A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, March 16, 2020

Whisky Galore! (Alexander Mackendrick, 1949)


Cast: Basil Radford, Catherine Lacey, Bruce Seton, Joan Greenwood, Wylie Watson, Gordon Jackson, Gabrielle Blunt, Jean Cadell, James Robertson Justice. Screenplay: Compton MacKenzie, Angus MacPhail, based on a novel by MacKenzie. Cinematography: Gerald Gibbs. Art direction: Jim Morahan. Film editing: Joseph Sterling, Charles Crichton. Music: Ernest Irving.

Alexander Mackendrick was unhappy with his first feature as a director, saying that it looked like "a home movie." But Whisky Galore! was a huge and enduring success, perhaps thanks in large part to its editors, Joseph Sterling and the uncredited Charles Crichton, who reassembled its footage and even had some additional takes shot, after initial dissatisfaction from Ealing Studios. In fact, the film helped launch Ealing as one of the major forces in what has come to be known as a kind of golden age of British film comedy, and Mackendrick went on to make two more hit comedies, The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955), in that era. Whisky Galore! is the story of the residents of an island in the Outer Hebrides who face calamity when wartime shipping blockades deprive them of a vital necessity, the water of life itself, whisky. And then a cargo ship carrying cases of the stuff hits the rocks nearby, is abandoned by its crew, and shunned by salvage authorities. Only the determined Capt. Waggett of the Home Guard stands between the townsfolk and the shipwreck. Waggett, played by Basil Radford, is a stern by-the-books man, despite the fact that no one, including his wife, takes him seriously. There's a subplot involving two sisters, played by Joan Greenwood and Gabrielle Blunt, and their suitors, played respectively by Bruce Seton and Gordon Jackson, but most of the film is about the clash between what authority Capt. Waggett can muster and the efforts of the people to get at the whisky.

The Pearls of the Crown (Sacha Guitry, 1937)

Arletty and Claude Dauphin in The Pearls of the Crown
Cast: Sacha Guitry, Jacqueline Delubac, Lyn Harding, Renée Saint-Cyr, Enrico Glori, Ermete Zacconi, Barbara Shaw, Marguerite Moreno, Arletty, Marcel Dalio, Claude Dauphin, Raimu, Jean-Louis Barrault. Screenplay: Sacha Guitry, Christian-Jaque. Cinematography: Jules Kruger. Art direction: Jean Perrier. Film editing: William Barache, Myriam Borsoutsky. Music: Jean Françaix.

Sacha Guitry's The Pearls of the Crown is a romp through French and English history that tells the story of how four pearls came to be placed on the royal crown of Great Britain -- and what happened to three other similar pearls that didn't make it. It purports (with tongue in cheek) to be a true story, and it gives Guitry a chance to play four distinct roles, including Francis I and Napoleon III. It also features cameos by some celebrated French actors, including Arletty in blackface as the queen of Abyssinia, Claude Dauphin as her pearl-hunting lover, Jean-Louis Barrault as the young Napoleon I, and Raimu as the owner of one of the three missing pearls. Guitry's wife and frequent co-star, Jacqueline Delubac, plays a key role as the wife of the chief pearl-hunter, Jean Martin (Guitry), as well as bits as Mary Stuart and Josephine de Beauharnais. It's made in three languages -- four if you count the gibberish spoken by the queen of Abyssinia and her courtiers -- but mostly in French. Engaging enough, though you may want to bone up on French and English history to get the full value.