Category Archives: Film, TV, and Theatre

Laurel & Hardy in Thicker Than Water (1935)

Stan Lau­rel and Oliv­er Hardy were arguably the most suc­cess­ful com­e­dy team of all time, thriv­ing dur­ing the ear­ly Clas­si­cal Hol­ly­wood era of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma from the late 1920s to the mid-1940s. Known and loved through­out the world under a large vari­ety of names (among them Dick und Doof
in Ger­many, Flip i Flap in Poland, and Cric e Croc in Italy), to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world they were of course Lau­rel and Hardy: Stan the love­able sim­ple­ton and Olly the ambi­tious but pompous butt of many a “fine mess”.

The duo, like W C Fields and the Marx Broth­ers, had deep roots in stage and music
hall before mak­ing the suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion from stage to screen. Stan Lau­rel began his career, when he was plain Arthur Jef­fer­son, as Char­lie Chaplin’s under­study when they were both sta­ble­mates of “Fred Karno’s army”, Karno being an influ­en­tial the­atre impre­sario and pio­neer of slap­stick com­e­dy. Oliv­er Hardy, mean­while, was cut­ting his teeth per­form­ing vaude­ville and work­ing for the Lubin motion pic­ture pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, appear­ing in scores of one-reel­er movies, most­ly play­ing the “heavy”. Their paths began to cross when both worked for Hal Roach Stu­dios in the ear­ly 1920s, but it was in 1927 that the two shared screen time togeth­er in the silent com­e­dy films, Slip­ping Wives, Duck Soup, and With Love and Hiss­es. The pos­i­tive audi­ence reac­tions to the pair­ing was not­ed, and a com­e­dy duo was born, and then cement­ed as they trans­ferred so per­fect­ly to the advent of the talkies.

Their com­e­dy tim­ing was impec­ca­ble, their phys­i­cal com­e­dy honed to per­fec­tion. With a pair of unmis­take­able, born-for-com­e­dy faces and phys­i­cal mor­phol­o­gy, just look­ing at a pic­ture of them is enough to bring a smile to the face. Whilst so much ear­ly com­e­dy has become dat­ed, the com­e­dy of Lau­rel and Hardy remains time­less, a whole eighty-odd years lat­er. Tes­ta­ment to their endur­ing charm is the large group of mod­ern-day Lau­rel and Hardy fans known as the “Sons of the Desert” (tak­en from their 1933 film of the same name) with chap­ters all over the world. A few years ago I took the fam­i­ly to a screen show­ing of some Lau­rel & Hardy reels at Birstall, and was both amused and reas­sured to see some of the chaps in the audi­ence sport­ing the trade­mark Sons of the Desert fez! I was equal­ly delight­ed to see my young daugh­ters lap­ping up the phys­i­cal com­e­dy and gig­gling at these gags from a dis­tant age.

Here, I have cho­sen a nice clip of the two get­ting into typ­i­cal­ly amus­ing both­er, with Olly, as usu­al, pay­ing for his impe­ri­ous and blus­ter­ing treat­ment of Stan, by com­ing off con­sid­er­ably the worst. It’s from the 1935 film, Thick­er Than Water.

 

Lau­rel & Hardy

Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party (1977)

In 1977, British direc­tor, Mike Leigh worked with a small group of actors to devel­op an idea he had for a play, a com­e­dy of man­ners, in the form of a sub­ur­ban sit­u­a­tion com­e­dy satiris­ing the aspir­ing mid­dle class emerg­ing in 1970s Britain. The play was called Abigail’s Par­ty and opened at Hamp­stead The­atre in April; lat­er that year, in Novem­ber, a record­ing was made for the BBC’s Play for Today.

Bev­er­ly and Lau­rence (Ali­son Stead­man and Tim Stern) are hold­ing a drinks par­ty for their new neigh­bours Angela and Tony (Janine Duvit­s­ki and John Salt­house), along with anoth­er neigh­bour, Sue (Har­ri­et Reynolds), whose teenage daugh­ter Abi­gail (whom we nev­er see) is hold­ing a par­ty next door. Leigh got his actors to build their char­ac­ters through repeat­ed impro­vi­sa­tions and the cast large­ly con­struct­ed their own char­ac­ters’ back sto­ries them­selves. The result is a rich tapes­try of char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion.

Ali­son Steadman’s aspi­ra­tional Bev­er­ly is the star of the show. She slinks like a cat around her kitsch liv­ing room, cig­a­rette and drink in hand, and you just know she’s feel­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed and oh-so-mod­ern. She’s got the lat­est gad­gets in her kitchen but doesn’t know how to use them. She has the rug, the drinks cab­i­net and built-in record play­er, the cig­a­rette case on the cof­fee table, along with a host of oth­er pretensions…in her mind, she has clear­ly “arrived”, though her Estu­ary Eng­lish points per­haps to a dif­fer­ent back­ground: a for­mer life as a depart­ment store cos­met­ics demon­stra­tor. She dom­i­nates her hus­band who, though he has clear­ly made her lifestyle pos­si­ble by work­ing long hours as an estate agent, is con­stant­ly hen-pecked and under­mined by Bev­er­ly, to the extent that he becomes increas­ing­ly neu­rot­ic as the play pro­gress­es. The cracks in the sub­ur­ban facade are evi­dent.

The plays is at turns amus­ing and excru­ci­at­ing, espe­cial­ly to those of us old enough to have had some real-life insight into sev­en­ties sub­ur­bia. Watch this glo­ri­ous scene as Bev­er­ly, with bare­ly-veiled irri­ta­tion at her husband’s lack of pli­an­cy, cajoles him to put con­tem­po­rary croon­er Demis Rous­sos onto the record play­er (could Mike Leigh have picked a fun­nier exam­ple of an inher­ent­ly-sev­en­ties artiste?).

So please…do you think we can have Demis Rous­sos on…?

 

The cast of Abi­gail’s Par­ty

Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Amy Archer in The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

The Hud­suck­er Proxy is a 1994 fan­tas­ti­cal com­e­dy film by Ethan and Joel Coen. Sid­ney J Muss­berg­er (Paul New­man), the new head of the huge­ly suc­cess­ful cor­po­rate mono­lith, Hud­suck­er Indus­tries, in Fifties-era New York, comes up with a bril­liant plan to make a lot of mon­ey: appoint a moron to run the com­pa­ny. When the stock falls low enough, Sid­ney and his friends can buy it for pen­nies, then take over and restore it to its for­mer for­tunes. They choose Norville Barnes (Tim Rob­bins), who has just start­ed in the mail room, but soon, tough reporter Amy Archer smells a rat and begins an under­cov­er inves­ti­ga­tion of Hud­suck­er Indus­tries.

The Coens’ sense of the aes­thet­ic is supreme, their know­ing ref­er­ences wit­ty to the extreme, and their style all their own. This movie, despite being a box office flop, is packed with deli­cious high­lights but today’s blog focus­es on the bril­liant per­for­mance by Jason Jen­nifer Leigh. Leigh plays Amy Archer, the hard­nosed reporter will­ing to do any­thing to get a good sto­ry, even going under­cov­er to gain the trust of the über-naïve Norville. In the news­room, she’s bold, sassy, and will inform any­one lis­ten­ing about her Pulitzer Prize. In a man’s envi­ron­ment, she’s the most capa­ble of the lot and, as we’ll see, she can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly talk on the phone to the chief, type a sto­ry, solve cross­word puz­zles, and fence fel­low reporter Smit­ty with smart, fifties-hip word­play.

If the con­cept of the quick-tongued, ace female reporter feels famil­iar, it should; in the great tra­di­tion of news­pa­per movies, Leigh is chan­nelling a cross between Jean Arthur in Mr Deeds Goes to Town and Katharine Hep­burn in Woman of the Year. In this scene, she has invei­gled her­self into Norville’s office and con­trives to win his trust, play­ing the vul­ner­a­ble maid­en in dis­tress and pre­tend­ing to be “a Muncie girl”. Then cut to tough Amy in the news­room, mul­ti-task­ing spec­tac­u­lar­ly and mock­ing the pat­sy, Norville. You can be sure her heart will soft­en in the end, but for now Leigh nails the stereo­type char­ac­ter with aplomb.

Jen­nifer Jason Leigh as Amy Archer

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore perform Pete and Dud at the Zoo (1966)

Monot­o­n­al cod philoso­pher Pete and def­er­en­tial side­kick Dud deliv­er an arche­typ­al dia­logue in the rep­tile house at the zoo. This is one of the so-called “Dagen­ham dia­logues”, fea­tur­ing “Pete and Dud”, pop­u­larised on the show Not Only…But Also, first aired in 1965.

Com­ing out of the heady icon­o­clas­tic suc­cess of the satir­i­cal stage revue, Beyond the Fringe, Dud­ley Moore embarked on what was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to be a solo project, Not Only Dud­ley Moore, But Also His Guests. How­ev­er, hav­ing invit­ed Peter Cook to appear with him in the pilot, the suc­cess of their dou­ble act quick­ly led to Cook join­ing the show per­ma­nent­ly.

The dia­logues between the flat-capped com­e­dy cre­ations from Dagen­ham pre­sent­ed Peter Cook with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ad-lib and cre­ative­ly explore the myr­i­ad com­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties of his char­ac­ter. His abil­i­ty to sus­tain long peri­ods of straight-faced com­ic ram­blings that often­times bring Moore to the brink of corps­ing hilar­i­ty, adds a won­der­ful com­ic ten­sion to the dia­logues. Ever alert to Moore’s strug­gle to stay in char­ac­ter, Cook enjoys ramp­ing up the com­ic sur­re­al­i­ty in order to crack Dud up.

The duo’s rela­tion­ship was always a bit edgy, but their part­ner­ship fell apart dur­ing the marathon tour of their two-man show Behind the Fridge, in the ear­ly sev­en­ties, and they nev­er worked togeth­er on a reg­u­lar basis again, save for some albums and shows fea­tur­ing the less-than-edi­fy­ing “Derek and Clive” char­ac­ters. A flawed bro­mance they may have been but it’s prefer­able to remem­ber the good times, and at times those good times were comed­ical­ly sub­lime.

Cook and Moore

Kenneth Branagh’s St Crispin’s Day Speech, Shakespeare’s Henry V (1989)

The Hun­dred Years’ War (1337–1453) was a series of wars between Eng­land and France involv­ing England’s claim to the French throne. In the cam­paign of 1415, England’s Hen­ry V sailed for France and besieged the fortress at Harfleur, cap­tur­ing it in Sep­tem­ber. The Eng­lish army then marched across the French coun­try­side towards Calais, only to be inter­cept­ed by the French army near the vil­lage of Azin­court. Henry’s troops were exhaust­ed, hun­gry, sick, demor­alised, and pitiably out­num­bered (accord­ing to some esti­mates, by some 36000 to 9000 troops).

It didn’t look good. Hen­ry need­ed to rouse his men for bat­tle like nev­er before, and he gave them a speech which not only roused them, but spurred them to a vic­to­ry that would resound through­out the ages as the famous Bat­tle of Agin­court. It was the morn­ing of Octo­ber 25th (St Crispin’s Day).

That Henry’s speech occurred is agreed by his­to­ri­ans to be a fac­tu­al event. How­ev­er, it was left to the cre­ative imag­i­na­tion of William Shake­speare, two hun­dred years lat­er, to envis­age Henry’s words and com­pose the über-gal­vanis­ing “St Crispin’s Day Speech” that has come down to us in his play, Hen­ry V.

What a speech! If any­thing could get you up and off to face the French, it’s sure­ly inspi­ra­tional words such as these:

We few, we hap­py few, we band of broth­ers;
For he today who sheds his blood with me
Shall be my broth­er…
…gen­tle­men in Eng­land now a‑bed
Shall think them­selves accurs’d they were not here
And hold their man­hoods cheap…

Lau­rence Olivi­er famous­ly deliv­ered this call to arms in the 1944 film of the play, made as a morale-boost­er for the war effort. How­ev­er, for me there is no bet­ter deliv­ery than this mes­meris­ing per­for­mance by Ken­neth Branagh in the 1989 ver­sion. Watch this, and allow your­self to be fired up, but please resist the temp­ta­tion to hit a French­man!

PS almost cer­tain­ly apoc­ryphal, but a great sto­ry nonethe­less, is the claim that, in the real life speech, Hen­ry V told his men that the French had boast­ed that they would cut off two fin­gers from the right hand of every archer, so that he could nev­er draw a long­bow again. After the bat­tle, Eng­lish archers were show­ing French cap­tives those fin­gers as if say­ing “See – my fin­gers are still here”. This is now known as the “V” for vic­to­ry ges­ture!

Ken­neth Branagh, Hen­ry V

W H Auden’s Night Mail (1936)

In the 1930s, a group of British film­mak­ers, led by John Gri­er­son, under the aegis of the GPO Film Unit, was behind an influ­en­tial out­put of doc­u­men­tary films that became known as the British Doc­u­men­tary Film Move­ment. Of the films it pro­duced, the best known and most crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed was Har­ry Wat­t’s and Basil Wright’s Night Mail (1936), fea­tur­ing music by Ben­jamin Brit­ten and poet­ry by W H Auden. Auden wrote his poem espe­cial­ly for the doc­u­men­tary, which fol­lows the Lon­don, Mid­land and Scot­tish Rail­way (LMS) mail train from Lon­don to Scot­land. The poem acts as a sort of verse com­men­tary over the footage of the steam loco­mo­tive, and helped to estab­lish the doc­u­men­tary as some­thing of a clas­sic.

Auden’s lan­guage is inge­nious; glo­ri­ous use of metaphor and clever rhymes, four-beat lines rhyth­mi­cal­ly deliv­ered to mim­ic the pump­ing of the rods and pis­tons of the loco­mo­tive. You can almost hear the train chug­ging along. The per­son­i­fied train is effi­cient, reli­able, stead­fast, trust­wor­thy – there is a remit, after all, to sell the mer­its of the postal ser­vice, and Auden sat­is­fies the spec. As the pace picks up to match the accel­er­a­tion of the train, the rhymes become quick and punchy, and become inter­nal rhymes (Let­ters of thanks, let­ters from banks) rather than line-end rhymes; a rapper’s delight.

And read along here:

This is the night mail cross­ing the Bor­der,
Bring­ing the cheque and the postal order,
Let­ters for the rich, let­ters for the poor,
The shop at the cor­ner, the girl next door.
Pulling up Beat­tock, a steady climb:
The gra­di­en­t’s against her, but she’s on time.

Past cot­ton-grass and moor­land boul­der
Shov­el­ling white steam over her shoul­der,
Snort­ing nois­i­ly as she pass­es
Silent miles of wind-bent grass­es.
Birds turn their heads as she approach­es,
Stare from bush­es at her blank-faced coach­es.
Sheep-dogs can­not turn her course;
They slum­ber on with paws across.
In the farm she pass­es no one wakes,
But a jug in a bed­room gen­tly shakes.

Dawn fresh­ens, Her climb is done.
Down towards Glas­gow she descends,
Towards the steam tugs yelp­ing down a glade of cranes
Towards the fields of appa­ra­tus, the fur­naces
Set on the dark plain like gigan­tic chess­men.
All Scot­land waits for her:
In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs
Men long for news.

Let­ters of thanks, let­ters from banks,
Let­ters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipt­ed bills and invi­ta­tions
To inspect new stock or to vis­it rela­tions,
And appli­ca­tions for sit­u­a­tions,
And timid lovers’ dec­la­ra­tions,
And gos­sip, gos­sip from all the nations,
News cir­cum­stan­tial, news finan­cial,
Let­ters with hol­i­day snaps to enlarge in,
Let­ters with faces scrawled on the mar­gin,
Let­ters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Let­ters to Scot­land from the South of France,
Let­ters of con­do­lence to High­lands and Low­lands
Notes from over­seas to the Hebrides
Writ­ten on paper of every hue,
The pink, the vio­let, the white and the blue,
The chat­ty, the cat­ty, the bor­ing, the ador­ing,
The cold and offi­cial and the heart’s out­pour­ing,
Clever, stu­pid, short and long,
The typed and the print­ed and the spelt all wrong.

Thou­sands are still asleep,
Dream­ing of ter­ri­fy­ing mon­sters
Or of friend­ly tea beside the band in Cranston’s or Craw­ford’s
Asleep in work­ing Glas­gow, asleep in well-set Edin­burgh,
Asleep in gran­ite Aberdeen,
They con­tin­ue their dreams,
But shall wake soon and long for let­ters,
And none will hear the post­man’s knock
With­out a quick­en­ing of the heart,
For who can bear to feel him­self for­got­ten?

Auden and Brit­ten

Peter Sellers plays Lionel Mandrake in Dr Strangelove (1964)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s black­est-of-black com­e­dy film, Dr Strangelove, was con­ceived as a straight thriller, based on Peter George’s book about the threat of nuclear war, Red Alert. The direc­tor, how­ev­er, increas­ing­ly found him­self struck, dur­ing the writ­ing process, by a per­sis­tent comedic thread that sug­gest­ed itself and which even­tu­al­ly forced him to embrace and run with it. A good thing too…and there could have been no bet­ter way to run with this comedic ele­ment in the fledg­ling movie than to engage Peter Sell­ers’ ser­vices.

Kubrick had worked with Sell­ers on Loli­ta, and it was prob­a­bly Sell­ers’ dis­play of char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion in that movie that moti­vat­ed Colum­bia Pic­tures to insist on cast­ing him in Dr Strangelove in mul­ti­ple roles. Sell­ers plays three char­ac­ters: US Pres­i­dent, Merkin Muf­fley; wheel­chair-bound, inge­nious mad Ger­man sci­en­tist, Dr Strangelove; and – the sub­ject of this blog post – British RAF exchange offi­cer, Group Cap­tain Lionel Man­drake.

The por­tray­al of Man­drake is a bril­liant dis­play of under­stat­ed comedic act­ing. The slow­ly-dawn­ing real­i­sa­tion that his com­mand­ing offi­cer, Gen­er­al Rip­per (him­self bril­liant­ly played by Ster­ling Hay­den), has become unhinged and para­noid and has put in motion a seem­ing­ly unstop­pable series of events that will cul­mi­nate in nuclear con­fla­gra­tion; his des­per­a­tion to extract from Rip­per the “recall code” to bring back the nuclear bombers that are swift­ly on their way to Rus­sia; and his fran­tic efforts to con­tact the Pres­i­dent and to avoid nuclear apoc­a­lypse when he finds he might hold the only key to do so…Sellers’ duty-bound and stiff-upper-lipped group cap­tain is a per­for­mance of sheer genius.

There is such a pletho­ra of superbly writ­ten and deliv­ered lines that there are too many to sin­gle out. Take ten min­utes to enjoy them all – as I guar­an­tee you will – in this mon­tage of Man­drake scenes.

Peter Sell­ers in Stan­ley Kubrick­’s DR. STRANGELOVE (1964). Cred­it: Sony Pic­tures. Play­ing 5/22–5/28.

Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto, as used in Brief Encounter (1945)

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s sec­ond Piano Con­cer­to in C Minor stands on its own as a mas­ter­piece of the late Roman­tic peri­od, but what a great idea it turned out to be, to pair it with David Lean’s clas­sic love sto­ry of 1945, Brief Encounter.

It was Lean’s col­lab­o­ra­tor, pro­duc­er Noël Cow­ard, on whose one-act play the film was based, who insist­ed on the use of his favourite piece of music, despite there being a com­pos­er, Muir Math­ieson, wait­ing in the wings to write an orig­i­nal score. With all due respect to Math­ieson and how­ev­er his score might have turned out, the use of Rach­mani­noff, played by Aus­tralian pianist Eileen Joyce and the Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, raised the film’s emo­tion­al lev­el sky-high.

The film is told in flash­back, as the lead char­ac­ter of Lau­ra (Celia John­son) sits in her liv­ing room with her hus­band, star­ing into space, lis­ten­ing to the Sec­ond Con­cer­to and think­ing about her time with anoth­er man, Alec (Trevor Howard). She remem­bers the day they met, at the café in the train sta­tion. When a piece of grit gets in her eye, Alec, a doc­tor, removes it, and a bond starts between them, quick­ly devel­op­ing into love as they  embark on a series of clan­des­tine assig­na­tions.

This love sto­ry is doomed, of course, as Lau­ra is a mar­ried moth­er and we are deep in the ter­ri­to­ry of 1940s mid­dle-class man­ners. Grant­ed, the strait-jack­et­ed morals and lin­guis­tic quirks of the times leave us in no doubt that the film is a peri­od piece, but it right­ly remains a huge­ly pop­u­lar British movie.

The devel­op­ment, and inevitable demise, of the rela­tion­ship is sub­tly under­pinned by the repeat­ing strains of Rach­mani­nof­f’s music. The endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of his piece, mean­while, is demon­strat­ed by its con­sis­tent­ly top­ping the Clas­sic FM Hall of Fame, firm­ly secur­ing its sta­tus as Britain’s favourite piece of clas­si­cal music. Watch and lis­ten to a pleas­ing mon­tage of Brief Encounter to Rach­mani­nof­f’s music below:

Celia John­son and Trevor Howard