Lom and Alfie Bass, Sidney James from the "Carry On" films, and Hartnell would become the first "Doctor Who."

But, that's not all. Playing the waitress at the driver's mess is Jill Ireland. And when Tom goes home to try to make amends, David MacCallum plays his younger brother. That's an amazing group of young actors, briefly doing washing duties in the "kitchen-sink" era of British film-making. As a result, the most subtle of the actors is star Baker, while the rest of the cast do their best to garner attention to themselves.

Lom's accent might be a little thick, but the actor who does the most egregious over-acting is a surprising one—McGoohan. He'd be known for merely quietly smoldering with a less-is-more kind of acting during his starring days, but here he's at full villainous boil, manking about like he was Richard III, hunch-shouldered and bull-headed. You hope for him to get his comeuppance early, as its a little painful to watch. When throws away a cigarette, you expect it to explode off-screen.

That aside, Endfield keeps the action going almost constantly, making it a visceral movie. Sometimes too much so. The driving scenes are viciously under-cranked, giving it an almost comic effect, rather than causing white knuckles. By the way, the cinematographer is the storied Geoffrey Unsworth, who would move on to far greater things.

Still, it's interesting to see if only for the young turks who would burn up the screen in the next decade.

* Well, it's listed as C. Raker Endfield, a slight obfuscation from how he was listed on his American films.