Brief Encounter (1945)

Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945) Two people (Trevor Howard, Celia Johnson) sit in a train depot cafe with few words passing between them, even though the need for words is agonizingly felt. This is a meeting of great import for these two people far beyond the casual and humble setting it is situated in. The time is precious and limited, and words could be balm or weapons, so they are avoided. It is agony, but neither one can avoid this meeting for both of them know it will be the last. And the clock is ticking. And words go unspoken. So much of that.

In Brief Encounter, the near-entirety of the story is told in flashback as a confession that never escapes the heroine's lips. Laura Jesson (Johnson) is considering telling her kind, stable, and decent (but dull) husband of her adultery, but the words go unspoken, flashing only in her mind, like a secret life passing through her mind before it dies. Only the audience is allowed the hearing. Only the audience will know the agony of that first scene.

But, not yet. As Laura and Dr. Alec Harvey (Howard) watch their tea cool and dread last words, they are interrupted by Dolly Messiter (Everley Gregg), a friend of Laura's and oh-so-chatty. Dolly is about to catch a train and what a lovely surprise to see Laura here and oh, how she does prattle on about the most meaningless, silly things and takes up all the oxygen—and time!—in the room, while Laura and Alec can only sit and be polite—it's not her fault, she doesn't know (although Laura will be thinking "I wish you'd stop talking. I wish you'd stop prying and trying to find things out. I wish you were dead - no I don't mean that. That was silly and unkind. But I wish you'd stop talking.") 

"Isn't it awful about people meaning to be kind?" is something she says that might also be applied in the situation. The underlying drama beneath an innocent seeming example of "two's company-three's a crowd" will not be disclosed (and only to us) the length of the picture away, but we get the gist—Dolly Messiter is intruding, but she knows not on what and is much too shallow to care. She might if she knew the possible ramifications it would lead Laura to in the near-future, but only in hind-sight, and there is something in Laura that might want to deny her the satisfaction—as satisfaction has been denied her.

Laura and Dr. Harvey part and there is only a fond hand on the shoulder to serve as a last embrace. He leaves. And as Dolly prattles on, director Lean does something amazing—he tilts the camera on Laura as her thoughts become desperate, and the image is a vertiginous tilt forward, like leaning in but off-kilter like standing on the edge of a precipice and the gravity drawing down, down, down. That tilt will remain as her resolve breaks and she runs out of the shop to the train tracks and a passing train blows her physically back and as it does so, reality —the camera returns to normal, the impulse broken. The world is "righted."

That's a bold move on Lean's part, and serves as a nice visual encompassing of the movie. The world goes off-axis during the affair, which for both parties is a secret double-life—they're both married and both quite proper. They're both racked by guilt for the indiscretion, which is as discreet as can be, as less than a handful of people suspect (and that's all they can do, besides judge), but it is enough to cause misery despite the happiness and longing they can't deny. But, it is played out in private and in the shadows, for fear of it being found out. Anyone will tell you this is common, despite how uncommon it all feels.

After all, in that very cafe, there are flirtations and affections being spouted all the time and at high volumes—particularly between station jobbers played by Sterling Holloway and Joyce Carey—and no one pays any attention to that. And on the platforms, PDA's are rampant and displayed in full, furtive view. In such an environment, guards might be down and desires encouraged. But, that's other people. Dr. Harvey and Laura Jesson are a different class and Society expects more of them, as they expect more of themselves.

Double-edged sword, that. They want more, expect more, but can't have more, and if they succumb, it tends to curl that stiff-upper-lip, even if they know forthright from wrong. Then, the inner dialogue begins, the repercussions, the guilt, the doubt, the shame. More is expected of you by denying yourself. You end up taking a lot of the joy out of it by second-guessing it and second-guessing whether you deserve it or not.

Noel Coward says all this much better than I can. By presenting that inner dialogue as a confession that will never be spoken, it offers the better parts of altruistic honesty without actually committing to it or suffering the consequences. By letting the audience in on the inner thoughts, it makes us co-conspirators and makes us put some skin in the game. And it is such a soaper that it allows the catharsis of tears without letting the figures involved on-screen so much as salt a lapel. They're allowed dignity, even if we have to blow our noses.

Clever little movie, another reason why Coward is revered as a scenarist and Lean a master craftsman. They do all the sneaking around in shadows and we do all the crying. That is a fine romance.

The Italian Job (1969)

The Italian Job (Peter Collinson, 1969) A fascination with Mini Coopers led me to red-enveloping this, the decidedly more enjoyable version of the story that turned morose when brought to the 21st Century. This version has its tongue firmly planted in its veddy British cheek, and its feet cemented in the swinging 60's. The idea revolves around newly released convict Charlie Croker (Michael Caine) is given the chance to carry-out a brilliant plan—seize four million dollars in gold bullion in Italy. Along the way scriptwriter Troy Kennedy-Martin (Edge of Darkness) and director Peter Collinson throw in a bit of wily commentary, a disdain for foreign cars (more expensive Italian cars are destroyed in this film for the sheer visceral fun of it, and an Aston Martin DB4 convertible trashed in revenge), and the loopiest car-chase in cinema history (which influenced many a car-chase after, although never surpassed), all fine and noble reasons to check out this cult favorite.

The film starts disarmingly with a title segment set to a crooning Matt Monro song (written by film composer Quincy Jones and lyricist Don Black) as a Lamborghini Miura is seen negotiating the hairpin turns of Italian Alps, just as you begin to appreciate the metaphor, the car enters a tunnel, a huge crash is heard, and the Miura is seen exiting the tunnel, wrapped around a bulldozer. Inside the car, the late Roger Breckerman (Rosanno Brazzi) who has been planning a job to steal the bullion sent from China to Turin as a proviso for Fiat to manufacture their cars there. The Mafia, getting wind of those plans, has killed Breckerman before the plan can be finalized, and to destroy the evidence the car is sent careening down the mountainside (the first of many such scenes).

Breckerman's widow recruits Croker to do the job as revenge for his murder, and for financial backing he goes right to the top—Mr. Bridger (the martini-dry Sir Noel Coward), head of a British crime syndicate, which he runs from his prison cell, entirely compromising the warden and staff to his needs. With Bridger's stern approval, the team sets off for Italy with its odd assortment of vehicles to pull off this mission: impossible and prove the superiority of British auto-works craftsmanship over its Italian equivalent.

The job itself is absurd but satisfying, the amazing stunts arranged by car-artiste Remy Julienne, with the cast headed by Caine, including Benny Hill as a perverse computer expert (good match, that). Did I mention the stunts? Beyond the interest to car-afficianado's, there is a marvelous humor to the sequences that produce gaping maws, dropping jaws, but an after-taste of raucous giggling as the cars are made to do things in the oddest places to the point where you may turn in your Hummer for a Mini.* The movie swerves from heist movie to comedy on a dime.

It's a trifle, but an entertaining trifle, far more satisfying in the memory than in the actual playing (which isn't that bad). That's what makes a cult classic, especially in the self-preservation society.

* Did I mention the other day I saw a Humvee almost cause an accident in a parking lot trying to maneuver around a speed-bump? If they're compensating for something, they're doing a lousy job.

Easy Virtue (2008)

Easy Virtue (Stephan Elliott, 2008) Okay, it may be a weak recommendation to say this may be the best performance Jessica Biel has ever given, but she holds her own in a good cast that includes Kristin Scott Thomas (as a society woman who has seen far better days) and Colin Firth (the head of the household, who has only returned bodily from his experiences in WWI), who are quite bent out of their stiff upper lips that their son (Ben Barnes) has married 1) an "adventuress", 2) a race-car driver, 3) a widow, and 4) an (gasp!) American—all in the form of a comely Biel.

"What am I to do with this bauble of a woman?" fusses Mrs. Whittaker. "Hang her?" says her barely-engaged husband.

The Noel Coward play has been filmed once before (by of all people Alfred Hitchcock in 1928, during his silent era...consider that for a moment, a silent version of a Noel Coward play) and Elliott's version tries mightily to make it more hip, making Biel's Larita Whittaker more of a liberated woman, rather than just a libertine, and her inability to navigate the iceberg-laden chilly waters at the Whitaker residence (which, at their most hapless, resembles something that might appear in Meet the Parents) puts a strain on her puppy-loveish young marriage.

Try as she might to ingratiate herself into the family, it all turns perfectly horrid, with no help from her cluelessly entitled young husband (who thinks he can have it all, and can't fathom why everybody doesn't just get along). Fact is, the Whittaker estate isn't so much a home as a castle, protecting itself from the cruelty of the outside world, and only those touched by that cruelty have the grace to rise above, if they can. Larita gravitates to the unsmiling Mr. Whittaker for advice, his cynicism to keeping up appearances, coinciding with a wish she cannot fulfill for her husband's/his son's sake.

There has to be a better way, if not for the family then for herself. What else can they do to her? 

Discover her secrets, maybe.

The two films diverge at this point: Hitchcock's hinges on a portrait done of Larita that colors her husband's death; Elliott's has that portrait, too (amusingly), but comes up with a more modern tragedy for Larita to cover up that wouldn't have "played" in the 20's, when Coward first wrote the play. It gives the film a depth, and distinguishes Larita from the rest of the family-members, and leads to an inevitable conclusion—Coward's way out.

A truffle; a bon-bon; a bauble. Easy Virtue has a grand time sending its message on the clash of the classes, filling it with period tunes (and ending with one out of period, but apt), and a cast making the most of Coward's words. Not one to be dismissed.

Design for Living

Design for Living (Ernst Lubitsch, 1933) High class production about the bohemian class. Noel Coward's play (which had nothing to do with the bohemian class) about a menage a trois (and, by association, a menage a quatre) is given a rinse of the more suggestive parts by Ben Hecht (it's Pre-Code, so they don't go through too many cycles on this one, just to keep both the prudes and the lascivious in a lather) and an added dash of charm by director Lubitsch and cast with a collection of players that folks wouldn't have bat an eye at before, but in retrospect (given subsequent histories), is a bit unexpected.

En route to Paris, graphics artist Gilda Hopkins (Miriam Hopkins) shares a train compartment with two American down-on-their-heels artistic wanna-be's, painter George Curtis (Gary Cooper) and playwright Thomas Chambers (Fredric March), both of whom become enchanted with Gilda, and she with them (“A thing happened to me that usually happens to men. You see, a man can meet two, three, or even four women and fall in love with all of them, and then by a process of interesting elimination, he is able to decide which he prefers. But a woman must decide purely on instinct—guesswork—if she wants to be considered nice. Oh, it’s quite all right for her to try on a hundred hats before she picks one out.”) but agree with her to keep things merely friendly and professional, as she starts to act as confidante and muse for both their lives and their art. That she is also sought-after by her much-too-old boss, Max Plunkett (Edward Everett Horton) only complicates matters.

George, Thomas and Gilda decide to share a loft and make a pact of no hanky, no panky and no combination of the two, as the off-beat living arrangements create a certain amount of tension between the three. Meanwhile, Gilda uses her connections to jump-start the two men's careers. Thomas' latest play is put in the hands of a London producer, and soon, he's flying off to help with re-writes and overseeing production.

"No sex. A gentleman's agreement..."

In his absence, Gilda and George begin an affair while, in London, Tom's absence makes his heart grow fonder and he decides then and there to marry Gilda once the play opens. But running into Plunkett at the theater, he discovers that George and Gilda are now a couple, and rushes back to Paris only to find that the lovers have moved out of the loft. George, however, is in Nice working on a commissioned portrait, and so Tom seizes the opportunity to make a stand. 

"Unfortunately, I'm no gentleman."

Gilda reluctantly agrees to see Tom, and—wouldn't you know it?—she decides she's really in love with Tom and they begin an affair while George is out of town. Except, George comes back and finds the two lovers in his own penthouse love-nest and things turn ugly. It seems that three's company and two's are not to be trusted. What's a girl to do?

She complicates things, of course. Gilda decides to marry her boss, Plunkett, but the marriage cannot be consummated when George and Tom send over potted plants as gifts ("It would have been much more tactful for them to forget!") which so upsets Gilda that she hides in her room, crying. Then, at a large soiree the couple is throwing for Plunkett's clients, Tom and George crash it, making mischief wherever they go, including Gilda's bedroom, which infuriates Plunkett. The marriage is over and the three decide to move back in together.

Now, this is in the Pre-Code era before content restrictions were self-imposed on studio's, so although it may seem raunchy, everything is merely suggested. In fact, Hecht's adaptation (although Coward bitched it was hardly that) makes the trio far more relatable to the movie-going public by taking it out of the rarefied air of British manners and class, and making the two artist-types Americans. You couldn't mistake March, a deft farceur, or Cooper—still in his glamour days before he aged into more rural authenticity—for upper-crust, even if you dress them in tails. And Horton maintains his professional befuddlement. 

Hopkins, of course, has the toughest role, making her designer charming despite an inability to make up her mind and a tendency towards—dare we say it?—capriciousness (we didn't dare say it). But, it's perfectly true that she's merely playing a man's game in the sexually sampling context and the men play by the same rules. This was 1933 and it seems like (now) the only women in movies who take the same attitude are labelled promiscuous or villainous. This is progress?

The film stays light, funny, extraordinarily quotable—without any Coward—and froths with "The Lubitsch Touch." At the same time, in that time or ours, it's also a little revolutionary. Vive le révolution.

Our Man in Havana

Our Man in Havana (Carol Reed, 1959) A fascinating serio-comic counter-point to author Graham Greene and Reed's post-war classic The Third Man (made a decade earlier) in which the bold find they can make quite a killing in the cracks created in a transitional government. Reed's camera still swoops (courtesy of d.p. Oswald Morris), making sure that the distended Cinemascope frame is filled to the corners with detail, and the dark streets of Havana at night, (filmed after the revolution and with the quite mercenary permission of Fidel Castro*) could be mistaken for post-war Vienna. The sun shines brighter, though, and so most of the internecine work of spies is done in the relative low-light of bars and brothels.

Greene's book was a cynical look at how Intelligence forces can show a distinct lack of intelligence when confronted with mis-information, but it is Reed's nifty idea to cast it with comedic actors, though not always playing for laughs.  With such as Burl Ives, Noel Coward, Ralph Richardson, Ernie Kovacs (he plays a corrupt Cuban police official straight, but it is still funny) and Alec Guinness, it seems more a comedy of errors: British ex-pat Jim Wormold (Guinness) is scraping by a living selling vacuum cleaners in Havana, while his daughter (Jo Morrow) is developing a taste for the expensive horsey set—something that could be provided by Captain Segura (Kovacks), who has an eye for the blonde girl. Wormold has other plans for her, like an expensive Swiss boarding school.  But where to get the money?

He is approached one day by Hawthorne (Coward, out of place in his dark suit and bowler hat in the mid-day sun of Havana) of the British secret service—or, as he is known, Agent 29500—to set up a bureau station for the service. For Wormold, it is extra cash, an all-expenses paid membership to the exclusive country club, and a more lavish life-style, all for keeping his daughter close. All the Service wants is results, which Wormold has trouble setting up—he is, after all, only a vaccuum cleaner salesman. Soon, he starts filing bogus reports, recruiting strangers as fellow agents (without their knowledge), building his station in importance to the delight of Hawthorne and his superior 'C' (Ralph Richardson).

However, becoming an important secret agent draws attention. He is soon assigned a secretary (Maureen O'Hara) by his superiors, wanting to build him up, and targeted for assassination by his enemies, wanting to shut him up.  Doesn't matter if the information he's sending is all wrong; with so many resources at his command, he's sure to dig up something sooner or later.  Scrutinized from both sides, the spy-game stops being so rewarding, and turns downright dangerous.

It's all played with a bit of a wink, with great comic actors under tight rein to let the material be funny without goosing it. Definitely worth seeing for the literate script, Reed's classic direction and the fine performances.  John le Carré would later use the basic subject matter for his book (and subsequent John Boorman film) The Tailor of Panama. 

* Filming in Cuba with set-visits from Castro and Ernest Hemingway:

Bunny Lake is Missing

Bunny Lake is Missing (Otto Preminger, 1966) It starts normally enough. Most nightmares do.

American Ann Lake (Carol Lynley), newly moved to London following with her brother Steven (Keir Dullea) who has moved for a prominent new job there, goes to pick up her daughter Bunny at the private school she's just enrolled her in. 

But, she can't find her. Nobody at the school remembers her, and can't recall seeing her. The teachers (including Anna Massey) are trying to deal with a crush of new kids starting off to school, so it's a little hard to pin-point the one individual child from the pack. But Ann is insistent, almost to the point of hysteria, and Steven is no help, poking around and questioning the odd woman (Martita Hunt) who lives above the school, berating the teachers and being oddly, vaguely threatening. Fearing a "bit of a row", the police are called in to investigate.

In walks Superintendant Newhouse (Sir Laurence Olivier) and his adjutant Williams (Clive Revill). Newhouse is a bit fusty, a might impatient, trying to understand a situation he doesn't quite fathom. He has an hysterical mother, a "helicoptering" brother, and a "missing person" that no one seems to have seen. It's all quite queer. He presses for details that seem to be there but no corroborating witnesses. He starts a line of inquiry that begins with a search of Steven and Ann's apartment.

When they get there, all traces of "Bunny Lake" are gone. No clothes, no toys, no dolls. Nothing. There isn't a sign that a child has ever lived there. Ever. Newhouse begins to suspect (as do we) that "Bunny Lake" is not only missing, but never existed in the first place. She may just be a figment of Ann's imagination, and the investigation changes from a "missing person" case to an investigation of Ann's psychological state. Steven volunteers that Ann had an imaginary friend as a child that was named "Bunny," and that steers Newhouse to try a different line of inquiry.

He takes Ann to a local pub where he begins an odd line of investigation. He asks Ann about "Bunny" and their history, hoping to liquor her up to find the truth. He learns that, while in the States, Ann had a boyfriend who got her pregnant and skipped out and Ann kept the baby, whom she called "Bunny." Steven was livid at the boyfriend's behavior and had even threatened him, but decided, instead, to get Ann out of that environment, taking a job in London and moving there with Ann and the child.

If the move had improved Steven's temper, it isn't noticeable when he storms into the pub and accuses Newhouse of trying to "railroad" his sister, and, instead of trying to find "Bunny," of trying to prove his sister is crazy. He warns the police to stay away from her...and him and do their jobs finding the missing child. Newhouse demurs, but he widens the search to find out what he can about the Lakes...all of them. 

Meanwhile, for the audience, the list of possibilities grows with every scene. That crazy old lady in the school's attic apartment doesn't seem the most stable of people, the cook who took charge of "Bunny" in the morning goes missing as well. Then, there's the actor-neighbor of the Lakes (Noel Coward), who can only be described as "pan-sexual," making a pass at Ann when they're alone. Maybe there is a "Bunny Lake," given all the potential suspects that would be handy to commit the crime. Maybe there isn't. And maybe Ann is being "gas-lit," led down a particular path to drive her crazy.

Adapted by John Mortimer (he created "Rumpole of the Bailey") and his wife Penelope (The Pumpkin Eater)—with a reported assist from Ira Levin—from a novel by Marryamm Modell, Bunny Lake is Missing is directed by Otto Preminger, a director who vacillated between prestige projects and controversial ones, to the point where one wondered whether he favored making good movies or headlines. But, he rarely played it safe, except in matters of budget. Here, he combines the genres of noir (with which he was all too familiar, having directed one of the classic ones, Laura) and the psychological drama, which Hitchcock had exploited successfully before and who had reached the box-office apex with Psycho.

Since 1960, Preminger had produced and directed big budget blockbusters with novel credibility—Anatomy of a Murder, Advise and Consent, The Cardinal, Exodus, and In Harm's Way. With Bunny Lake... there was budgetary down-sizing, so that less money was at stake, but Preminger's reputation was such that he could still get actors like Olivier and Coward, even if the film was small in scope and less than seemly in content. He changed the book's location from New York to London (probably for budget reasons, but also to benefit from an unfamiliar British cast and enhancing the disorientation of the "Ann" character). And somewhere along the way, they also changed the ending of the book to lend an extra element of surprise. 

Preminger favored long "takes," getting the most mileage out of his actors and his shooting day, editing being dictated by how things went on stage—nothing fancy. Preminger, who favored black and white for cinematography whenever he could, filled the screen with rich areas of darkness, learned from his early noir's.
Bunny Lake is engaging, fairly engrossing for most of its length with odd curiosities along the way. That it doesn't quite fulfill the promise of maintaining it might be a bit in the playing of it, rather than in the preparation.