Cry ‘God for Larry, Hammer Films and Network!’ April 29, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info, British Film , 6 comments“If I wasn’t an actor, I think I’d have gone mad. You have to have extra voltage, some extra temperament to reach certain heights. Art is a little bit larger than life - it’s an exhalation of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness.”
Laurence Olivier
2007 marks the centenary of the birth of Laurence Olivier (May 22 to be precise), once regarded as the world’s leading stage and screen actor.
Lord Olivier, as he was after being elevated in 1970 (the first actor to receive the accolade; the only other to be honoured by a peerage is Lord Attenborough), is, perhaps, perceived today as an old-fashioned declamatory actor, whose sometimes flamboyant film performances meant that even towards the end of his lifetime, he was being reassessed by those who preferred the minimalist approach of the modern thespian.
However, anyone who thinks Olivier should now simply be considered a rather choice smoked ham should watch, for instance, his spine-tingling performance as Archie Rice in The Entertainer, feel that frisson of disgust as his demonic ’Richard Crookback’ shuffles forward to confide and conspire with the camera in Richard III, genuinely thrill to the Agincourt speech in Henry V, or enjoy his quite intimate screen performance in Bunny Lake is Missing.
As well as bringing, via his screen adaptations, the works of Shakespeare to the masses - and having already mentioned cured meats - it must be said that Olivier relished the opportunity to ham it up with the very best. He couldn’t resist the chance to be lip-smackingly salacious in the adaptation of Harold Robbins The Betsy, and some think his French Canadian trapper ‘Johnnie’ in Powell and Pressburger’s The 49th Parallel maybe needs to be turned down just a notch or two (but not this fan). Towards the end of his career, if Hollywood wanted variations on any number of ‘mittle European ackzents’, Lord Larry was their man. Who can forget Olivier’s ‘weißer engel’, doing for dentistry what Jaws did for recreational swimming? Or his frail (he was actually ill at the time; in fact he was in ill-health for the last two decades of his life) but dogged Nazi hunter ‘Ezra Lieberman’ in The Boys From Brazil?
There’s a great story told by William Goldman about Marathon Man. Dustin Hoffman turned up on set and Olivier was aghast at his appearance. The Great Man asked what on earth was wrong and Hoffman replied that he was playing a character who hadn’t slept all night…so Hoffman hadn’t slept.
Olivier, ever disparaging of ‘the Method’, gave him an exasperated look and said: ‘Why don’t you just ACT it dear boy?’
I always find Olivier, in productions good, bad, or indifferent, to be excellent value for money, in his Shakespearian roles he’s simply hypnotic. As a small boy I was bought an ‘EP’ (remember them?) of Treasure Island, with Donald Wolfit as ‘Long John’. I hadn’t a clue who Wolfit was at the time, but was told he’d been ‘a very great stage actor’, yet he was a man who was little regarded by the time he died in 1968. Maybe Olivier has become a ‘Donald Wolfit’ for another generation? Whatever. I loved that record and thought Wolfit was just fab. Olivier is fab too…
In R2, Network is prepping two box sets for release next month:
Laurence Olivier Presents: Five works by 20th century playwrights, presented by one of the greatest actors of the modern age, with an outstanding range of international talent. Plays include: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tennessee Williams); The Collection (Harold Pinter); Hindle Wakes (Stanley Houghton); Come Back, Little Sheba (William Inge); Saturday, Sunday, Monday (by Eduardo de Filippo).
and…
The Laurence Olivier Centenary Collection: Henry V, Richard III, The Ebony Tower, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, The Merchant of Venice, The South Bank Show: Laurence Olivier - A Life (originally aired in two parts), plus the six plays in the Laurence Olivier Presents box.
Meanwhile there are number of celebrations planned throughout the UK including special screenings. The BBC reported recently that Henry V gets digital makeover:
…For a screening at the Brighton Festival on the south coast of England this year, composer Dominic Sewell has digitally removed William Walton’s original score so that the film can have its music performed by a live orchestra. The orchestra will play the music in synchronisation with newly-remastered images on the screen - digitally enhanced as part of an ongoing project to celebrate the centenary of Olivier’s birth……Henry V, made to boost morale during World War II, is regarded as a British film classic. Olivier was both its star and director, and as such the film is at the centrepiece of the centenary of his birth in 1907.
Once it has been fully restored, it will be screened in a number of venues later this year - including at the Cannes Film Festival.
The process of digitally restoring it is being overseen by Fiona Maxwell, director of operations and servicing at British media company Granada International, which owns the rights to a number of Olivier classics.
She said that by going back to original 35mm negatives and re-transferring them on modern equipment, “we can get them back to their former glory.”
“We can regrade them, get the colour that is within those negatives,” she said.
While some restoration will also be in real time - by passing the negative through a bath to get rid of dirt, for example - the frame-by-frame restoration made possible by computer has meant that even scratches that occurred within the negatives on which the film was originally shot can now be removed.
“You can literally take a wipe across the screen,” Ms Maxwell said.
“Sometimes it’s like turning on light - because people have got used to dirt and fading, and think this is what an old film looks like.”
You’ll see at this link that Brighton Festival’s Henry V has sold out. And it looks superb too - Walton’s music, particularly the charge of the French towards the English bowmen, is fantastic. The scene - the sun glinting off the armour, the bright, primary colours of the banners and shields, the verdant battlefield, a deep, azure blue sky - should be a Technicolor marvel, but on the current unrestored R2 DVD, it’s sometimes drab and badly marked. A restored Henry V in all it’s Plantagenet splendour would be an eyewatering delight; it’s not been confirmed, but I cannot believe that the restoration will not be included in the ‘Centenary’ box. Here’s hoping.
‘It’s in the trees! It’s coming!’
This news from HammerWeb is being greeted with delight on various internet fora. Click though and you’ll see that DD Home Entertainment has struck a deal with Columbia which means that UK based DDHE - already responsible for a number of excellent Hammer and horror releases including The Quatermass Xperiment - is set to pull the trigger on even more Hammer:
“…A spokesman for DD is keen to stress that the exact titles due to be released are dependent on the results of an ongoing evaluation of archive materials, but we can confirm that the thirteen Hammer titles provisionally scheduled for release are The Camp On Blood Island, Cash on Demand, Creatures the World Forgot, The Damned, Don’t Panic Chaps, The Gorgon, Maniac, Never Take Sweets From a Stranger, The Stranglers of Bombay, Sword of Sherwood Forest, Taste of Fear, The Terror of the Tongs and Watch it Sailor. There may be other titles to follow.”
Tucked in with the Hammer news is this snippet: “In the meantime, DD’s release of Columbia titles will get underway with the British DVD premiere of the 1957 film Night of the Demon. DD are planning a collector’s edition of this classic horror film and work is already underway on exclusive behind-the-scenes extra features.”
Columbia has already done an excellent job in R1 with Night of The Demon / Curse of The Demon, but a release with some substantial extras would be marvellous. It’s one of the great iconic British horror films, deftly directed by Jacques Tourneur, the noirish shadows and suggestion creating far more creeping menace than the rubber monster foisted on Tourneur for the final scenes. I really must get round to buying Tony Earnshaw’s book Beating the Devil: The Making of ‘Night of the Demon’…
DDHE’s presentations vary in quality, sometimes excellent, sometimes awful, and sometimes they make elementary and frustrating mistakes in authoring. They do try hard, however, paying for the inclusion of a commentary here or a featurette there, and I rather like the booklets they often include with their bigger releases. They obviously haven’t the budget of the big studios to carry out major restorations on their own, but providing they are given decent elements in the first place - and you would think Columbia will have access to such - I’m quite hopeful.
With Warners hinting that they are set to revisit their Hammer titles - the crown jewels as far as most fans are concerned - it’s looking to be a great year for afficionados of the films from Bray and Elstree.
Things to Come…
Finally - finally - the specs and art are up for the Things to Come: Special Edition on the Network site:
• Brand new digital restoration of the longest existing version
• Virtual Extended Edition – a viewing option allowing for the inclusion of text and images from long-missing and unfilmed scenes to present a tantalising ‘what if?’
• Brand-new audio commentary with Things to Come expert Nick Cooper
• On Reflection: Brian Aldiss on H.G. Wells – 25 minute documentary from 1971
• Ralph Richardson interview by Russell Harty in 1975
• Extensive booklet written by Nick Cooper
• The Wandering Sickness – an original 78rpm recording
• Comprehensive image gallery, including many rare stills
• Merchandise image gallery
• US re-release trailer
The artwork is beautiful, certainly an improvement over the proposed box art for the aborted 2006 release. One press release from Network adds: ‘This extended version is taken from a high quality 35mm print from the BFI archives’. If I recall correctly, the restored British Film Institute print, first screened a couple of years ago now, is some three minutes longer than the more commonly seen American cut. Nick Cooper confirmed to me that this release is an improvement on the DDHE transfer; just how much of an improvement remains to be seen.
The waiting is quite painful, and any readers of this blog will know it’s become something of a saga - not long to go, thankfully, now. I might actually get through a post without mentioning it!
Having said that, we may have to go though all this again (groan..). Word came out recently that the U.S. rights to a number of Korda films had passed from MGM / UA into the hands of Janus Films. The Private Life of Henry VIII, Things to Come, The Thief of Bagdad (to name but three), all from Criterion?
It’s a tantalising thought…
Comings…and Goings… April 10, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info, British Film , 1 comment so farEver since it was tentatively announced last year by Network in the UK, there has been much speculation about just what might be ’special’ about their ‘Special Edition’ DVD of Things to Come.
I’ve mentioned it here a couple of times and, it seems, disinformation and rumour has been the order. Up until now hopefully.
As reported previously, William Cameron Menzies seminal sci-fi epic is being screened at Sci-Fi London next month in association with distributors Network, and when details were at last posted on the Festival Website, it looked like we were in for an astonishing treat. Those details have now been amended, but originally they gave the running time as 116 minutes and claimed: “…Released in 1936 at 87 minutes, we screen the original director’s version with 20 minutes of never-before-seen footage. The film has been painstakingly restored and we present it in glorious HD….”
With some incredulity, I reported the above over at the Roobarb’s Forum, and got this reply from Nick Cooper. Note that the UK standard TV format, PAL, means that film runs 4% fast, so that when he talks of ‘uplift’ he’s quoting timings for film at normal speed without PAL conversion:
Sadly, that’s an error. Basically, the various reported or known running times of the film are:
130m - Rough cut (reported)
117m 13s - Version submitted to the BBFC in Feb 1936 (passed as an ‘A’)
108m 40s - London trade screening, premiere, and initial 1936 release
98m 06s - Shorter version in UK circulation by late-1936
96m 24s - American release - The version of the film that had always been released on VHS and shown on TV since 1986 in the UK runs to 92m 42s on film - 89m exactly in PAL format.There are prints floating around in the US with two additional scenes and two segments from existing scenes running to 3m 42, that therefore “uplift” this running time to the 96m 24s of the US release, although they are otherwise missing other footage and therefore as a whole run shorter than 92m 42s.
The Network release re-instates these four scene/segments, as reflected by the BBFC-quoted running time of 92m 45s. The simple fact is that this is all the actual footage that remains from the film, barring a few alternate shots of existing scenes that survive in trailers.
Production paperwork is virtually non-existent, but there is a continuity/editing script containing an additional ten scenes or segments from existing scenes. Because each shot in this script is timed (in feet and frames), it’s possible to work out the extra running time of these ten scene/segments; overall they uplift the running time to 104m 41s.
Obviously this is still a bit short of the initial 1936 UK release and considerably less than the version certified by the BBFC. Wells published what was essentially the shooting script in October 1935, and it’s notable that where footage actually exists - or is documented in the above-mentioned continuity script - the published version is spot-on.
That’s not surprising, since Wells’s contract stipulated that the film had to be shot exactly as he wrote it, pretty much to the word, so the additional material does pretty much “fill in the gaps” that remain. That said, there are at least two scenes (coincidentally, one of which is being reinstated) that do not appear in the published script, so clearly there was at least one further revision before filming finished in late 1935.
More detail on my website: www.thingstocome.org.uk
My sincere thanks to Nick for clearing up the confusion on the running time front. It still looks like a treat - just not the one we might have imagined! All we are waiting for now is for Network to give us the news of any extra features, and for them to deliver a sparkling transfer with crystal clear sound. Here’s hoping, and with the May release of the disc still on track we won’t have to wait too much longer to find out.
Optimum’s yo-yoing schedule looks to have ‘yo’d’ against their proposed release of Abel Gance’s silent epic Napoleon. At first, they looked to be releasing a cut, sonorised, 1934 version of the film, but then, to much amazement, Optimum announced that they had reached a deal with Francis Ford Coppola to release his ‘restoration’ of the film with a score by his father Carmine. The result, in some quarters, was outrage and a call for a boycott of the release until Coppola, who claims to hold the worldwide rights for the film, came to an agreement with Kevin Brownlow to allow his much better restored version to be screened and released via the BFI on DVD.
Well, no need for that boycott now. Optimum has pulled the release from their schedule ‘due to a rights issue’. The deal with Coppola was apparently one he could refuse. Optimum’s release of Gance’s Austerlitz has also been canned.
Finally, in this mini news round-up, fans of vintage British films rejoice - I’m delighted to report that ITV DVD is set to release The Stewart Granger Collection: Adam and Evelyne, Blanche Fury, Caesar And Cleopatra, Captain Boycott, Fanny By Gaslight, The Lamp Still Burns, Love Story, Madonna of The Seven Moons, The Magic Bow and Waterloo Road come June in the UK. Huzzah!
God, Mammon and Imperial Entanglements… April 9, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : Film & DVD Reviews, Historical Drama , 2 commentsHaving no faith whatsoever myself, it’s perhaps a little odd that I feel almost morally obliged to watch at least one Hollywood Biblical epic during the Easter holiday; it harks back to my youth when all television had to offer at this time of year was a good dose of God to go alongside the ‘Pace Egging’ and ‘Walking Day’ processions. God and Mammon in fact.
Now, it seems, there’s not much room for the Resurrection; we have to make do with Mammon alone…and the nearest that any of the Trinity gets to being broadcast into my living room is when a golfer in Augusta tells me how Jesus helped him with that particularly difficult chip at the 17th.
The Lord truly does move in mysterious ways.
With The Prophet reduced to the status of a bag-toting caddy, I slap Warners DVD of Ben-Hur into my player, and, as per usual, right up to and including the quite magnificent chariot race*, I’m royally entertained. Thereafter, William Wyler’s 1959 epic runs out of steam as the narrative slows to a crawl, and we have to rely on the rather dull ’fairy tale’ element of the saga to hold our interest. Part of the problem is that Judah’s mother and sister seem no more ravaged by the horrors of leprosy than your average acne scarred teenager (’Lepers! See - they have zits too!’), and over-exposure to The Life of Brian means that these days, with the Sermon on The Mount and the stoning of the prostitute, my brain screams ‘blessed are the cheesemakers?’ and ‘Who threw that!? I’m warning you…’
But until the moment the evil ‘Messala’ spits at ‘Judah’ that the ‘race goes on’, Ben-Hur remains a fascinating piece of film-making. Wyler famously asked Gore Vidal and Christopher Fry to doctor his script and despite the protestations of Charlton Heston, the conclusion that they inserted a not so subtle homosexual subtext into the material is inescapable.
It’s there when Juda and Messala first meet with a lovers embrace, tears of joy in their eyes, and the sharing of wine, their arms sensuously entwined. It’s there too as ’Quintus Arrius’ casts his eye lasciviously over the near naked Judah, the forlorn Prince chained to his oar, his hate-filled eyes setting the agitated, lip-smacking Consul’s juices flowing.
Quintus Arrius: Your eyes are full of hate, forty-one. That’s good. Hate keeps a man alive. It gives him strength.
Now, all that has been the subject of debate after debate and you could just as easily argue that Judah and Messala are simply, ah, very good friends and that Arrius is moved to help Judah by God’s will rather than a stirring ‘neath his tunica talaris (or both). You could, honest.
Oh, perhaps not…
But even more intriguing, given today’s Middle Eastern turmoil, is the script’s anti-imperialist sentiments which must surely also have sprung from the acid dipped nib of Vidal.
Ben-Hur hit the screens just three years after the Suez Crisis, and political intrigue in the Middle East was very much to the fore. Britain, France and America, aided by the embattled Israelis, were seen to be meddling in a part of the world that has long been been a quite volatile powder keg, indeed it was a decade in which liberal America was horrified by their country’s role as ‘world policeman’, and what was seen by some as the USA’s imperial ambitions. Plus ca change…
Of course, General Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ simply follows the scriptures when he has Imperial Rome as the hated conquerers of The Holy Lands. The masters contempt for non-Romans extends to casual beatings, the indigenous population subject to being routinely gaoled in lightless hell holes without just cause or trial (which ironically foreshadows modern events), the populace taxed into abject poverty.
However, the finished film script is peppered with lines which echo down the decades. As Messala takes up his new post he’s told: “…the people have an irrational resentment of Roman…then there’s religion, they smash the statues of our Gods…”, which mirrors a continuing western conceit that freedom and contentment can only be measured by our standards, our insistence on foisting our ideas of ‘democracy’ on people and considering it all they need to become ‘civilised’.
Moreover Messala is told that ‘there’s always some rabble rouser ready to stir up the people…You can break a man’s skull, you can arrest him, you can throw him into a dungeon. But how do you control what’s up here? How do you fight an idea?’ It’s a continuing conundrum.
Messala is the black-hearted cheerleader for the ‘Masters of the World’. He tells Judah: ‘There is rebellion in the wind; it will be crushed. It’s a Roman world if you want to live in it you have to become part of it...it was no accident that one small village on the Tiber was chosen to rule the world.’
Judah Ben-Hur: ‘Your legions..?’
Messala: ‘No, it wasn’t just our legions. Other countries have armies, fine armies, I know I’ve fought them. It was fate that chose us to civilise the world and we have. Our ships connect every corner of the earth, Roman law, Roman literature are the glory of the human race.
‘…Resistance to Rome is futile it can only end one way. Extinction for your people.’
Later comes the pivotal exchange. Messala is begging his childhood friend, The Prince of Hur, to act as his informer. ‘The Emperor is watching us, at this moment he is watching the east. The Emperor is watching us - all we need to do is serve him.’
Judah: ‘You talk of him as if he were a God…’
Messala: ‘He is a God! Real power on earth! …There is only one reality in the world today…Look to the West, Judah! Don’t be a fool, look to Rome!
Judah: I would rather be a fool than a traitor… or a killer!
Messala: I am a soldier!
Judah: Yes! Who kills! For Rome! Rome is evil!
Messala: I warn you…
Judah: No! I warn YOU! Rome is an affront to God! Rome is strangling my people and my country, the whole Earth! But not forever. I tell you the day Rome falls there will be a shout of freedom such as the world has never heard before!
That last exchange of dialogue in particular is breath-taking. It’s a climactic moment in the film, it seals the fate of Judah Ben-Hur, but, speculatively perhaps, it’s also further evidence, nearly half a century ago, of the frustration of the anti-imperialist scourge that is Gore Vidal, a man that only recently wrote that Americans were ‘now governed by a junta of Oil–Pentagon men… both Bushes, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and so on.’
At the end of course, Judah embraces the teachings of the Nazarian and eschews violence as a means of ridding his people of their hated conquerors. A happy conclusion then, and proof positive, surely, of the good that lies within all people; it’s a fair bet the perceptive Vidal didn’t write that…
*George Lucas paid another of his filmic ’homages’ (aka ’see a good idea, steal it’) in The Phantom Menace with his ‘pod race’ sequence, John Williams doing his professional damnedest to imitate Miklós Rózsa’s magnificent score for that scene. If anyone had any doubt that pixels could replace the adrenalin rush provided by real action performed by real daredevil flesh and blood stuntmen, look no further.