Films in the sky
There are those who cannot bear flying but I love being in that parallel world that lacks time and location being pampered and above all watching films. Thus it was that I had to make a 7 hour and then 5 hour flight on Emirates and the first thing I looked for on the entertainment screen was the films. I was disappointed by new releases but a section called Film Club clearly catered for the discerning cineaste .
I started with Hitchcock Truffaut which I somehow missed in general release. These are my two favourite filmmakers who marry the highest technique with popular entertainment. My favourite Hitchcock films were those made in the mid-thirties before he went to Hollywood: The Thirty Nine Steps and The Lady Vanishes. This is not to disparage Renecca, Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds and Rear Window but I preferred those with non-Hollywood values and veneer. As for Francois Truffaut Jules et Jim would make my top ten best list but I also loved Day for Night, the best film ever about a film and Le Dernier Metro with Catherine Deneuve and the young Gerard Depardieu. This film centred on an interview between the two directors. If it stuck to this it would have made for interesting insight into the directors but the bulk of the Hitchcock critique came from Martin Scorsese who has set himself up as some sort of czar on modern cinema. Peter Bogdanovich is much the deeper film historian and his The Last Picture Show is better than anything that Scorsese had done. But he only gets the briefest of airtime. The film came up with the usual admiration for Hitchcock but skated over the rather sadistic side of the director, the almost perverted way he scared his blonde leading ladies (Tippi Hendren in The Birds had wires attached from her eyelids to the claws of the birds.
My next selection 30,000 miles high was The Manchurian Candidate, a film I had somehow missed. Directed by John Frankenheimer he came to London to avoid the MacCarthy witch hunt. It’s a clever parable on Macarthyism when some soldiers are brainwashed by the Communists, one of whom is programmed to commit murder. It’s just a bit weird and dated now though. Frank Sinatra shows what a fine actor he is, less so Lawrence Harvey, an actor who has never impressed me except for his suave looks.
Finally and now well-fuelled by champagne, gin and tonics and fine wine I hit on another favourites The Great Escape. Robert Vaughn who died recently is remembered for The Magnificent Seem though only on screen for 16 minutes but was also a considerable tv actor well known as Napoleon Solo in The Man From Uncle. David Mcallum became a heart throb as Ilya Kuryakin but less remembered in the follow up John Sturges film after the Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape. Again some excellent actors better known for tv roles appeared: Gordon Jackson who was in The Professionals and Upstairs Downstairs and Nigel Stock who played Dr Watson to Douglas Willmer’s tv Sherlock Holmes. Steve McQueen steals the show with that breathtaking motor bike sequence. Watching it for the umpteenth time I appreciated a nuanced performance from Hannes Messemer as Kamp Kommandant Von Luger reflecting the troubled relationship between seasoned professional soldiers and the amoral ruthless Gestapo and SS. Oddly enough Messemer was sent to the Eastern front for insubordination and escaped from Russian captivity there.
My fourth film was Rain Man. I had only seen it the once and was curious to see how it wore. Perceptions of autism have changed since it was released in 1988. I was amazed how well Tom Cruise acted as the selfish brother at first seeking to claim half the inheritance of the autistic one but in a buddy road movie scenario develops true affection for his brother Ray. Ray was played by Dustin Hoffman and to pitch your talents aged 25 against one of American’s most talented film stars since the 1960s is quite a challenge but Cruise more than responds to it.
