Film Reviews by CB

The narration is somewhat turgid but the subject matter is , as you would expect, really fascinating. Lots has been left out or tantalisingly simply alluded to without being exploited in depth (the work of Douglas Sirk, for example) but there is so much here to look at and think about.

The main character is a Will Hay type character. The actor even sounds a bit like Hay and uses his gestures. Go for the real thing, I would say, and avoid this poor imitation.

This film was made in the early 1970s and uses the South of France to convey atmosphere and chic but the film has a cliched plot with little interest. There are some good actors in the film who are wasted.

This film is so worthy and good natured in its comedy it merely induced apathy in me. It's hard to imagine there was ever an audience for this sort of entertainment outside the Home Counties and even there I can't imagine it would inspire much interest or joy.

These films are all cheaply made, have bad scripts and are lacking any interest since they are so bad. One of them almost makes it into the category of mildly interesting. Renown have gone to a lot of effort to digitally enhance these films but they aren't worth it.

I like the work Renown doing restoring old films from the 1930s to the 1950s but this film has the worst sound I have heard, perhaps ever, in a film. You have to listen carefully to understand most of what is said. As for the plot, the main character is a kind of inverse Paul Temple, a crime novelist working with the police at their invitation but with a very different attitude to the insufferable Temple. If you haven't seen this you haven't missed anything.

This film is based on a true story which leads to a very good film with a profound moral dilemma at its heart. The only negative is that it is too long in leading to its climatic events but otherwise this is a very worthwhile film to see and deserves to be better known. Even though it is British all the main characters are American or French (James Robertson Justice's role is pretty superfluous). This is far superior to most Second World War films, especially those made in the 1950s.

This is like an unfunny episode of Fawlty Towers in which the main character is more and more caught in the web of his deception when he would have done better to tell the truth from the start. The plot is comically bad and whilst there is a clever twist at the end it only removes one of the few plausible points of the drama. I like seeing old British films, hence 2 stars instead of 1, but this is tosh.

Disc 1, all I have seen thus far, consists of films about Elgar and Debussy. the Elgar film is more conventional and narrative based, which I preferred, and was a mine of information, most of which was completely unknown to me. The Debussy Film stars Oliver Reed and is more what one would expect from Russell. The self referential nature of the film didn't appeal to me but it is still absorbing. I hate to state the obvious but the BBC was so radical and open in those days and we didn't realise how lucky we were to see such programmes. A really great disc to watch.

This is a terribly made film literally cobbled together using a long clip from another film and bits and pieces strung together to embellish the really thin plot. The film is digitally restored but still the sound is poor, apart from the opera excerpts which are well recorded. Amazingly the original story was co-written by the great Italian director Mario Monicelli. I would like to know what he thought of this bizarre effort.

In some ways a conventional British B movie gangster film but this is better than another Greville British film 'Guilty' . This one is set only in London and has many cliched aspects to its plot about a gangster meeting his just deserts at the hands of an incorruptible British police, a fearless press, albeit with an American reporter, and justice system. Greville introduces some stylish angles and cuts to enliven the filming but there is not much else of interest to this film beyond his direction even though the screenplay is by Richard Llewellyn. Nigel Patrick's acting stands out but I found his character tiresome after a while and Derek Parr is as usual anodyne. I wonder what Greville really thought about this and all his British-made films?

Melville's last film is bewildering to understand on first viewing but this is a superbly crafted film (with the exception of one flaw). Several climatic scenes are rendered virtually dialogue less ( as was true of Le Cercle Rouge) with much emotional tension conveyed by interchanges of short glances or long stares. Several incidents in the film are preposterous but the film is so engrossing I just laughed them off. The only flaw in the film is the 20 minute long train sequence where the exteriors are so obviously made using a toy train set that it grates, even though one accepts the utter implausibility of a helicopter travelling a few metres above a train for about 20 minutes without anyone on board noticing, and for me the accumulation of the detail of Simon's activities went on too long. All the main actors are superb though the characters are largely cynically dispassionate. Un Flic is as worthy as Melville's other more celebrated gangster films like Le Doulos and Le Circle Rouge.

I watched this because Bertrand Tavernier discussed Greville in his history of French cinema. If I hadn't known he was (at one time) a famous French director I would have written this off as a standard British 1950s B movie, which in many ways it definitely is. I haven't seen any of Greville's French films but I assume they are better than this.

I agree that Ralph Richardson's direction is uninspired but I found Margaret Leighton's character really restricted in her repressed angst. I have watched several of these British 1950s films now and am not as impressed as I once was with the stiff upper lip, which is much in evidence here. The film's premise is a bit far fetched, especially the ending, but once again forces one to realise how much of a long term effect the war had on the British population, especially the bombing campaigns. R C Sheriff wrote the story, so it has some substance. If you like British films this is definitely worth watching.

A foolish plot, the usual British B movie mix of stiff upper lip alternating with melodramatic acting, dull music and poor directing. Dennis Price is the only person who redeems this film though even he succumbs to over acting at the end. I don't understand why there were so many terrible British films made in the 1950s which are still available to us today. The film is at once too short for its subject but too long to hold our interest.