Tunes of Glory (Ronald Neame, 1960)

Tunes of Glory (Ronald Neame, 1960)

Cast: Alec Guinness, John Mills, Dennis Price, Kay Walsh, John Fraser, Susannah York, Gordon Jackson, Duncan Macrae, Percy Herbert, Allan Cuthbertson, Paul Whitsun-Jones, Gerald Harper, Richard Leech, Peter McEnery. Screenplay: James Kennaway, based on his novel. Cinematography: Arthur Ibbetson. Production design: Wilfred Shingleton. Film editing: Anne V. Coates. Music: Malcolm Arnold.

Tunes of Glory is a kind of anti-buddy movie, meaning that its chief distinction is that it gives us a chance to see two great actors paired off, though hardly as buddies. Director Ronald Neame originally thought that Alec Guinness would play Col. Barrow, the reserved, by-the-book officer who comes as a replacement for the gregarious, happily boozy Maj. Jock Sinclair at the head of a Highland Regiment sometime just after World War II. Among other things, Barrow had been interned as a POW in a Japanese camp and still suffers from post-traumatic stress. This similarity to the character Guinness had played, and won an Oscar for, in David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), may have caused Guinness to ask for the role of Sinclair instead. I happen to think it was a mistake on his part: Although Guinness is known as a chameleonic actor, able to efface his own personality in his roles, he also carries with him our memories of other performances. Too often in Tunes of Glory, I think, we're distracted by watching an actor act, rather than being caught up in the character he's creating. I was as distracted by the image of Guinness showing through the part of Sinclair as I was by the fake red hair on his head. Mills comes off rather better as Barrow, although the film doesn't give him enough scenes to develop the character's backstory -- his suicide comes as rather too abrupt, I think. Neame noted in an interview that accompanied the film on the Criterion Channel that New Yorker writer Roger Angell once suggested that Tunes of Glory should have been a play in which Guinness and Mills switched roles on alternate nights, the way Laurence Olivier and Anthony Quinn did in a production of Becket on Broadway in 1960-61. Or maybe the point is that the too-talky, rather static Tunes of Glory would have been a better stage play than movie.

The Horse's Mouth (Ronald Neame, 1958)

Alec Guinness in The Horse's Mouth

Gulley Jimson: Alec Guinness
Dee Coker: Kay Walsh
Sara Monday: Renee Houston
Nosey: Mike Morgan
Sir William Beeder: Robert Coote
A.W. Alabaster: Arthur Macrae
Lady Beeder: Veronica Turleigh
Abel: Michael Gough
Capt. Jones: Reginald Beckwith
Hickson: Ernest Thesiger
Lollie: Gillian Vaughan

Director: Ronald Neame
Screenplay: Alec Guinness
Based on a novel by Joyce Cary
Cinematography: Arthur Ibbetson
Art direction: William C. Andrews
Film editing: Anne V. Coates
Music: Kenneth V. Jones

The artist as mad eccentric is such a tired and familiar trope that artists should complain about it. But it remains true that the only way art can find new paths for itself is by going against the grain. It just remains to be seen how much anti-establishmentarianism one can get away with. Gulley Jimson gets away with a a lot -- theft, trespassing, and malicious destruction to start with -- in The Horse's Mouth, mainly because people think he's a genius (and his art a good investment). And in spite of his grubby egocentricity, there's something lovable about him -- at least the way Alec Guinness writes and plays him. The film doesn't really have much to say about the role of the artist in society or the venality of the art business beyond the obvious points, but director Ronald Neame keeps it buoyant with the help of Guinness and company, and with the especial help of Sergei Prokofiev, whose music for the film Lieutenant Kije (Aleksandr Faintsimmer, 1934), Kenneth V. Jones borrowed to great effect. Guinness was nominated for an Oscar for his adaptation of Joyce Cary's novel, to which he added the great visual gags of Abel's block of stone crashing through the floor into the apartment below and the Beeders and Alabaster being swallowed up when they unwittingly step out onto the rug placed over the resulting hole.

Erin Brockovich (Steven Soderbergh, 2000)

Albert Finney and Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich

Erin Brockovich: Julia Roberts
Ed Masry: Albert Finney
George: Aaron Eckhart
Brenda: Conchata Ferrell
Donna Jensen: Marg Helgenberger
Pete Jensen: Michael Harney
Pamela Duncan: Cherry Jones
Charles Embry: Tracey Walter
Kurt Potter: Peter Coyote
David Foil: T.J. Thyne
Theresa Dallavale: Veanne Cox

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Screenplay: Susannah Grant
Cinematography: Edward Lachman
Production design: Philip Messina
Film editing: Anne V. Coates
Music: Thomas Newman

Any film that purports to be what the title character of Erin Brockovich calls a "David and what's-his-name" story is bound to be somewhat formulaic. But I can forgive Steven Soderbergh's movie for its clichés, such as the hunky next-door neighbor who provides Erin with sex and babysitting, or the starchy, tightly wound female lawyer who tries and fails to do the kind of work in signing up participants in the lawsuit that comes so naturally to Erin. We're asked to swallow a lot of narrative shortcutting in the relationship that she builds with Ed Masry, too. But it's to Julia Roberts's great Oscar-winning credit that she makes this fictionalized version of a real person (whom we see early in the film in the role of a waitress) as believable as she does, with the considerable help of the invaluable (but never Oscar-winning) Albert Finney. I've always thought that Soderbergh is undermined by his choice of material: Traffic, which came out the same year as Erin Brockovich and won an Oscar for Soderbergh, is weakened by the difficulty of cramming so many interlocking stories into the confines of a feature film, and it too suffers from some formulaic plotting. But Erin Brockovich makes the case for the feel-good movie with its director's obvious delight in providing a showcase for such skilled actors. This is what makes his Ocean's movies (20001, 2004, 2007) and Magic Mike (2012) so entertaining. Would a grittier approach with less charismatic stars have done a better job of telling the story of Brockovich and Masry's fight with PG&E? Yes, probably. But there's something to be said for good things in glossy packages.

Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh, 1998)

George Clooney, Ving Rhames, and Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight

Jack Foley: George Clooney
Karen Sisco: Jennifer Lopez
Buddy Bragg: Ving Rhames
Maurice Miller: Don Cheadle
Adele: Catherine Keener
Marshal Sisco: Dennis Farina
Glenn Michaels: Steve Zahn
Richard Ripley: Albert Brooks
Chino: Luis Guzmán
Kenneth: Isaiah Washington
White Boy Bob: Keith Loneker
Moselle: Viola Davis
Midge: Nancy Allen
Hejira Henry: Samuel L. Jackson
Ray Nicolette: Michael Keaton

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Screenplay: Scott Frank
Based on a novel by Elmore Leonard
Cinematography: Elliot Davis
Film editing: Anne V. Coates

When George Clooney left ER in 1999, there were some who thought it was a case of David Caruso Syndrome: a TV star whose ego had led him to think he had outgrown the medium that made him famous and was ready for movie stardom. There was evidence to support this premise: Clooney had done a disastrous turn as Batman in Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin (1997), a film that Clooney himself has disowned, and his forgettable appearances as a leading man with Michelle Pfeiffer in the romantic comedy One Fine Day (Michael Hoffman, 1996) and with Nicole Kidman in the thriller The Peacemaker (Mimi Leder, 1997) had done little to establish his credibility as a film actor. The one exception was Out of Sight, and among other things it cemented a working relationship with the director who had brought out the best in Clooney, Steven Soderbergh. The two have since worked together numerous times, with Soderbergh serving as director and/or producer, as well as mentoring Clooney's own directing and producing career. What Soderbergh found in Clooney was a kind of puckishness and vulnerability that has been further developed into broad comedy by directors like Joel and Ethan Coen in such films as O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and Hail, Caesar! (2016). But at the same time, Soderbergh helped Clooney figure out how to be a romantic leading man: His scenes with Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight have a kind of heat that Clooney never generated even with Pfeiffer or Kidman. That said, the romantic scenes in Out of Sight are probably the least entertaining part of the film. Much better are the scenes in which Clooney plays off against such wizardly character actors as Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Steve Zahn, and Albert Brooks. Out of Sight puts such superb actors as Catherine Keener and Viola Davis in tiny roles, and also supplies unbilled cameos for Michael Keaton -- as Ray Nicolette, the character he played in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown (1997) -- and Samuel L. Jackson. It's wittily put together, with such teases as the opening sequence in which Clooney's Jack Foley angrily dashes his necktie to the ground before going across the street to rob a bank -- an action that isn't explained until halfway through the film, after numerous flashbacks and setting changes. It includes audacious surprises, such as the macabre-comic death of White Boy Bob, whose klutziness has been subtly hinted several times before he brains himself with a slip on the staircase. (Clooney's reaction to the death is priceless.)

Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)

Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia

T.E. Lawrence: Peter O'Toole
Prince Faisal: Alec Guinness
Auda Abu Tayi: Anthony Quinn
Gen. Allenby: Jack Hawkins
Sherif Ali: Omar Sharif
Turkish Bey: José Ferrer
Col. Brighton: Anthony Quayle
Mr. Dryden: Claude Rains
Jackson Bentley: Arthur Kennedy
Gen. Murray: Donald Wolfit
Gasim: I.S. Johar
Majid: Gamil Ratib
Farraj: Michel Ray
Daud: John Dimech
Tafas: Zia Mohyeddin

Director: David Lean
Screenplay: Robert Bolt, Michael Wilson
Based on the writings of T.E. Lawrence
Cinematography: Freddie Young
Production design: John Box
Film editing: Anne V. Coates
Music: Maurice Jarre

It's often said -- in fact, it was said in today's San Francisco Chronicle -- that David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia is one of those films that must be seen in a theater. That statement kind of gets my back up: If a movie's story and performances are secondary to its spectacle, is it really a good movie? As it happens, I first saw Lawrence in a theater in the year of its release (or at least its European release, which was 1963), but it was a theater in Germany and the film was dubbed in German. Only moderately fluent in spoken German, I don't think I followed the dialogue very well, though I certainly appreciated the spectacle, especially Freddie Young's Oscar-winning cinematography. It took some later viewings on TV in the States for me to grasp the movie's story, though the film was trimmed for time, interrupted by commercials, and subjected to atrocious panning-and-scanning because viewers objected to letterboxing of wide-screen movies. So this viewing was probably my first complete exposure to Lean's celebrated film. And though I watched it at home -- in HD on a 32-inch flat screen TV -- I think I fully appreciated both the spectacle and the story. Which is not to say that I think the movie is all it's celebrated for being. The first half of the film is far more compelling than the latter half, and some of the casting is unforgivable, particularly Alec Guinness as Prince Faisal and Anthony Quinn as Auda. Guinness was usually a subtle actor, but his Faisal is mannered and unconvincing. Quinn simply overacts, as he was prone to do with directors who let him, and his prosthetic beak is atrocious. Omar Sharif, on the other hand, is very good as Ali. The producers are said to have wanted Horst Buchholz or Alain Delon, but they settled on Sharif, already a star in Egypt, and made him an international star. His success points up how unfortunate it is that they couldn't have found Middle Eastern actors to play Faisal and Auda. In his film debut, Peter O'Toole gives a tremendous performance, even though he's nothing like the shorter and more nondescript figure that was the real T.E. Lawrence, and it's sad that screenwriters Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson couldn't have found room in the script to trace the origins of Lawrence's obsession with Arabia. I recently read Scott Anderson's terrific Lawrence in Arabia: Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East, which not only depicts Lawrence's complexity but also the madness of the spy-haunted, oil-hungry wartime world in which he played his part. It's beyond the scope of even a three-and-a-half-hour movie to tell, though maybe it would make a tremendous TV miniseries some day.