George Cukor's "The Philadelphia Story" — Aiming for the Wrong Target

The rather wonderful artist Alison Jackson makes fake photographs and films of famous people for satirical effect, using a cast of lookalikes.  One film ‘showed’ ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie in a field with the Queen, being harassed by royal hunting dogs.  On the one hand it was mocking the urbane Blairs but as ever with Jackson the real target was the royal family.  The Queen seemed to enjoy the Blairs’ discomfort and made no effort to call off the dogs or to accommodate her guests’ lack of familiarity with country ways. 

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There is a similar scene in The Philadelphia Story when hapless fiancé George Kittredge (John Howard) struggles to mount his horse in front of his intended, Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn).  Kittredge has recently acquired wealth and influence through trade, while Lord is a natural born Philadelphia socialite.  In this case though all the mockery is focused on stupid, vulgar Kittredge.  There’s never any serious doubt that Lord will end up reunited with her ex-husband C. K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant), an equally privileged Philadelphia man about town whose connections are extensive as his names.

Along the way she is tempted by everyman tabloid photographer Macaulay Connor (James Stewart) who falls for her despite his distrust of Lord’s lavish lifestyle.

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Thanks to the attentions of her three suitors and various pieces of unsolicited advice (“You'll never be a first class human being or a first class woman until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty,” and “You've got all the arrogance of your class, haven't you?” and “Oh it's all right, Tracy. We all go haywire at times and if we don't, maybe we ought to.” and “You have everything it takes to make a lovely woman except the one essential: an understanding heart. And without that you might just as well be made of bronze.”), Lord discovers some truths about herself.  There’s nothing like a 1940s film to teach women something about themselves.




Cary Grant plays a similar role to his part in His Girl Friday, also released in 1940, as the charming but flawed ex-husband determined to win back his wife from a new husband.  Grant, Hepburn and Stewart all turn in spirited performances and it’s good to see someone sticking up for old American Money.  Those poor devils need all the help they can get.

Personal Score: 4/10

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This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

Norman Jewison's "In the Heat of the Night" — Fowl Owl on the Prowl

The IMDB Top 250 is a funny old thing and if you took it too seriously it would drive you mad. When I first wrote down the list, The Shawshank Redemption was Number 1 and In the Heat of the Night was near the bottom. Today, Heat has dropped off the list but Shawshank is still Number 1.

In many ways they are similar films. Both show a well educated man exposed to the brutalities of a system not designed for someone of his background. Both show the man's talents being recognized and appreciated by the local authority figure. Both show a talented and principled man stubbornly holding out against the odds.

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But for me, "Heat" is by far the more successful film. It lacks the gloss of Shawshank but replaces it with virtuoso colours. And what's the more resonant subject: the plight of a white collar worker thrown to prison thugs or the plight of a northern educated black in America's Deep South?

So why is one at the top and one at the bottom? Who knows? It's interesting that Heat never shows Tibbs beaten up, unlike Dufresne in Shawshank. Jewison refuses to present Tibbs as a victim. I suspect it is the sentimental portrayal of a man superhumanly working through repeated beatings that makes people vote for Shawshank all the time.

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"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

The music is wonderful, from the title song to the nocturnal "Fowl Owl on the Prowl". And the cinematography is out of this world. The saturated red of a police light on a car seat at night. The perfect lighting of Poitier's skin. The stunning cotton field scenes. And so much more. Every scene is exquisitely composed.

I love the acting from the policemen – they play the stupid
lethargy of heavyset middle-aged men in the heat to perfection.

And the racial points are all the more effective for following the comic buffoonery of the casual prejudice of the policemen. The famous line "They call me MISTER Tibbs" and that slap in the orchid greenhouse on top of the hill both hit the ball out of the park.




There are some fun homoerotic undertones. Immaculately dressed throughout in the heat, Tibbs has risked a visit to the dangerous South to visit his mother. When confronted by thugs waving metal chains and stakes, Tibbs coolly picks up a much longer metal bar. Later he nonchalantly poses with another big phallic wooden stake. There's the bizarre improvised scene between Tibbs and police chief Gillespie in Gillespie's house, where single middle-aged Gillespie confesses that Tibbs is the first visitor, male or female, to his home. Then there is the 'It would give me a world of satisfaction to horsewhip you, Virgil' line and the awkward farewell scene at the train.

But it is at a non-sexual level that Gillespie warms to Tibbs through the film and it becomes clear that Gillespie is as much an outsider in the town as Tibbs. One of his staff says of him that he never smiles. He's cooped up in his office all day. At night he drinks and suffers from insomnia. The night is almost as long and hot for Gillespie as it is for a black fearing the arrival of a lynch mob.

I won't give it top marks since some of the plot twists aren't played to perfection. Too often we know the latest twist is false immediately because Tibbs demolishes it at once. The tension falls as a result – overall, the crime plot is compromised by bringing the racial and character themes
to the front.

But it's a treat, a favourite from the IMDB 250 list, even if it's not on it anymore.

Personal Score: 9/10

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This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

Franklin J. Schaffner’s “Planet of the Apes” – Pedestrian Simian

I confess I was looking forward to seeing this again.  As a species, we’ve been setting ourselves up for a fall with our endless feudin’, reality shows and bum selfies.  What’s not to love about a bunch of mega-evolved apes coming along to kick our worthless hairless asses? 

The first half an hour of Franklin J. Schaffner's 'Planet of the Apes' is great. With its discordant score, crazy camera angles, sparky characters and stark desert scenes it seems to be setting itself up for a classic.

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Then the apes appear and things go downhill. The initial scenes of the armed apes on horseback are effective enough but the film slows right down into a pedestrian satire of human warfare and religious fundamentalism.

Before we know it, three of the four original cast that we've been getting to know are either dead or brain dead.

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"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

When they arrive on the planet the crew ask 'Which direction?' Carlton Heston's character points to the right. 'That way.' 'Any particular reason?' 'None at all.' Perhaps if he'd set off to the left they'd have walked into the brilliant film that the start promised.

That said, if you ever find yourself unable to speak through injury and subjected to a period of imprisonment and torture by overbearing talking apes, you could do worse than to end your muteness with Heston's line, 'Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!'

There are a few other nice lines but you’ve probably heard them all a thousand times.  Bottom line is that after a decent start the apes look the part but they're just too lame.

Personal Score: 4/10

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This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" — Monster Laughs

There are three Frankenstein films in the IMDB 250 list: James Whale’s Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, and… Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, released in black and white in 1974 and played one hundred per cent for laughs.  In the 1930s, James Whale identified the lack of a hunchbacked assistant as a problem with Mary Shelley’s original gothic masterpiece. In the 1970s, Mel Brooks unearthed yet another mistake of Shelley’s: she’d neglected to add an bimbo lab assistant, played in Young Frankenstein by Teri Garr.  No wonder there are so few women authors in the Western canon when they make elementary errors like that. 

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Thankfully, we don’t often see women embracing an unreconstructed bimbo role in public these days.  In the UK we have a couple of post-modern aware puppets: Denise Van Outen, who proudly described herself as a dolly-bird on her breakfast TV show, and Rachel Riley, hostess with the mostest on the long running Channel 4 show, ‘Countdown,’ performing a role that would be more efficiently done by a computer.  But you really have to go back to the early seventies to see how it should be done, and Teri Garr plays the role to perfection.  Tottering around in her heels and tight dresses, she screws up her face in bafflement to demonstrate that not only is she a blonde, she is a dumb blonde.  Van Outen and Riley are amateurs in comparison.  Perhaps to demonstrate that she is putting on an act, Garr adopts a comedy German accent throughout the film.  Garr and the rest of the cast are clearly loving every minute of the shoot and they all play up their roles into extreme hamminess.

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"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

The original novel begs to be parodied, and that was before all the early black and white films came along.  There’s something about Shelley’s Frankenstein that is like a child aiming to shock its parents with its perversity.  ‘Look at what a naughty girl I can be,’ she seems to be saying to saucy Lord Byron and her husband.  Brooks has simply taken things an extra step by squeezing out every drop of madness and laughs from the story.

Most of the jokes are extremely silly.  The best ones are the direct riffs on classic scenes, such as the monster’s encounters with the blind man and the child.  The blind man quite naturally pours the soup repeatedly into the monster’s crotch and lights his thumb instead of his cigar.




Considering how silly the film is, a ridiculous amount of energy and money went into its production.  The sets are huge, the cinematography plays up the parody as much as the script and the acting, and they even got hold of the original Frankenstein lab kit.  I’ve got to say that I didn’t find it quite as funny as the cast seemed to, but it has its moments.

Personal Score: 5/10

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This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

Alexander Mackendrick's "Sweet Smell of Success" — Jungle Life

Imagine if Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson gave up their dreams of world domination and instead took roles as press agents, newspaper columnists and police in 1950s New York.  You’d end up with something like Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success.

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Tony Curtis as slimy press agent Sidney Falco is exactly as mean-spirited and cynical at the end of the film as he is at the beginning.  It’s probably a matter of taste whether you consider this a strength or a weakness in the film.  His lack of development feels realistic but if change is what you look for in a film, you’ll be disappointed.

The demonic dance that Falco plays with Burt Lancaster’s J.J.Hunsecker, an influential newspaper columnist, drives the film.  Hunsecker seems to have sway over the whole city, from who goes up and who goes down, to who gets or loses a job, to who gets roughed up by the police.  His calm manner contrasts with Falco’s rodent-like scurrying around as he desperately tries to climb the food chain.  Having chalk and cheese characters is an effective way to add tension to a story and these two couldn’t be more different, even in height.

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"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison

"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson

"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

Falco has a job where payment only comes for results.  His clients are prepared to hold their noses and pay him, providing he produces the goods in free publicity through the newspaper columns.  The columnists in turn rely on agents like Falco for stories.

The film lets Falco off the hook from time to time.  He goes an extra inch to save J.J.’s sister from suicide, and when he pimps out a match girl to plant a smear with a rival columnist, she reveals once he’s gone that she’d voluntarily slept with the same man a couple of years earlier. But he’s bad through and through, and the famous line, ‘I'd hate to take a bite outta you. You're a cookie full of arsenic,’ sums him up well.

When you have such scumbags together the nuances of their characters become more noticeable.  One of them shows a moment of kindness, another is forced into admitting an affair to his wife to avoid Falco’s attempted blackmail, then they’re back in the gutter again.

J.J. wants Falco to split his sister and her boyfriend so that he doesn’t come across as the bad man driving them apart.  Needless to say, it doesn’t work.  Everyone ends up knowing everyone else’s motives.

It will be the grimy scenes of New York – the shadowy corners, the drunks, the crowded jazz bars – that will stay with you from this film: the perfect backdrop for the comings and goings of the reptiles who live there.

Personal Score: 7/10

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This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.