The best film of the year so far is Quartet. I am yet to see Lincoln or the film about the capture of Osama bin Laden by the director who made The Hurt Locker.
Quartet is a lovely film where five major actors front an ensemble cast of former musicians and other stage performers, directors and artists who live in an expensive country house with grounds retirement home facing closure because of its escalating costs. It is managed by a qualified doctor and has a range of activities which add to the challenge of balancing the books.
Residents at the home are three off the former opera singers who performance in the Rigoletto quartet remains highly regarded, Tom Courtney was an outstanding tenor of his day and his performance in the annual concert to raise funds on the anniversary of the birthday of Giuseppe Verdi is regarded as one of the highlights. He also gives talks to local school teenagers on the Opera and this leads to a demonstration that rap is a contemporary form of expressing emotions.
He is also man who never recovered from finding out on his wedding day that his common law wife, an exceptional soprano of the day played by Maggie Smith had been unfaithful with another tenor. He had subsequently refused to appear in productions in which she performed. He is upset and disturbed when he finds that Maggie, the fourth member of the famous quartet is to become the latest resident in the home when she has to give up her independent life in fine surroundings.
Her` arrival is greeted with great enthusiasm particular by Michael Gambon who plays an aging director who experiences giddy spells from his ongoing health condition and who organises the annual concert with a small committee which includes Pauline Collins, She plays someone in the early stages of memory forgetfulness, the fourth member of the Quartet, a kindly soul who admires Maggie as well as the other two. She gives a very fine performance which may well be overlooked against that of Maggie Smith and Tom Courtney. Billy Connolly plays the other member of the Quartet, a close friend and confident of Courtney since the marriage break up.
Maggie attempts to become friends with Tom who finds the situation intolerable at first but becomes reconciled to the need to persuade Maggie to perform with him and the others the Quartet in order to attract the audience and funds to keep the home going for another year or more. The three arrange to take Maggie out to a fine restaurant in order to talk her into the concert but she reacts with dismay and anger having revealed her fear of singing again and the feeling of betrayal that she hoped the others, especially Tom genuinely wanted to become friends again.
She is persuaded to participate and the latter part of the film concentrates on the build up to the great day as old wounds are healed and rivalries set aside. There are cameo performances from the various artists a couple performing in a cross between Naughton Wayne and Basil Radford and Flanagan and Allen. Unlike Mama Mia for example there is no attempt by the four non singing actors to pretend they can relying on their original recording and clever cut always from the start and end of the performance as they are greeted and rewarded with applause for their appearance and performance.
This is a tender film which should well reap some rewards at the Bafta’s and Oscars although we none outstanding so far I believe the honours will be shared including Skyfall in the UK and perhaps a special Oscar in USA show with Les Misérables, Lincoln, Pi and the Biggalo film on Bin Laden.
Quartet has been compared to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which also starred Maggie Smith together with Judy Dench, Penelope Wilton, Judy Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Ronald Pickup, Celia Imrie and Dev Patel. With the exception of Wilkinson who dies the other have indicated a willingness to return for a sequel where a script is said to have been delivered. I saw the Exotic Marigold Hotel in Theatre and again yesterday evening on the TV and regard the film as superior because of the significant interlocking a number of important stores whereas Quartet concentrates on the saving of the home, the coming back together of the four singes and the relationship between Tom and Maggie, who agree to remarry at the end.
I have seen Quartet before in my childhood in 1948 when RC Sherriff collaborated with Somerset Maugham to bring four of his short stories to the screen, later extend in Trio and Encore now all available on one DVD set. The stories were portrayed by an extraordinary array of stars, many in the making.
In the Facts of Life Jack Watling is a teenage Tennis player who goes on his own to a Tennis tournament in Monte Carlo with his parents (Angela Badderly and Basil) Radford warn him against women, gambling and lending money to strangers which he does when he meets Mai Zetterling at the casino where he wins substantially and take a sofa at her flat when it is too late to return to the hotel. She takes his money thinking he is asleep placing in a vase which he takes back only to find that there is significantly more than his own. And the moral is? James Robertson Justice, Naughton Wayne and the creator of Bond Ian Fleming also have parts.
In The Alien Corn Dirk Bogarde plays a young man of a good family who shocks his parents on his birthday announcing he wants to become a professional pianist. His cousin played by Honor Blackman proposes an acceptable compromise in which Bogarde goes to study in Paris for two years at the end of which an independent expert will say if he is good enough to become a soloist. The man congratulates on his technical abilities but declares he lacks virtuoso talent. He kills himself while cleaning a revolver. The Inquest concludes the death was accidental. Was it?
George Cole, Hermoine Badderly, Susan Shaw, Mervin Johns and Bernard Lee star in the Kite. George and his father have spent their free time flying kites, a hobby which he continues when he marries much to the dismay of his bride. When his wife destroys his latest kite he not only moves back home to the delight of his mother in particular who dislikes he wife, but refuses maintenance which leads to his imprisonment. A prison visitor on learning the story takes upon himself to resolve the situation so that when Cole leaves the prison he finds that his wife, Susan Shaw, is on the common flying a kite.
In the fourth story, The Colonel’s Lady Cecil Parker as the Colonel discovers via a copy provided by his mistress that his wife has written an audacious and successful book of poems about a passionate relationship with a younger man He learns that the poems must have been based on a real affair in which according to the book, the young man dies. Reluctant to raise the subject with his wife at first he eventually learns that the poem about himself as the death is that of their love. Others in the piece are Nora Swinburne, Felix Aylmer and Wilfred Howard White.
Quartet was a very successful film while the follow up Trio, two years lawyer did not please the critics as much although I recollect it was looked forward to by the aunties. Whereas on checking available film notes I remembered all four stories of Quartet I struggled with Trio which I now associate with an interdepartmental magazine with Social Services, Health and Education which I co edited for Cheshire County Council some forty years ago.
In the Verger the new vicar played by Michael Horden sacks his Verger (James Hayter because he cannot to read. Together with his landlady who he marries (Kathleen Harrison) he opens the first tobacconist in the area which si a great success and he is so successful that with his wife’s help he opens a chain depositing the profits at the local bank. The bank manager, Felix Aylmer suggests that Hayter moves some of the money into more profitable investments and is shocked to find that the man refuses because he cannot read the relevant documentation. The bank manager poses the question what could Hayter have been done if he had been able to read to which Hayter makes the point, “ back as the verger;” an important point to be remembered by all those who believe a university education is end and be all.
Wilfred Hyde-White plays Mr Gray in Mr Know It All who finds himself sharing a cabin on an ocean liner with Nigel Patrick at the Know All gem dealer, a nick name given to him by other passengers.
The previously work separated husband (Naughton Wayne) of a woman who wears great looking pearls bets Patrick that the Pearls are fake. Patrick admits he was wrong and pays up but later the money is returned and W H Whyte learns that in fact the Pearls were real but Patrick lied in order for the couple to save face, with the implication that the woman had been given the jewels while having an affair while the husband was away.
Roland Culver plays a writer in the Sanatorium which contains others, including Jean Simmons, new arrival Michael Rennie a pair of longer stay residents John Laurie and Finlay Currie who are at loggerheads and a man Raymond Huntley who is getting away from his wife, unsuccessfully. The new arrival a major falls in love with Simmonds but the couple are warned that the relationship could prematurely end the life of the major who has a scandalous background. They decide to leave together regardless and given the death of one of the patients, this has the impact of reconciling Huntley with his wife.
Encore (1951) included The Ant and Grasshopper in which Nigel Patrick also featured scroungers from his hard work brother (Roland Culver) When Culver attempts to turn off the tap he is approached by a car dealer who says that eh brother has stolen one of his cars and to protect the man and the family he makes good the loss although in reality it is a fraud and the car dealer and the brother have split the money between them. While staying at seaside hotel living it up he meets a woman claiming to be very rich and fed up with men lying about their positions to gain her favour. The brother admits he has been a scoundrel but this has the effect of drawing him closer to the woman and they become engaged. This enables him to pay back his brother who bemoans the fact that he is having to sell of the family estate to live while his brother is now able to lead the good life. The brother discloses that his wife is going to but up the family estate,
In the Winter Cruise Kay Walsh plays a woman who will not stop chattering to the frustration and boredom of the ship’s crew and other passengers. John Laurie has a part in the film but it is Ronald Squire,, the ship’s doctor who hits on the plan for a steward to have an affair with Walsh to keep her quiet on the way home from Caribbean. Walsh admits that she knows it is a scheme but is happy to go along and enjoys the affair.
Terence Morgan and Glynis Johns are the stars of Gigolo and Gigollette with a dangerous night club act which involves diving into a water tank . In order to avoid having to continue with the act after learning of the misfortunes of others she gamblers and loses their savings to the anger of her husband. Despite her fear she decides to undertake the second and more dangerous dive of the night as a consequence and her husband rushes to stop her, but too late. Fortunately the dive is successful and her fear is conquered.
I was surprised to find that I only possess one of Maugham’s novels, The Explorer, yet I have read and also experienced the films of some of his books all long ago although I did see the Laurence Harvey Kim Novack film of Human Bondage again with the last decade, itself a remake of the 1946 film. The Razors Edge and the Moon and Six Pence(George Sanders) are the two others I have read.
I also believe I saw The Secret Agent (John Gielgud and Peter Lorre, Robert Young) recently where I did not read the book along with Sadie Thompson in 3D back in the 1958 with Rita Hayworth and Jose Ferrer I have also seen Christmas Holiday wth Dianna Durban and Gene Kelly, the Beachcomber, The Hour Before dawn with Veronica Lake and the Seventh Sin( based on the Painted Veil which was remade in 2006) .The most recent film seen is Being Julia with Annette Bening based on the book Theatre but I missed Up the Villa with Christian Scott Thomas and Sean Penn and the Least version fo the Painted Veil with Naomi Watts. Thinking about the work of Maugham also reminded me of another great English writer and Socialist also CND supporter J B Priestly who book The Companions have read and enjoyed the film, (1956) the radio show and I believe a stage play although from what I read it may have been a musical.
While I am still finish the Harry Potter Films and those of James Bond where I have re-seen all but the Quantum of Solace I will cover other films view recently of which four have merit.
I watched for the umpteenth time Passport to Pimlico the highly enjoyable but preposterous 1949 film which I first saw as a 10 year old in theatre with the “aunties”. This Michael Balcon film can be now regarded as attempt to bolster the flagging wartime spirit of Joe public in the face of the continuing austerity of rationing and large chunks of remaining blitzed London, although it was based on a true incident when during World War 2 the child of Princess Juliana of the Netherlands would not have been able to claim the throne if born outside her home land so that the Canadian Government passed a special law making her room in the maternity hospital part of the Netherlands. The film stars Stanley Holloway and Margaret Rutherford and the young Barbara Murray together with a young Charles Haughtry of subsequent Carry On fame, Raymond Huntley as the creative Bank Manager and that fine actor John Slater, also with James Hayter, Arthur Denton, Michael Horden Sydney Tafler, Sam Kidd and Hermoine Baddeley.
The people living in heavily bombed Pimlico close to Victoria Station struggle to cope with the prolonged summer heat wave and the rationing surrounded by bombed buildings in the middle of which there is an unexploded bomb to be made safe. However the unit announces is has been told to move to another site and that the bomb will be detonated via a small explosion advising everyone to take precautions. Before this a group of young lads messing about with a large tyre fail to take proper control and it runs into the mine trench hole and detonates fortunately without injury to anyone, Stanley Holloway goes to investigate, falls down and thinks he sees treasure, which is laughed at by his wife but not by his daughter, Barbara Murray, when she realises that he has brought up a gold coin. They investigate and find a huge haul of coin and silver plate which is removed to the safe keeping of the Bank where the manager, a local man, is under fire from his headquarters because of his policy of granting loans to help out local shopkeepers and businesses. He is to be moved.
The find is reported to the government who seek to take control when the question of ownership is determined at an Inquest. Margaret Rutherford plays the expert who upon examining a document found in casket by Holloway as well as portrait of a nobleman reveals that not only is the treasure of the French House of Burgundy who lived in the area when exiled but the document grants ownership of the land to the Duke and his descendents and as it is understood he died without an heir the Treasure belongs to the those born in the area covered by the Royal Warrant who technically are Burgundians with the implications that British laws and taxes do not apply. This leads to the locals to tear up their ration books and identity cards, keep the pub open all hours and plan how they will spend the money on a lido for the children on the bomb site. Huntley declares UDI for his bank.
The area becomes besieged by out of area traders in what has becomes free zone leading the residents having a change of mind about their impendence when the police explain they cannot intervene. However the position changes again when it is revealed that the Duke had a son and his descendent arrives to claim treasure and his Dukedom, or at least to support the local people when the government tightens the screws and impose a customs post. The local retaliate by stopping the passing Underground trains which in turns leads to the water being cut off. The children are evacuated but residents manage to turn the water back on illicitly however the problem is that the basement is flooded where the food was being stored for the communal meals and it appears they have no alternative but to surrender and leave the area or give up the treasure. The children on seeing a newsreel use their pocket money to buy bread rolls which they pass over the barrier to their families which leads to other passers by doing the same and when the word spreads by radio and press everyone joins in to provide the community with more than sufficient supplies to keep them going Naughton Wayne and Basil Rathbone on behalf of the government are forced to negotiate a settlement in which the money is given to the Treasury as capital but the community benefits from the interest which gets them their Lido. The Duke and Barbara Murray fall in love
The classic line in the film is We’ve always been English, and we’ll always be English and its precisely because we are English that we’re sticking for the right to be Burgundians.”
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a film based on a book but with a new twist. `According to information on line the book concentrates on the relationship between two women, the eldest is 80 and looks back on her life under four Chinese Emperor commencing when she was eight years of age and first formed a relationship with the other. They come from different classes of society but their paths take different courses after the age when their feet acre bound at a time when the size of the foot in later life could become a major factor when a marriage is arranged. The one from the lower social home marries into the best family in area because she is regarded as having perfect small feet although to achieve this she had to endure great pain.
Her husband is sent by his father away on business when they have been married a short while and she is pregnant. Both the parents die from a typhus epidemic so that after his return his becomes the local Lord of the manor and she the Lady, For many years she is prevented from going to visit her friend and when she does she finds that although her friend was socially higher she lives in comparative poverty without servants as her husband is a butcher and a common man.
According to the film they are all forced to quickly leave when a rebellion occurs (The Taiping revolution when an estimate 20 million people died) and the husband leaves them to retrieves their cow only to find that in the snow and low temperature that one of his children has died and in his grief he blames his wife for not taking better care, strikes her and then buries the child without telling the wife where this is. The lady tries to persuade her friend to leave with her children and live with her so she can have a better life but the friend explains that she is passionately loved by her husband and she him something which she rightly suspects has not happened in the relationship with her friend despite her wealth and position.
This is a challenge to basic premise of the novel about laotang relationship which can be chosen between two girls or women which is about lifelong emotional closeness and fidelity whereas for most women, the marriage is arranged for the purpose of providing sons and where to this day the majority of the population regard bearing a female child first as a failure especially during the decades where China restricted couples to one child unless they obtained special permission. The Lady regards this as betrayal of their relationship which she then also betrays by revealing their relationship to her friends. She is reconciled when the friend prematurely dies but spends many years alone after her husband and her children also die.
The film develops the story interposing the historical relationship with that between two female descendents who also sign the laotang but also find keeping its intentions difficult as they become adolescents and they are also prevented by a relative who sees the girl being led astray by the other, One is then struck by a taxi and is in a coma and the other finds that her friend has written up the story of their ancestors. She decides that this will not happen to them and stays with the friend who in this instance does not die and they are united.
The fan of the title is significant because it was used to communicate messages in the historical situation and is now an heirloom part of a collection which is being shown in an art gallery with the one exception and which is brought to the hospital and becomes a symbolic binding artefact which not only unites the two again but appears to cause the awakening from the coma. The film can be interpreted at many levels from a commentary on the history and social changes of China to issues of the nature of the marital heterosexual marriage, arranged or by choice and which given the growth of professional match making organisations in European and USA society is fascinating. The film is beautifully and tenderly shot despite the grim harshness of some scenes. While there is also a hint of physicality at one moment in the historical era, it is primarily about unconditional friendship and loyalty.
People tend to love or hate the films of Woody Allen and his 2011 contribution Midnight in Paris is no exception. It is a piece of fantastical nonsense which I enjoyed. The hero, or anti hero in this instance is a Hollywood screen writer with ambitions to create something meaningful and artistic while vacationing with his attractive conventional and culturally uneducated fiancée and her even more conventional conservative Republican parents. It is evident that if he was half the man he is supposed to be he would not have become involved the woman and her family within a thousand miles.
He loves to walks the streets, even in the rain ( hints of gene Kelly here). After getting drunk and wondering about when at the midnight hour a 1920’s vehicle and passengers drives up and invites him to join them in a party, for Jean Cocteau. He meets Alice B Toklas, Cole Porter. Josephine Baker. Zelda and F Scott z and Hemingway whop all treat him as one of them. Hemingway agrees to show the prospective great novel to Gertrude Stein who he then meets and gives him good advice. Stein introduces him to Picasso and come of is current women Adrianna ( Marianne Cotillard) with whom he is attracted. He shares with her the opening lines of the book about his fascination with the past which she admits she also has,
On subsequent nights Adrianna nights leaves Picasso for Hemingway and become more attracted to her. He also meets T S Elliot and then Dali Man Ray and Louis Brunel with whom he reveals his conflict of being in love with two women at the same time but being surrealists they see nothing strange in this and his interest in two women normal. The joke here is that he tells Brunel the plot of the film he is yet to make The Exterminating Angel which Brunel initially dismisses and continues to question. While out during the day with his fiancée looking at very expensive antiques he comes across the published diary of Adrianna who has written that she loves him and wishes he would give her a pair earrings as a token of his affection after which they would make love. He then attempts to steal the earrings of his fiancée but is thwarted so has to buys a pair but when he goes to meet her hey are invited back into the Belle Epoch of the 1890’s at Maxims and the Moulin Rouge where he encounters Degas, Lautrec and Gauguin and these three argue that the era which they would have preferred to have lived was the Renaissance . As this is Adrianna’s era of choice she elects to stay but he returns to the present.
Meanwhile his fiancée frustrated by his lack of attention and absorption in his literary work and wonderings is spending more time with a male friend who is something of a know it all and where our hero is able to put him in his place together with impressing an official guide because of his authoritative first hand knowledge of what the artists said to him about their work, intentions and relationships. However it is Stein who tells him that Hemingway makes the point that he needs to polish his portrait of the relationship between the fiancée in the novel and the friend because rationally the two are having an affair behind the back of its hero. When he confronts his fiancée with this insight at first she dismisses but then admits claiming it was a mere dalliance and something which should not affect their relationship,
The break up confirms the dislike the parents where the father reveals that he has had him followed by a detective who has disappeared, In fact the man has been transported back to 18th century Paris and decides to remain there.
Our hero decides to remain in Paris to finish his book and remeets a young woman previously met who declares that like him she loves just wondering the streets, including in the rain. The pair are made for each other. The film won an Oscar for its Screen play written by Allen and was also nominated as best Film, best Director and for Art Direction. Woody Allen also won a Golden Globe for the screen play and was nominated for a BAFTA as other awards and countless nominations. It was all great fun and witty and I wish.
Cleanskin with Sean Bean is a very different kind of film which could have been so much better if did not attempt to mix a portrait of how an intelligent young British Muslim becomes a terrorist with a confusing conspiracy about the extent to which the secret service and its political masters caused deaths through bombings. A series of time shifts in the film does not also help. I have tried to disentangle the two story lines, Ash (Abhin Galeya) is a university law student who begins to question what is right and what is wrong about the British role in the middle East when he comes under the influence of a British Cleric who grooms him and other young men to become terrorists. Under his influence Ash turns on his English University fellow student who drinks heavily and enjoys passionate sex with him and others. They break up but meet again years later and have sex again. This makes him question what he has become
In the meantime Ash asks to be given work and is put to the test helping a comrade imported from the middle East to assassinate a retired British soldier who now runs horse stables. Ash recruits a friend as requested and the trio set off with the intention to capture the soldier and then execute him on camera. The soldier realises something is happening and is able to fight and kill the recruited man. Ash is able to knock out the soldier but pretends that he has not discovered the man’s sister and her baby child hiding in a room upstairs. He then films as the terrorist cuts of the man‘s head. He later learns that the man had killed he woman and the baby and is criticised by the assassin and the Cleric for his soft heart at the inevitability of collateral damage in a war. He is sent somewhere for training and on return he is prepared for a suicide mission. He is to kill by blowing himself up an American Senator active in the War on Terror who has come to England for the marriage of his daughter. The reception happens to be at a hotel where Sean Bean is staying and is able to stop by killing Ash just before he detonates the bomb.
However all this is something of a sub plot .Sean Bean is a creative recruited to becoming an undercover licence to kill operative for the UK after being a professional soldier. He is 100% loyal to his country and the Service although with a tendency to act first when confronted with bomber after his wife, unconnected with his work was killed in a bombing incident.
When on a mission to flush out terrorists he and a colleague pose as Semtex sellers with the same group involving Ash however the plan goes horrible wrong and his colleague is killed and Bean wounded because the colleague’s gun had his clip of bullets removed. Sean follows this up with a new colleague specially assigned by his immediate chief and discovers the prostitute used by his colleagues was also having a regular relationship with an Arab who persuaded her to remove the bullets, he forces her to lead him to the address she has used but Ash is too clever and not only gets away but kills the prostitute. (This is one of many improbable aspects of the story),
Unfortunately the failure of the first mission where Semtex gets into the hands of the terrorists and leads to a bomb and significant casualties, something which in effect Bean and the Service unintentionally caused. With a General Election looming with would be political dynamite if the media got to know and the Minister puts pressure on Bean‘s immediate boss, Charlotte Rampling, to get the matter quickly sorted by any means and she appears to delegate this to Bean. He and his new colleague are sent to capture an Arab believed to have intelligence. When captured the man says he is like Bean and misunderstanding the situation Bean sets the man on fire and kills him. He finds nothing incriminating in the man’s coat or elsewhere and is riddled with guilt at having killed an innocent man. He is told to lie low with the new colleague in as it happens the same London hotel as Ash is aiming to kill the American Senator. He becomes suspicious of his colleague, they fight and he kills the colleague having the impression he was being set up to be got rid off as a cover for the failed missions and the killing of the innocent man. He finds a safe deposit key and number written on a piece of paper in the actual jacket coat of the innocent man previously killed (in the bag of his colleague) ( Why he has this with him is also odd).
He leaves the hotel before the authorities arrive after he has killed Ash and stopped the bomb. As he leaves the hotel he spots the suspicious adding of a suitcase to a luggage trolley and the suitcase explodes destroying the front of the hotel where he was staying,
He escapes without injury and we see him open the safe deposit box and finds a file and a tape which reveals that man was an undercover Secret Service agent with incriminating evidence about the duplicitous role of the service. Rampling had employed the new colleague to get the evidence and frame and then kill Bean blaming him for all the deaths and mistakes and thus protecting her own position. He visits Rampling at her home, kills her making it look like suicide with a copy of a report he has drawn up with the other evidence on the failings of the service.
Now I think this is the position leaving open who placed the second bomb and why because with flashbacks and the interaction of the two stories it may be intended to add up top something very different. Do I care? No.
At one level The Guns of Fort Petticoat where a group of Southern women organised by war hero Audie Murphy fend off a large war party of Indians will appear unpromising afternoon viewing fare even given the winter weather and a night when I felt so tired I went to bed and slept around 8,30 and then could not sleep for about four hours getting up and going back to bed in the early hours.
I have written before that Audie Murphy, the star of the film was a genuine super hero, the most decorated individual soldier in the Second World War. He died at the age of 47 in a plane crash in 1971 having made over forty films. His book and first film To Hell and Back remains a classic,
The film uses an actual event as yhe backcloth, The Sand Creek Massacre or the Chivington Massacre. On November 29th, 1864 a 700 man force of the Colorado Territory Militia committed one of the most infamous acts of genocide in US History against its indigenous people when they murdered between 73 and 166 friendly Cheyenne over half women and children and destroyed their village in the process.
About a decade after a peace treaty had been signed with a number of Indian Tribes, the finding of gold led he US government to renege and reduce the land area available to less than tenth and which although many agreed to accept others, understandably did not The Colorado Unit had helped defeat the Texas Confederate army in the Civil War in 1862 and returned home to where they mounted a home guard under Colonel Chivington. The State Governor using Chivington and his men adopted a hard line towards the Indians who some settler i.e. trespassers and land stealers, accused the Indians of stealing their cattle. Understandably the massacre led to a war of retaliation. About a thousand Indians set about revenge killing many women and children. It needs to be stressed that the Americans had not just slaughters the Indians but brutally tortured and mutilated many of the defenceless women and children.
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In the film Texan Lt. Frank Hewitt (Murphy) is serving with the U.S. Cavalry under Colonel John Chivington. On patrol, Hewitt meets a group of Indians who are unarmed and returning to the Sand Creek reservation which they were not supposed to leave. While briefing Col. Chivington, the Colonel orders the Sand Creek Massacre. Hewitt not only disagrees with the punishment of the Indians, but realizes they will use the attack as an excuse to unite and spread terror throughout the Southwest, including his own hometown in Texas which has been emptied of the majority of its menfolk who are fighting for the Confederacy. Colonel Chivington sees Indian attacks on Texas as a bonus to create havoc in the Confederacy. Violently objecting, Hewitt is placed under arrest and confined to quarters.
He deserts to warn his neighbours but meets a hostility because of the side he joined and considered a traitor. This includes a woman he had hoped to marry and who had married another man in protest on the rebound to his departure and now manages the farm with the help of the husbands younger adolescent brother.
No one believes him about the threat until he brings home the dead body of a woman murdered by Comanche’s who have joined the uprising. Hewitt organizes the woman hence the petticoat brigade of women training them in marksmanship and combat tactics. Armed and given military ranks, Hewitt and the ladies seize the day and hold onto the only safety they have in an abandoned mission. This includes a pacifist bible quoting lady and a couple of itinerant saloon women.
There is also one man who wants to get away in apart from the woman who he has got pregnant and wants him to marry her. He is forced to stay but persuades the woman to get for him the only horse left Reaching a stage post he encounters three desperadoes and persuades them to let him live by telling of the women and alleging they have gold and jewels at the Mission. The men kill him anyway. The desperadoes are then run off from the mission and they run into the Indian War Party and use the same approach telling of the women. Vastly outnumbered Murphy gets everyone on the roof out of sight and this convinces the Indians that if the women were there they have gone and they kill the desperadoes. Just as they are about to ride away a gun used by the adolescent brother goes off accidentally and there is no alternative but to stay and fight, Two of the women are killed and others wounded but the Audie hits on the idea of killing the Indian medicine man, and showing him off back at the Fort and this convinces the Indians that the omens are bad and they ride off.
Murphy announces that he is returning to face the music at his unit and a court marshal and found guilty as his story is not believed. However before sentence is given the Commanding Officer arrives as do a group of the Petticoat brigade to confirm his account fo what happened, Chivington is arrested for the Massacre and Murphy freed, The woman says she will lave her husband when he gets back and join her first and still love.
I will not spend too much time on the implausible Secrets of an Undercover wife, On her wedding day the husband is arrest, charged and convicted of fraud and murder. The wife is convinced he is innocent and despite the protestations of her best friend a lawyer and her husband she decides to go it alone to uncover the truth, She learns that the FBI know he was innocent of the particular crimes as the firm he had set up was taken over by the Mob for the purposes of money laundering and they had hoped his arrest would lead to catching the bigger fish. She gets a low level job at a firm where the mob are thought to have a major interest and she meets the Deputy CEO a single man who takes an immediate shine. Ignoring the advice of and potential help of the FBI but with the help of her friend she sets out to get the evidence on tape of the deputy CEO where she has become his personal assistant to admit his involvement on tape as the employer of the partner of her husband who was responsible for the dirty deeds.. She is found out and instead of being killed on the spot is taken by his private jet to the Cayman island where also is his father a wanted head of a Mafia family a very sick man has been hiding out. Fortunately before she is killed her friend arrives as does the FBI and because they are outside of jurisdiction the friend is able to take back the Deputy CEO his father to the Sates where they can claim the $1 million reward for the wanted man. The husband is released for the jail for happy ever afters. Ridiculous.
Quartet is a lovely film where five major actors front an ensemble cast of former musicians and other stage performers, directors and artists who live in an expensive country house with grounds retirement home facing closure because of its escalating costs. It is managed by a qualified doctor and has a range of activities which add to the challenge of balancing the books.
Residents at the home are three off the former opera singers who performance in the Rigoletto quartet remains highly regarded, Tom Courtney was an outstanding tenor of his day and his performance in the annual concert to raise funds on the anniversary of the birthday of Giuseppe Verdi is regarded as one of the highlights. He also gives talks to local school teenagers on the Opera and this leads to a demonstration that rap is a contemporary form of expressing emotions.
He is also man who never recovered from finding out on his wedding day that his common law wife, an exceptional soprano of the day played by Maggie Smith had been unfaithful with another tenor. He had subsequently refused to appear in productions in which she performed. He is upset and disturbed when he finds that Maggie, the fourth member of the famous quartet is to become the latest resident in the home when she has to give up her independent life in fine surroundings.
Her` arrival is greeted with great enthusiasm particular by Michael Gambon who plays an aging director who experiences giddy spells from his ongoing health condition and who organises the annual concert with a small committee which includes Pauline Collins, She plays someone in the early stages of memory forgetfulness, the fourth member of the Quartet, a kindly soul who admires Maggie as well as the other two. She gives a very fine performance which may well be overlooked against that of Maggie Smith and Tom Courtney. Billy Connolly plays the other member of the Quartet, a close friend and confident of Courtney since the marriage break up.
Maggie attempts to become friends with Tom who finds the situation intolerable at first but becomes reconciled to the need to persuade Maggie to perform with him and the others the Quartet in order to attract the audience and funds to keep the home going for another year or more. The three arrange to take Maggie out to a fine restaurant in order to talk her into the concert but she reacts with dismay and anger having revealed her fear of singing again and the feeling of betrayal that she hoped the others, especially Tom genuinely wanted to become friends again.
She is persuaded to participate and the latter part of the film concentrates on the build up to the great day as old wounds are healed and rivalries set aside. There are cameo performances from the various artists a couple performing in a cross between Naughton Wayne and Basil Radford and Flanagan and Allen. Unlike Mama Mia for example there is no attempt by the four non singing actors to pretend they can relying on their original recording and clever cut always from the start and end of the performance as they are greeted and rewarded with applause for their appearance and performance.
This is a tender film which should well reap some rewards at the Bafta’s and Oscars although we none outstanding so far I believe the honours will be shared including Skyfall in the UK and perhaps a special Oscar in USA show with Les Misérables, Lincoln, Pi and the Biggalo film on Bin Laden.
Quartet has been compared to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which also starred Maggie Smith together with Judy Dench, Penelope Wilton, Judy Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Ronald Pickup, Celia Imrie and Dev Patel. With the exception of Wilkinson who dies the other have indicated a willingness to return for a sequel where a script is said to have been delivered. I saw the Exotic Marigold Hotel in Theatre and again yesterday evening on the TV and regard the film as superior because of the significant interlocking a number of important stores whereas Quartet concentrates on the saving of the home, the coming back together of the four singes and the relationship between Tom and Maggie, who agree to remarry at the end.
I have seen Quartet before in my childhood in 1948 when RC Sherriff collaborated with Somerset Maugham to bring four of his short stories to the screen, later extend in Trio and Encore now all available on one DVD set. The stories were portrayed by an extraordinary array of stars, many in the making.
In the Facts of Life Jack Watling is a teenage Tennis player who goes on his own to a Tennis tournament in Monte Carlo with his parents (Angela Badderly and Basil) Radford warn him against women, gambling and lending money to strangers which he does when he meets Mai Zetterling at the casino where he wins substantially and take a sofa at her flat when it is too late to return to the hotel. She takes his money thinking he is asleep placing in a vase which he takes back only to find that there is significantly more than his own. And the moral is? James Robertson Justice, Naughton Wayne and the creator of Bond Ian Fleming also have parts.
In The Alien Corn Dirk Bogarde plays a young man of a good family who shocks his parents on his birthday announcing he wants to become a professional pianist. His cousin played by Honor Blackman proposes an acceptable compromise in which Bogarde goes to study in Paris for two years at the end of which an independent expert will say if he is good enough to become a soloist. The man congratulates on his technical abilities but declares he lacks virtuoso talent. He kills himself while cleaning a revolver. The Inquest concludes the death was accidental. Was it?
George Cole, Hermoine Badderly, Susan Shaw, Mervin Johns and Bernard Lee star in the Kite. George and his father have spent their free time flying kites, a hobby which he continues when he marries much to the dismay of his bride. When his wife destroys his latest kite he not only moves back home to the delight of his mother in particular who dislikes he wife, but refuses maintenance which leads to his imprisonment. A prison visitor on learning the story takes upon himself to resolve the situation so that when Cole leaves the prison he finds that his wife, Susan Shaw, is on the common flying a kite.
In the fourth story, The Colonel’s Lady Cecil Parker as the Colonel discovers via a copy provided by his mistress that his wife has written an audacious and successful book of poems about a passionate relationship with a younger man He learns that the poems must have been based on a real affair in which according to the book, the young man dies. Reluctant to raise the subject with his wife at first he eventually learns that the poem about himself as the death is that of their love. Others in the piece are Nora Swinburne, Felix Aylmer and Wilfred Howard White.
Quartet was a very successful film while the follow up Trio, two years lawyer did not please the critics as much although I recollect it was looked forward to by the aunties. Whereas on checking available film notes I remembered all four stories of Quartet I struggled with Trio which I now associate with an interdepartmental magazine with Social Services, Health and Education which I co edited for Cheshire County Council some forty years ago.
In the Verger the new vicar played by Michael Horden sacks his Verger (James Hayter because he cannot to read. Together with his landlady who he marries (Kathleen Harrison) he opens the first tobacconist in the area which si a great success and he is so successful that with his wife’s help he opens a chain depositing the profits at the local bank. The bank manager, Felix Aylmer suggests that Hayter moves some of the money into more profitable investments and is shocked to find that the man refuses because he cannot read the relevant documentation. The bank manager poses the question what could Hayter have been done if he had been able to read to which Hayter makes the point, “ back as the verger;” an important point to be remembered by all those who believe a university education is end and be all.
Wilfred Hyde-White plays Mr Gray in Mr Know It All who finds himself sharing a cabin on an ocean liner with Nigel Patrick at the Know All gem dealer, a nick name given to him by other passengers.
The previously work separated husband (Naughton Wayne) of a woman who wears great looking pearls bets Patrick that the Pearls are fake. Patrick admits he was wrong and pays up but later the money is returned and W H Whyte learns that in fact the Pearls were real but Patrick lied in order for the couple to save face, with the implication that the woman had been given the jewels while having an affair while the husband was away.
Roland Culver plays a writer in the Sanatorium which contains others, including Jean Simmons, new arrival Michael Rennie a pair of longer stay residents John Laurie and Finlay Currie who are at loggerheads and a man Raymond Huntley who is getting away from his wife, unsuccessfully. The new arrival a major falls in love with Simmonds but the couple are warned that the relationship could prematurely end the life of the major who has a scandalous background. They decide to leave together regardless and given the death of one of the patients, this has the impact of reconciling Huntley with his wife.
Encore (1951) included The Ant and Grasshopper in which Nigel Patrick also featured scroungers from his hard work brother (Roland Culver) When Culver attempts to turn off the tap he is approached by a car dealer who says that eh brother has stolen one of his cars and to protect the man and the family he makes good the loss although in reality it is a fraud and the car dealer and the brother have split the money between them. While staying at seaside hotel living it up he meets a woman claiming to be very rich and fed up with men lying about their positions to gain her favour. The brother admits he has been a scoundrel but this has the effect of drawing him closer to the woman and they become engaged. This enables him to pay back his brother who bemoans the fact that he is having to sell of the family estate to live while his brother is now able to lead the good life. The brother discloses that his wife is going to but up the family estate,
In the Winter Cruise Kay Walsh plays a woman who will not stop chattering to the frustration and boredom of the ship’s crew and other passengers. John Laurie has a part in the film but it is Ronald Squire,, the ship’s doctor who hits on the plan for a steward to have an affair with Walsh to keep her quiet on the way home from Caribbean. Walsh admits that she knows it is a scheme but is happy to go along and enjoys the affair.
Terence Morgan and Glynis Johns are the stars of Gigolo and Gigollette with a dangerous night club act which involves diving into a water tank . In order to avoid having to continue with the act after learning of the misfortunes of others she gamblers and loses their savings to the anger of her husband. Despite her fear she decides to undertake the second and more dangerous dive of the night as a consequence and her husband rushes to stop her, but too late. Fortunately the dive is successful and her fear is conquered.
I was surprised to find that I only possess one of Maugham’s novels, The Explorer, yet I have read and also experienced the films of some of his books all long ago although I did see the Laurence Harvey Kim Novack film of Human Bondage again with the last decade, itself a remake of the 1946 film. The Razors Edge and the Moon and Six Pence(George Sanders) are the two others I have read.
I also believe I saw The Secret Agent (John Gielgud and Peter Lorre, Robert Young) recently where I did not read the book along with Sadie Thompson in 3D back in the 1958 with Rita Hayworth and Jose Ferrer I have also seen Christmas Holiday wth Dianna Durban and Gene Kelly, the Beachcomber, The Hour Before dawn with Veronica Lake and the Seventh Sin( based on the Painted Veil which was remade in 2006) .The most recent film seen is Being Julia with Annette Bening based on the book Theatre but I missed Up the Villa with Christian Scott Thomas and Sean Penn and the Least version fo the Painted Veil with Naomi Watts. Thinking about the work of Maugham also reminded me of another great English writer and Socialist also CND supporter J B Priestly who book The Companions have read and enjoyed the film, (1956) the radio show and I believe a stage play although from what I read it may have been a musical.
While I am still finish the Harry Potter Films and those of James Bond where I have re-seen all but the Quantum of Solace I will cover other films view recently of which four have merit.
I watched for the umpteenth time Passport to Pimlico the highly enjoyable but preposterous 1949 film which I first saw as a 10 year old in theatre with the “aunties”. This Michael Balcon film can be now regarded as attempt to bolster the flagging wartime spirit of Joe public in the face of the continuing austerity of rationing and large chunks of remaining blitzed London, although it was based on a true incident when during World War 2 the child of Princess Juliana of the Netherlands would not have been able to claim the throne if born outside her home land so that the Canadian Government passed a special law making her room in the maternity hospital part of the Netherlands. The film stars Stanley Holloway and Margaret Rutherford and the young Barbara Murray together with a young Charles Haughtry of subsequent Carry On fame, Raymond Huntley as the creative Bank Manager and that fine actor John Slater, also with James Hayter, Arthur Denton, Michael Horden Sydney Tafler, Sam Kidd and Hermoine Baddeley.
The people living in heavily bombed Pimlico close to Victoria Station struggle to cope with the prolonged summer heat wave and the rationing surrounded by bombed buildings in the middle of which there is an unexploded bomb to be made safe. However the unit announces is has been told to move to another site and that the bomb will be detonated via a small explosion advising everyone to take precautions. Before this a group of young lads messing about with a large tyre fail to take proper control and it runs into the mine trench hole and detonates fortunately without injury to anyone, Stanley Holloway goes to investigate, falls down and thinks he sees treasure, which is laughed at by his wife but not by his daughter, Barbara Murray, when she realises that he has brought up a gold coin. They investigate and find a huge haul of coin and silver plate which is removed to the safe keeping of the Bank where the manager, a local man, is under fire from his headquarters because of his policy of granting loans to help out local shopkeepers and businesses. He is to be moved.
The find is reported to the government who seek to take control when the question of ownership is determined at an Inquest. Margaret Rutherford plays the expert who upon examining a document found in casket by Holloway as well as portrait of a nobleman reveals that not only is the treasure of the French House of Burgundy who lived in the area when exiled but the document grants ownership of the land to the Duke and his descendents and as it is understood he died without an heir the Treasure belongs to the those born in the area covered by the Royal Warrant who technically are Burgundians with the implications that British laws and taxes do not apply. This leads to the locals to tear up their ration books and identity cards, keep the pub open all hours and plan how they will spend the money on a lido for the children on the bomb site. Huntley declares UDI for his bank.
The area becomes besieged by out of area traders in what has becomes free zone leading the residents having a change of mind about their impendence when the police explain they cannot intervene. However the position changes again when it is revealed that the Duke had a son and his descendent arrives to claim treasure and his Dukedom, or at least to support the local people when the government tightens the screws and impose a customs post. The local retaliate by stopping the passing Underground trains which in turns leads to the water being cut off. The children are evacuated but residents manage to turn the water back on illicitly however the problem is that the basement is flooded where the food was being stored for the communal meals and it appears they have no alternative but to surrender and leave the area or give up the treasure. The children on seeing a newsreel use their pocket money to buy bread rolls which they pass over the barrier to their families which leads to other passers by doing the same and when the word spreads by radio and press everyone joins in to provide the community with more than sufficient supplies to keep them going Naughton Wayne and Basil Rathbone on behalf of the government are forced to negotiate a settlement in which the money is given to the Treasury as capital but the community benefits from the interest which gets them their Lido. The Duke and Barbara Murray fall in love
The classic line in the film is We’ve always been English, and we’ll always be English and its precisely because we are English that we’re sticking for the right to be Burgundians.”
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a film based on a book but with a new twist. `According to information on line the book concentrates on the relationship between two women, the eldest is 80 and looks back on her life under four Chinese Emperor commencing when she was eight years of age and first formed a relationship with the other. They come from different classes of society but their paths take different courses after the age when their feet acre bound at a time when the size of the foot in later life could become a major factor when a marriage is arranged. The one from the lower social home marries into the best family in area because she is regarded as having perfect small feet although to achieve this she had to endure great pain.
Her husband is sent by his father away on business when they have been married a short while and she is pregnant. Both the parents die from a typhus epidemic so that after his return his becomes the local Lord of the manor and she the Lady, For many years she is prevented from going to visit her friend and when she does she finds that although her friend was socially higher she lives in comparative poverty without servants as her husband is a butcher and a common man.
According to the film they are all forced to quickly leave when a rebellion occurs (The Taiping revolution when an estimate 20 million people died) and the husband leaves them to retrieves their cow only to find that in the snow and low temperature that one of his children has died and in his grief he blames his wife for not taking better care, strikes her and then buries the child without telling the wife where this is. The lady tries to persuade her friend to leave with her children and live with her so she can have a better life but the friend explains that she is passionately loved by her husband and she him something which she rightly suspects has not happened in the relationship with her friend despite her wealth and position.
This is a challenge to basic premise of the novel about laotang relationship which can be chosen between two girls or women which is about lifelong emotional closeness and fidelity whereas for most women, the marriage is arranged for the purpose of providing sons and where to this day the majority of the population regard bearing a female child first as a failure especially during the decades where China restricted couples to one child unless they obtained special permission. The Lady regards this as betrayal of their relationship which she then also betrays by revealing their relationship to her friends. She is reconciled when the friend prematurely dies but spends many years alone after her husband and her children also die.
The film develops the story interposing the historical relationship with that between two female descendents who also sign the laotang but also find keeping its intentions difficult as they become adolescents and they are also prevented by a relative who sees the girl being led astray by the other, One is then struck by a taxi and is in a coma and the other finds that her friend has written up the story of their ancestors. She decides that this will not happen to them and stays with the friend who in this instance does not die and they are united.
The fan of the title is significant because it was used to communicate messages in the historical situation and is now an heirloom part of a collection which is being shown in an art gallery with the one exception and which is brought to the hospital and becomes a symbolic binding artefact which not only unites the two again but appears to cause the awakening from the coma. The film can be interpreted at many levels from a commentary on the history and social changes of China to issues of the nature of the marital heterosexual marriage, arranged or by choice and which given the growth of professional match making organisations in European and USA society is fascinating. The film is beautifully and tenderly shot despite the grim harshness of some scenes. While there is also a hint of physicality at one moment in the historical era, it is primarily about unconditional friendship and loyalty.
People tend to love or hate the films of Woody Allen and his 2011 contribution Midnight in Paris is no exception. It is a piece of fantastical nonsense which I enjoyed. The hero, or anti hero in this instance is a Hollywood screen writer with ambitions to create something meaningful and artistic while vacationing with his attractive conventional and culturally uneducated fiancée and her even more conventional conservative Republican parents. It is evident that if he was half the man he is supposed to be he would not have become involved the woman and her family within a thousand miles.
He loves to walks the streets, even in the rain ( hints of gene Kelly here). After getting drunk and wondering about when at the midnight hour a 1920’s vehicle and passengers drives up and invites him to join them in a party, for Jean Cocteau. He meets Alice B Toklas, Cole Porter. Josephine Baker. Zelda and F Scott z and Hemingway whop all treat him as one of them. Hemingway agrees to show the prospective great novel to Gertrude Stein who he then meets and gives him good advice. Stein introduces him to Picasso and come of is current women Adrianna ( Marianne Cotillard) with whom he is attracted. He shares with her the opening lines of the book about his fascination with the past which she admits she also has,
On subsequent nights Adrianna nights leaves Picasso for Hemingway and become more attracted to her. He also meets T S Elliot and then Dali Man Ray and Louis Brunel with whom he reveals his conflict of being in love with two women at the same time but being surrealists they see nothing strange in this and his interest in two women normal. The joke here is that he tells Brunel the plot of the film he is yet to make The Exterminating Angel which Brunel initially dismisses and continues to question. While out during the day with his fiancée looking at very expensive antiques he comes across the published diary of Adrianna who has written that she loves him and wishes he would give her a pair earrings as a token of his affection after which they would make love. He then attempts to steal the earrings of his fiancée but is thwarted so has to buys a pair but when he goes to meet her hey are invited back into the Belle Epoch of the 1890’s at Maxims and the Moulin Rouge where he encounters Degas, Lautrec and Gauguin and these three argue that the era which they would have preferred to have lived was the Renaissance . As this is Adrianna’s era of choice she elects to stay but he returns to the present.
Meanwhile his fiancée frustrated by his lack of attention and absorption in his literary work and wonderings is spending more time with a male friend who is something of a know it all and where our hero is able to put him in his place together with impressing an official guide because of his authoritative first hand knowledge of what the artists said to him about their work, intentions and relationships. However it is Stein who tells him that Hemingway makes the point that he needs to polish his portrait of the relationship between the fiancée in the novel and the friend because rationally the two are having an affair behind the back of its hero. When he confronts his fiancée with this insight at first she dismisses but then admits claiming it was a mere dalliance and something which should not affect their relationship,
The break up confirms the dislike the parents where the father reveals that he has had him followed by a detective who has disappeared, In fact the man has been transported back to 18th century Paris and decides to remain there.
Our hero decides to remain in Paris to finish his book and remeets a young woman previously met who declares that like him she loves just wondering the streets, including in the rain. The pair are made for each other. The film won an Oscar for its Screen play written by Allen and was also nominated as best Film, best Director and for Art Direction. Woody Allen also won a Golden Globe for the screen play and was nominated for a BAFTA as other awards and countless nominations. It was all great fun and witty and I wish.
Cleanskin with Sean Bean is a very different kind of film which could have been so much better if did not attempt to mix a portrait of how an intelligent young British Muslim becomes a terrorist with a confusing conspiracy about the extent to which the secret service and its political masters caused deaths through bombings. A series of time shifts in the film does not also help. I have tried to disentangle the two story lines, Ash (Abhin Galeya) is a university law student who begins to question what is right and what is wrong about the British role in the middle East when he comes under the influence of a British Cleric who grooms him and other young men to become terrorists. Under his influence Ash turns on his English University fellow student who drinks heavily and enjoys passionate sex with him and others. They break up but meet again years later and have sex again. This makes him question what he has become
In the meantime Ash asks to be given work and is put to the test helping a comrade imported from the middle East to assassinate a retired British soldier who now runs horse stables. Ash recruits a friend as requested and the trio set off with the intention to capture the soldier and then execute him on camera. The soldier realises something is happening and is able to fight and kill the recruited man. Ash is able to knock out the soldier but pretends that he has not discovered the man’s sister and her baby child hiding in a room upstairs. He then films as the terrorist cuts of the man‘s head. He later learns that the man had killed he woman and the baby and is criticised by the assassin and the Cleric for his soft heart at the inevitability of collateral damage in a war. He is sent somewhere for training and on return he is prepared for a suicide mission. He is to kill by blowing himself up an American Senator active in the War on Terror who has come to England for the marriage of his daughter. The reception happens to be at a hotel where Sean Bean is staying and is able to stop by killing Ash just before he detonates the bomb.
However all this is something of a sub plot .Sean Bean is a creative recruited to becoming an undercover licence to kill operative for the UK after being a professional soldier. He is 100% loyal to his country and the Service although with a tendency to act first when confronted with bomber after his wife, unconnected with his work was killed in a bombing incident.
When on a mission to flush out terrorists he and a colleague pose as Semtex sellers with the same group involving Ash however the plan goes horrible wrong and his colleague is killed and Bean wounded because the colleague’s gun had his clip of bullets removed. Sean follows this up with a new colleague specially assigned by his immediate chief and discovers the prostitute used by his colleagues was also having a regular relationship with an Arab who persuaded her to remove the bullets, he forces her to lead him to the address she has used but Ash is too clever and not only gets away but kills the prostitute. (This is one of many improbable aspects of the story),
Unfortunately the failure of the first mission where Semtex gets into the hands of the terrorists and leads to a bomb and significant casualties, something which in effect Bean and the Service unintentionally caused. With a General Election looming with would be political dynamite if the media got to know and the Minister puts pressure on Bean‘s immediate boss, Charlotte Rampling, to get the matter quickly sorted by any means and she appears to delegate this to Bean. He and his new colleague are sent to capture an Arab believed to have intelligence. When captured the man says he is like Bean and misunderstanding the situation Bean sets the man on fire and kills him. He finds nothing incriminating in the man’s coat or elsewhere and is riddled with guilt at having killed an innocent man. He is told to lie low with the new colleague in as it happens the same London hotel as Ash is aiming to kill the American Senator. He becomes suspicious of his colleague, they fight and he kills the colleague having the impression he was being set up to be got rid off as a cover for the failed missions and the killing of the innocent man. He finds a safe deposit key and number written on a piece of paper in the actual jacket coat of the innocent man previously killed (in the bag of his colleague) ( Why he has this with him is also odd).
He leaves the hotel before the authorities arrive after he has killed Ash and stopped the bomb. As he leaves the hotel he spots the suspicious adding of a suitcase to a luggage trolley and the suitcase explodes destroying the front of the hotel where he was staying,
He escapes without injury and we see him open the safe deposit box and finds a file and a tape which reveals that man was an undercover Secret Service agent with incriminating evidence about the duplicitous role of the service. Rampling had employed the new colleague to get the evidence and frame and then kill Bean blaming him for all the deaths and mistakes and thus protecting her own position. He visits Rampling at her home, kills her making it look like suicide with a copy of a report he has drawn up with the other evidence on the failings of the service.
Now I think this is the position leaving open who placed the second bomb and why because with flashbacks and the interaction of the two stories it may be intended to add up top something very different. Do I care? No.
At one level The Guns of Fort Petticoat where a group of Southern women organised by war hero Audie Murphy fend off a large war party of Indians will appear unpromising afternoon viewing fare even given the winter weather and a night when I felt so tired I went to bed and slept around 8,30 and then could not sleep for about four hours getting up and going back to bed in the early hours.
I have written before that Audie Murphy, the star of the film was a genuine super hero, the most decorated individual soldier in the Second World War. He died at the age of 47 in a plane crash in 1971 having made over forty films. His book and first film To Hell and Back remains a classic,
The film uses an actual event as yhe backcloth, The Sand Creek Massacre or the Chivington Massacre. On November 29th, 1864 a 700 man force of the Colorado Territory Militia committed one of the most infamous acts of genocide in US History against its indigenous people when they murdered between 73 and 166 friendly Cheyenne over half women and children and destroyed their village in the process.
About a decade after a peace treaty had been signed with a number of Indian Tribes, the finding of gold led he US government to renege and reduce the land area available to less than tenth and which although many agreed to accept others, understandably did not The Colorado Unit had helped defeat the Texas Confederate army in the Civil War in 1862 and returned home to where they mounted a home guard under Colonel Chivington. The State Governor using Chivington and his men adopted a hard line towards the Indians who some settler i.e. trespassers and land stealers, accused the Indians of stealing their cattle. Understandably the massacre led to a war of retaliation. About a thousand Indians set about revenge killing many women and children. It needs to be stressed that the Americans had not just slaughters the Indians but brutally tortured and mutilated many of the defenceless women and children.
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In the film Texan Lt. Frank Hewitt (Murphy) is serving with the U.S. Cavalry under Colonel John Chivington. On patrol, Hewitt meets a group of Indians who are unarmed and returning to the Sand Creek reservation which they were not supposed to leave. While briefing Col. Chivington, the Colonel orders the Sand Creek Massacre. Hewitt not only disagrees with the punishment of the Indians, but realizes they will use the attack as an excuse to unite and spread terror throughout the Southwest, including his own hometown in Texas which has been emptied of the majority of its menfolk who are fighting for the Confederacy. Colonel Chivington sees Indian attacks on Texas as a bonus to create havoc in the Confederacy. Violently objecting, Hewitt is placed under arrest and confined to quarters.
He deserts to warn his neighbours but meets a hostility because of the side he joined and considered a traitor. This includes a woman he had hoped to marry and who had married another man in protest on the rebound to his departure and now manages the farm with the help of the husbands younger adolescent brother.
No one believes him about the threat until he brings home the dead body of a woman murdered by Comanche’s who have joined the uprising. Hewitt organizes the woman hence the petticoat brigade of women training them in marksmanship and combat tactics. Armed and given military ranks, Hewitt and the ladies seize the day and hold onto the only safety they have in an abandoned mission. This includes a pacifist bible quoting lady and a couple of itinerant saloon women.
There is also one man who wants to get away in apart from the woman who he has got pregnant and wants him to marry her. He is forced to stay but persuades the woman to get for him the only horse left Reaching a stage post he encounters three desperadoes and persuades them to let him live by telling of the women and alleging they have gold and jewels at the Mission. The men kill him anyway. The desperadoes are then run off from the mission and they run into the Indian War Party and use the same approach telling of the women. Vastly outnumbered Murphy gets everyone on the roof out of sight and this convinces the Indians that if the women were there they have gone and they kill the desperadoes. Just as they are about to ride away a gun used by the adolescent brother goes off accidentally and there is no alternative but to stay and fight, Two of the women are killed and others wounded but the Audie hits on the idea of killing the Indian medicine man, and showing him off back at the Fort and this convinces the Indians that the omens are bad and they ride off.
Murphy announces that he is returning to face the music at his unit and a court marshal and found guilty as his story is not believed. However before sentence is given the Commanding Officer arrives as do a group of the Petticoat brigade to confirm his account fo what happened, Chivington is arrested for the Massacre and Murphy freed, The woman says she will lave her husband when he gets back and join her first and still love.
I will not spend too much time on the implausible Secrets of an Undercover wife, On her wedding day the husband is arrest, charged and convicted of fraud and murder. The wife is convinced he is innocent and despite the protestations of her best friend a lawyer and her husband she decides to go it alone to uncover the truth, She learns that the FBI know he was innocent of the particular crimes as the firm he had set up was taken over by the Mob for the purposes of money laundering and they had hoped his arrest would lead to catching the bigger fish. She gets a low level job at a firm where the mob are thought to have a major interest and she meets the Deputy CEO a single man who takes an immediate shine. Ignoring the advice of and potential help of the FBI but with the help of her friend she sets out to get the evidence on tape of the deputy CEO where she has become his personal assistant to admit his involvement on tape as the employer of the partner of her husband who was responsible for the dirty deeds.. She is found out and instead of being killed on the spot is taken by his private jet to the Cayman island where also is his father a wanted head of a Mafia family a very sick man has been hiding out. Fortunately before she is killed her friend arrives as does the FBI and because they are outside of jurisdiction the friend is able to take back the Deputy CEO his father to the Sates where they can claim the $1 million reward for the wanted man. The husband is released for the jail for happy ever afters. Ridiculous.
