A bridge too long

I mentioned several weeks ago how war historian Cornelius Ryan wrote the book on the D-Day invasion, The Longest Day, which was turned into an epic movie. Another of his books was similarly turned into an epic film 15 years later. That movie, A Bridge Too Far, aired as part of Dirk Bogarde's turn as TCM's Star of the Month since he was in the all-star cast. I got around to watching it not long before it went off my cloud DVR since YouTube TV only keeps recordings for nine months, but since I had a backlog of Bogarde films I wrote this post rather early and left it as a draft until a suitable time after the other Bogarde movies.

A narrator at the beginning of the movie, over newsreel-type footage of the late stages of World War II, informs us of the situation on the ground as it was at the end of the summer of 1944. The Allies had invaded Normandy in June, of course, and advanced reasonably far. But the Rhine was a major barrier because, if need be, the Nazis could just blow up all the bridges and set defensive positions on the other side. Anyone trying to cross the river would be a sitting duck. British general Montgomery came up with a daring plan that Eisenhower eventually agreed to, which was given the code name Operation Market Garden. The plan is to drop troops behind enemy lines in the Netherland, close to a bunch of important bridges. The troops are then supposed to capture six major bridges and hold them until traditional infantry coming from Belgium.

Dirk Bogarde was getting to the age where he would play the sort of military officer ranked high enough to be able to stay behind the front and come up with the overriding plan; he plays British Lt. General Browning who is more or less in command of the whole British part of the operation, even more difficult than the American part because the British are being dropped farther behind the enemy lines. Leading the men actually going in is Major General Urquhart (Sean Connery); they get the most distant bridge, at Arnhem.

As is always the case in war, large operations may seem brilliant on paper, but they're going to meet real life the minute the soldiers are expected to execute them, not that this is any fault of the soldiers. Especially when an operation is this big and is expected to run like clockwork, it should be obvious that there's a much bigger potential for things to go wrong. Indeed, the commander of the Polish forces, Maj. Gen. Sosabowski (Gene Hackman) raises objections to Lt. Gen. Browning when Browning briefs everybody on the operation. However, Browning say British intelligence believes the the Germans are badly enough off that the portion of the military defending the Netherlands is either too old or too young to put up a truly effective defense.

The date for the drop eventually comes, and as you might guess from the title even if you didn't know anything about the war, you'll guess correctly that problems do happen. Urquhart's radios don't work, and they have difficulty getting from the drop zone to where they're supposed to go. Since they can't radio, future supplies that are supposed to be dropped to them wind up with the Germans, leaving them in an untenable situation. Other portions of the operation have lesser problems, a lot of which were due to adverse weather, something you'd think the bigwigs could have predicted and planned for. Although the Allies weren't able to get to get that last bridge, there were enough successes that military historians have debated how much of a failure Market Garden was.

A Bridge Too Far has a bit of advantage over The Longest Day, in that there are so many points of action that a longer movie isn't quite to the detriment the way it is in The Longest Day. Having said that, however, I have a feeling the material would have worked better as a TV miniseries, with commercial breaks at suitable points to switch between the various parts of the operation. The movie is competently made, although with the number of major stars in the past, it's also easy to see why some contemporary critics thought the movie collapsed under its own weight. It definitely feels like a slog at times.

I've only read the Reader's Digest condensed version of A Bridge Too Far (seriously), and that decades ago, so I can't honestly say just how right Cornelius Ryan got things. But I think the movie is a worthy attempt at trying to document a massive military action, even if it's by no means perfect.

Young Anthony Hopkins

It's only a couple of weeks ago that I blogged about Anthony Hopkins in The Remains of the Day, by which time he was quite famous, it being after his first Oscar win. Back in October for Halloween, TCM aired a much earlier Hopkins movie that I hadn't seen before, which sounded interesting, so I recorded it: Magic. Recently, I finally watched it off my DVR.

Hopkins plays Corky, a struggling magician working the nightclub scene in New York; his British accent is explained away by the fact that his parents emigrated to work the Borscht Belt which is how Corky wound up in America. That Catskills upbringing however does come in as a plot point later in the movie. When we first see him, Corky is nervous and despite doing his mentor Merlin's tricks and doing them well, the show flops because of Corky's nerves and lack of delivery. Merlin tells Corky that he needs a gimmick, so he goes off and gets one.

Fast forward some unspecified amount of time, and Corky is back at that same club we first saw him in, only this time his agent Ben (Burgess Meredith), who knows about Corky's new gimmick, shows up with a network representative in tow. Corky starts doing his routine, which looks a lot like the same one he was doing as the movie opened. And that show seems to be bombing just as badly as the first one. So badly, in fact, that a man starts heckling him from the back of the room.

In fact, that's the gimmick. Corky isn't getting into a double act like Martin and Lewis in The Stooge; in fact, the heckler is a ventriloquist's dummy, named Fats, and the idea that Corky can throw his voice that far is impressive in itself. But Fats serves as the distraction a magician needs for his sleight of hand. Corky also gives Fats the persona of an off-color heckler, injecting humor into the routine. Fats turns the show into a success, enough that the guy from the network wants to offer Corky a pilot.

But there's a catch. One of the clauses in the standard contract is that the person getting the pilot needs to do a physical, and Corky is flatly against that, which he says is from principle, but the way it's all presented foreshadows that there's probably something darker going on. Indeed, we've seen Corky carrying on a conversation with Fats with no one else around. Corky runs away heading back for home, except that all his family are dead and gone.

Corky really has another reason for heading back to the Catskills. When he was in school, he had a crush on lovely Peggy Ann (Ann-Margret), and is looking to see her again, stopping at the motel her parents owned. But it's Peggy who's there, having been given control of the motel when her parents left for Florida. But since the Borscht Belt is dying by this time, the business isn't going well and she lives in a loveless marriage with her husband Duke (Ed Lauter).

At this point, the movie starts getting really dark. The voice of Fats inside Corky's head doesn't go away, and when Corky rekindles his relationship with Peggy, going farther than he did in high school, it's not only Duke who has a problem with it; Corky does as well. Fats senses the danger, and things start to spiral out of control from there....

The old horror anthology trope of a ventriloquist's dummy that seems to take on a life of its own has been done a lot of times, but I don't think it's so common that it's been extended out to a full-length film. Magic does it fairly well, helped by an intelligent way of introducing the premise. That, and fairly good performances, especially from Hopkins and Meredith. Magic, for some reason, has fallen through the cracks, and isn't so well remembered today, which is a bit of a surprise considering the star power of the cast. It's definitely one that deserves better, and deserves a watch.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon

Of the movies on my DVR that are getting another airing soon, a lot of them have been stuff showing on FXM largely because that channel has a smaller set of movies to show and repeats movies in the rotation quite a bit. But one that ran on TCM a few months back and is finally getting another airing is Seance on a Wet Afternoon. That airing is Tomorrow (Dec. 28) at 5:45 PM.

Myra (Kim Stanley) is a medium living somewhere near England together with her henpecked husband Billy (Richard Attenborough). The marriage has been going sour, largely because some time back they had a stillborn son, with that putting a lot of strain on Myra in particular. You get the feeling that she's beginning to have difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction, and beginning to believe in her power to be a medium. Myra comes up with a crazy idea that will prove to everyone just how good a medium she really is.

That idea is to find a rich couple with a child, and kidnap the child. The couple will then hold the child hostage, with Myra's intention being to use her powers as a medium to find the chid and deliver the child back to the parents safely, without really taking the ransom money. Why anybody would expect this to work is beyond me, but then a good portion of the movie is questioning whether Myra is really sane. Poor Billy is the one who gets the job of actually carrying out the kidnpping.

The initial abduction seems to go successfully, followed by Myra's scheme to try to go to the house of the wealthy parents, the Claytons (Nanette Newman and Mark Eden) to tell them she's had some sort of dream involving the missing child. Of course it's a scam, and it only serves to bring the police, led by Supt. Walsh (Patrick Magee) to Myra and Billy's house. Thankfully, Billy had the good sense to hide the little girl. But it only serves to put a greater strain on Myra's sanity.

Myra then gets the even nastier idea that her dead son wants the girl they've kidnapped to be with him, which means that Myra now wants the girl dead. And, of course, it's going to be Billy's job to do the actual killing and dispose of the body, which is just a step too far for him. Now, the movie was made in the UK, but it was clear that it was going to get released in the US as well, and at the time the movie was made in 1964, the Production Code was still in effect, so there had to be some way for the plot to play out such that Myra and Billy don't get away with what they did. But how is everything going to be resolved?

Seance on a Wet Afternoon is a movie that has a very interesting premise. But a movie that's not without its flaws. That's largely because the movie plays out at a very leisuerly pace, a lot of times feeling too slow for its own good. It also doesn't help that the two protagonists are fairly unlikeable people. But the movie has a lot of pluses as well, thanks in no small part to the portrayals of the two main characters by Stanley and Attenborough. The black-and-white photography also serves to give the movie a stark look, being one of those movies that wouldn't work so well in color.

So if you haven't seen Seance on a Wet Afternoon before, definitely give it a try.

Don't look for Lionel Richie

Some time back I picked up a box set of Basil Dearden movies from Criterion's Eclipse series in no small part because it had The League of Gentlemen on it. The one movie in the set that I hadn't done a post on before is All Night Long, so not too long ago I put that one in the DVD player and watched it to do a post on here.

Richard Attenborough plays Rod Hamilton, a wealthy man who is a lover of jazz music. He's met jazzman Aurelius Rex (Paul Harris) and Rex's wife Delia (Marti Stevens) before. Now it's their first anniversary, so Rod rented out a warehouse in an industrial party to have an all night party/jazz session for the couple and many of their jazz-playing friends. It's something they can't do in the polite and posh part of London where Rod lives, because of the noise complaints it would engender. But it also shows just how rich Rod is, being able to rent such a warehouse and furnish it like this.

Among the guests are Rex's manager, Cass (Keith Michell), who has a bit of a drug problem, although amazingly enough the drug of choice isn't heroin; some famous real-life jazz musicians (more on that later); and drummer Johnny Cousin (Patrick McGoohan) and his wife Emily (Betsy Blair).

Johnny has been hoping to step out on his own and start a combo. But there are a lot of combos out there, and he'd need something more than just a competent drummer, as promoter Berger tells him. But he's got a plan for that too: Delia is a singer. Or was, as she decided to retire when she got married to Rex. Johnny has been working on convincing Delia to come out of retirement, starting by her surprising Rex with a new arrangement of a song at the party.

Rex doesn't know anything about this, however, and he's not going to be particularly pleased when he starts finding out. If that weren't bad enough, Johnny has a particularly nasty way of getting Rex to find out. Johnny's plan it to make it seem as though Delia is being unfaithful with him, instead spending time with Cass. It is, of course, untrue, but it certainly gets Rex's temper up.

Supposedly, All Night Long is a retelling of Shakespeare's Othello, a play that I haven't actually seen first-hand, but only in adaptations like this or Ronald Colman's A Double Life. So I can't really say just how faithfully this follows Shakespeare. But I can say that the acting performances are quite good.

Equally good are the jazz performances. Fans of vintage jazz will probably highly enjoy seeing people like Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus, and some names I didn't recognize but jazz fans probably would such as John Dankworth. They not only do some very rudimentary acting, but also play various jazz pieces, which are by themselves worth the price of admission.

If there were one flaw, it was how Johnny was able to record everybody to make a fake conversation to try to convince Rex of his wife's unfaithfulness. If Rod had rented and furnished the place, why would the reel-to-reel recorder be there, and how would Johnny have gotten access to any tapes? It's not as if this were a real house where a musician might have had such a recorder.

But that's a minor plot hole. In any case, I'm thrilled that I bought this box set and got to watch (or in some cases re-watch) all four films in it.

A three-hour tour

I've had The Sand Pebbles on my DVR for quite some time, but I've been a bit reluctant to sit down and watch three-hour movies. Recently, I finally made the time to sit down and watch it to do a review on here.

Steve McQueen plays Jake Holman, a Petty officer in the US Navy in 1926. It's a time when there's no real war going on, but there's still enough adventure abroad for people who want it, and Holman didn't have much choice, having been given the choice of the military or reform school when he was about 18. Being from an interior part of the States, he picked the Navy, and has now wound up being transferred to a ship called the USS San Pablo, whose job it is to assist with the defense of American citizens in China, which is in tumultuous days.

This is still five or so years before the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, but there's still the sort of civil war and warlords things going on that were a staple of 1930s movies that tried to be exotic, like Shanghai Express or The Bitter Tea of General Yen, with the big difference here being that it's a movie about the Navy and not the Marines or even really about the locals. Anyhow, among the Americans are an older missionary, Jameson (Larry Gates), as well as a young woman about to do the missionary thing herself, Shirley Eckert (Candice Bergen). Holman meets both of them just before boarding the San Pablo, and they're going to go up river to where their mission is.

On the San Pablo, the captain, Lt. Collins (Richard Crenna), has a bit of a hard time of it because there's not much of a navy out on the Yangtze River and there are a lot of Chinese to deal with. Indeed, there's a sort of symbiotic, if definitely not by-the-book relationship between the men on the ship and some of the Chinese in that they do a bunch of the jobs that would normally be done by the crew, with this being easier for the crew but also probably making it less likely that the Nationalist army would attack them. Holman sees all this and is horrified by it since it's probably the sort of thing that would lead the San Pablo to become the rickety boat that it is.

One of the few people on the San Pablo who becomes a friend of Holman's is Frenchy (Richard Attenborough). He's met a Chinese prostitute, Maily, and has fallen in love with her. But she's in debt to her pimp, and when Frenchy tries to pay off those debts, he finds there's a civilian westerner who wants Maily too.

Along the way, the San Pablo gets involved in multiple skirmishes with the Chinese, who at one point besiege the boat during the winter season, before a climax of having to go to that mission and save Jameson and Eckert, who don't really want to be saved despite what the Nationalists are going to do to them.

As I said at the top, The Sand Pebbles runs just about three hours, and boy does that show. It's a well-acted movie, and in terms of the technical production it's the sort of high-quality movie that you can see why it got so many Oscar nominations, but at the same time, why id din't win any of those. It's extremely leisurely, and there's really not a whole lot going on as it feels as much episodic as it does a fully-plotted movie.

Still, there are definitely going to be people who like The Sand Pebbles for its performances, so it's definitely worth a watch, if you're willing to sit down and watch a three-hour movie.