The Chalk Garden

Some months back, TCM ran a night of movies directed by British director Ronald Neame. This gave me the chance to record a couple of movies I hadn't seen before, such as The Chalk Garden.

Deborah Kerr is the star here, playing a woman named Madrigal. As the movie opens, shows up at one of those big old houses that looks like it's on the coast of Devon or Cornwall. The house is owned by the elderly Mrs. St. Maugham (Edith Evans), and she's put a help wanted ad in the papers looking for a governess for her adolescent granddaughter Laurel (Hayley Mills). Laurel, it seems, is quite the handful and has driven off several prior governesses in prior succession. Indeed, Miss Madrigal isn't the only prospect showing up on this day; as the servant Maitland (Hayley Mills' real-life father John Mills, although Maitland is not Laurel's father in this movie) talks about Laurel, the other prospect isn't so sure she wants the job. But Madrigal is badly in need of a job, even though she's never been a governess before and has no references. But she has firm opinions on how to deal with Laurel and even speaks candidly about the state of the garden and how it's a metaphor for Laurel's upbringing, so Mrs. St. Maugham gives Madrigal the job.

Laurel sets out trying to destroy Madrigal the same way she has all the previous governesses; never mind her other misbehaviors like being a firebug. She's also a chronic liar, saying that her father killed himself and that Mom abandoned her and basically drove Dad to kill himelf. She also claims that Maitland killed his wife and child. As for Laurel's mom, she's gotten remarried and is at the point where she could legally file for custody of Laurel since she is, after all, the kid's biological mother. Mrs. St. Maugham doesn't seem to want that to happen, while Madrigal is more non-committal, even though Laurel is still clearly trying to snoop around into Madrigal's past.

With a custody battle looming, St. Maugham brings in a judge friend of hers, McWhirrey (Felix Aylmer), for advice. McWhirrey may recognize Madrigal; in any case it seems clear that Madrigal recognizes the judge and is thoroughly disconcerted by that. Laurel picks up on this, and because the judge is talking about a murder case involving a female defendant who would have been the right age for that defendant to have been Madrigal herself, gets the idea that Madrigal's past involves murder. And she may just be right. But what good will it do her if she is right and exposes the fact that Madrigal's past is as a murderess?

The Chalk Garden feels like it was based on a stage play, which is because it actually was, one by Enid Bagnold, a name you may recognize from having written National Velvet. Neame and the screenwriters try to open up the action both with scenes in the garden and with an excursion into town. They're not particularly successful in hiding the legacy of a stage play, but that doesn't mean the movie is bad. It has uniformly fine performances, although Hayley Mills' character is so darn nasty that she's tough to like. That can make the movie a bit hard to take at some points.

The Chalk Garden is definitely a movie worth watching thanks to those fine performances.

Teacher O'Zhivago

Robert Mitchum was TCM's Star of the Month in January, and one of his movies that I recorded not having seen it before was Ryan's Daughter. It's on TCM again during 31 Days of Oscar since it got multiple nominations. That airing comes up overnight tonight at 1:45 AM (or early tomorrow depending upon your perspective and time zone), so I made a point to watch in order to to a review in conjunction with the upcoming showing.

The movie starts off with a woman walking along a beach somewhere in the west of Ireland. That woman, Rosy Ryan (Sarah Miles), is the daughter of the local publican, Tom Ryan (Leo McKern). At the pub, we learn that it's around 1917, which would be the later stages of World War I, but before American involvement really turned the tide of war. Also, 1917 was just after the Eastern Uprising in Ireland. Ireland was still a part of the United Kingdom at the time, but a lot of people on the island wanted independence from Britain, while UK soldiers are also stationed on the island.

Returning from a visit to London is the local teacher, Charles Shaughnessy (Robert Mitchum). The first thing he does is go to the cemetery to visit the grave of his dearly departed wife. It's been a couple of years since Charles became a widower and it might be time for him to start thinking about finding another wife. Meanwhile, Rosy wants any sort of romance, just so she can get the heck out of this dead-end of a village, and when she meets Charles, she allows herself to be swept off her feet, even though for him, it's more a matter of practicality. When Rosy discovers that marriage isn't all it's cracked up to be, it leaves her rather disillusioned.

There's still another main character who has yet to be introduced: Major Doryan (Christopher Jones). He's obviously in the British Army, and served with quite some distinction on the front over in France. However, his service resulted in several injuries. One is a leg injury that's left him with a limp. More seriously, however, is a case of shell shock, which is part of why he's being sent to a backwater like this. However, he's a soldier in a uniform, and that's enough for Rosy. As you can guess, the two begin an affair.

But Doryan is English and Rosy is Irish. And this village is one of those places where the locals largely support independence from Britain, so they've been working to try to make life difficult for the British troops stationed there. At the same time, support isn't unanimous as they've got an informant in their midst. So when they try to run munitions, the British are going to find out, which is going to lead to disastrous consequences.

And then Charles is going to figure out that Rosy has been having an affair with Doryan. That also is going to have terrible consequences. Not only is Charles going to be unhappy, but the locals come to the logical conclusion that perhaps Rosy was the one informing on them to Doryan. After all, she was sleeping with the guy.

Ryan's Daughter was panned by critics at the time of its release, and it's not hard to see why. The movie runs 200 minutes, and its an incredibly slow 200 minutes at that. It's more of an intimate story than an epic, which doesn't have to be a bad thing. But here, the movie kept reminding me of Doctor Zhivago, a movie of which I'm not a fan to say the least. Part of that is the direction by David Lean, and part is the overbearing score by Maurice Jarre, who collaborated on Doctor Zhivago. While Lean made some great movies, his direction here is plodding.

As I said, Ryan's Daughter got multiple Oscar nominations, and won two. One was for the cinematography, which is the high point of the movie, and certainly Oscar-worthy, although I haven't seen all of the nominated movies to compare. The other one was for John Mills as Best Supporting Actor. He plays a character who's half Barry Fitzgerald from The Quiet Man -- the Quirky Villager who helps move the plot along at a few key times. The other half, however, is Nick Cravat, a Mills' character is for no explicable reason a mute. Either way, the character is obnoxious.

So as you can tell, I didn't particularly care for Ryan's Daughter. But as always, judge for yourself.

The "Human" Factor

George Kennedy is interesting in pretty much everything I've seen him in, and he had a pretty long career. Recently, while looking through what's available on Tubi, I came across a movie of his that I'd never heard of: The "Human" Factor. The plot also sounded interesting, so I sat down to watch it in order that I'd be able to do a review on it.

Unfortunately, the print that Tubi has is in 4:3 and looks like it was done on videotape and could be a TV movie, although every bit of information I found suggests it's in fact a theatrical movie. It starts off showing John Kinsdale (that's George Kennedy) looking like a typical American family man, which in many ways he is, except that he's an expat, working for NATO in their Southern Europe headquarters in Italy as a computer expert, together with British electronics expert Mike McAllister (John Mills). One night, Kinsdale returns home to what is supposed to be his son's birthday party, only to find out that a bunch of police cars are surrounding the front entrance, willing to keep even him out since they don't realize yet he's the patriarch of the family. He finds that his family has been killed execution-style, in a way completely new to the Italian authorities by police inspector Lupo (Raf Vallone).

Lupo gives Kinsdale a bit of information that perhaps he shouldn't, as it's evidence in the ongoing investigation into the murders. Even though Kinsdale has an ironclad alibi and wants the killers caught, giving out such information probably isn't a good idea. In Kinsdale's case, however, it kindles in him an idea to start his own investigation to try to avenge the murders of his wife and kids. So he steals some credentials Lupo has courtesy of the US Embassy. Being a computer expert and working for NATO, he uses his knowledge of accessing government databases to get into them and figure out who the murderer might be.

A second murder committed in the same way against another American family takes place, and Kinsdale is able to meet with a bigwig in the US embassy, George Edmonds (Barry Sullivan). Edmonds, not having been told by Kinsdale that this is the husband of the first family that got killed, reveals what is more or less classified information, that some sort of terrorist cell has contacted American authorities with blackmail demands, that they'll kill another American family every few days unless certain demands are met. This gives Kinsdale an even more urgent desire to figure out who carried out the killings and stop future killings from happening.

But Kinsdale isn't an expert in this sort of investigation, and whatever vigilante actions he's taking may only screw up the investigation being carried out by the Italian police in cooperation with the legitimate American authorities. It all leads to a climax at one of the US bases in the area....

As I said, The "Human" Factor looks, and in many times feels, like a TV movie of the week. Not that it's bad; there are quite a few TV movies from that era that were pretty darn good. The computer technology depicted here is primitive, but in some ways it only serves to add to the charm of the movie. George Kennedy does well as the man with a burning desire for revenge, while Mills, along with Rita Tushingham as the third member of their crew, provide level-headed moral support. The views of the Naples area as it was in 1975 are also worth catching.

The "Human" Factor isn't the world's greatest movie by any stretch of the imagination. But if you haven't seen it before, and just want to be entertained, it will certainly do.

Glorious tunes

I mentioned the other day that I watched several movies recently that all happen to be on DVD courtesy of Criterion. Another of those is Tunes of Glory, so today you get the full-length review of it.

In a brief introductory scene, Morag Sinclair (Susannah York, who gets an "introducing" credit here) goes to a Scottish regimental military base sometime not long after the end of World War II, where her father Jock (Alec Guinness) is the commander. However, she's not going there to meet him, but Piper Ian Fraser (John Fraser), who is her boyfriend, although Dad doesn't know that.

As for Dad, he's currently the commander, but that's not the case for long. He's about to be replaced by Lt. Col. Barrow (John Mills), who comes from a long line of commanders and is expected to show up tomorrow for the change-of-command ceremony. With that in mind, Maj. Sinclair is holding a get-together for all of his men, who mostly love him; it's the sort of shindig filled with food and, more importantly, whisky.

But Lt. Col. Barrow shows up that night. Not that he's going to take over the command now, but his actions make it very clear that he's going to be a different sort of commander than Maj. Sinclair was. Now, some of it is probably might be necessary; you never know when you'll need military discipline, and having the officers being too chummy with the men can be a problem too.

But Barrow turns out to be much worse. Not only is tea time at a very specific time -- not five minutes early if there's nothing else to be done -- but Barrow complains that the men dance uncouthly. Things like that, and a million other little things. So for the most part, the men are naturally predisposed not to like Barrow, while Sinclair in particular feels like he's lost a part of what has made him who he is.

That dance drilling was in service of a cocktail party with the civilians. After that party, Sinclair decides to take some of his men to a pub. But also there, in another room, is Morag, who is again secretly meeting with Fraser. Dad finally finds out about the relationship, and for no good reason (I'm assuming Morag is 18, but I don't think her age is mentioned). Dad responds by punching Fraser, which would be bad enough among civilians -- but both men are in their uniforms, which makes it something worthy of court-martial. This brings about a change of fate for both Sinclair and Barrow.

Tunes of Glory is a movie that generally gets very high reviews, at least from all the reviews I've seen. Although there is a reasonably deep story here, the film is still more of a character study of both Maj. Sinclair and Lt. Col. Barrow. With that in mind, I have to admit that I had some problems with the movie. It's a bit slow, but the bigger problem is that once Barrow starts putting out the feelers for a court-martial, both he, and even more so Sinclair, start having a substantial change in personality. In Sinclair's case, it comes across as cartoonish and unrealistic.

I suppose, however, that Guinness and Mills were both only dealing with what the script gave them. In that regard, both of them give quite fine performances, which is nothing less than you should expect from them. Tunes of Glory isn't going to be a movie for everybody, but I think it's one that definitely deserves a viewing.

Bombsight Stolen

Another of those old British movies that I bought of Amazon from one of the gray-market distributors is Cottage to Let. It was apparently released in the US back in the day under the title Bomsight Stolen, but the DVD calls it by its original British title.

Young George Cole plays Ronald, one of a group of British youths that has been sent north from London because it's about 1940 and the Germans are busy bombing London. Children were brought north, or even to Canada, to escape the bombing, and this group is going to be billeted in a small Scottish town. Mrs. Barrington (Jeanne De Casalis) signed up to put two of them in an outbuilding of their large home, but it turns out that Mrs. Barrington is a bit flighty. She's already offered use of the cottage as an infirmary for a Spitfire pilot, Flt. Lt. Perry (John Mills) who has crash-landed and is recovering, while it also had a "cottage to let" sign (hence the British title of the movie), with Charles Dimble (Alastair Sim) having shown up insistent that he has a contract to take the cottage for the summer. It's going to be an interesting time at the Barrington house.

Which brings us to the other title of the movie. John Barrington (Leslie Banks) is an inventor who has been holing himself up at this place here in Scotland because he's a bit of an eccentric who doesn't want to deal with the government authorities if he can avoid it. That, and it turns out that the Nazis have already stolen a previous of his inventions that he came up with as part of the war effort. He thinks that being more secluded makes it more likely that he won't be found out, while military intelligence thinks that it would be better for him to come down to London and work there. If need be, they'll send somebody up to keep an eye on Barrington.

As you can probably guess, that somebody is going to be necessary because there's already almost certainly a Nazi plant on the estate trying to get those valuable military secrets. Pretty much anybody there could be working for either side. We do find out about two-thirds of the way through the movie just who is working for the Nazis and who is working to stop the Nazis, leading to a reasonably exciting climax.

Cottage to Let is one of those little movies that I found quite entertaining. Well, I should say that I'll probably find it really entertaining if I get around to watching it a second time. I wasn't paying quite as much attention as I should have been during the first half of the movie, with the result that I found it a bit hard to keep track of all the twists and turns. Part of that, however, is deliberate on that part of the writers.

Alastair Sim is quite good as always, with the surprise being newcomer Cole. Cole was actually a sort of foster son to Sim, which might explain how he got the role. (Sim was also training him in acting.) At any rate, it led to a 60-year career in movies and TV for Cole. Mills has a smaller role but does well, as do the rest of the cast.

If you'd like to see a British movie that may well be new to you, I can strongly recommend Cottage to Let.