Major Barbara (Gabriel Pascal, 1941)

Robert Newton, Wendy Hiller, Robert Morley, Rex Harrison, and Emlyn Williams in Major Barbara

Cast: Wendy Hiller, Rex Harrison, Robert Morley, Robert Newton, Sybil Thorndike, Emlyn Williams, Marie Lohr, Penelope Dudley-Ward, Walter Hudd, David Tree, Deborah Kerr, Donald Calthrop, Marie Ault, Cathleen Cordell, Torin Thatcher, Miles Malleson, Felix Aylmer, Stanley Holloway. Screenplay: George Bernard Shaw, based on his play. Cinematography: Ronald Neame. Production design: Vincent Korda. Film editing: Charles Frend, David Lean. Music: William Walton.

George Bernard Shaw's plays often seem to me as if they're about to collapse underneath their own cleverness: so many paradoxes, so much witty dialogue, such tantalizingly heretical ideas. Major Barbara is a prime example of this, a duel between faith and realism, between rich and poor, between capitalism and Fabian socialism, between men and women, all treated with the would-be drawing-room-comedy lightness of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, down to the climactic revelation that the play's ostensible hero is a "foundling" (a euphemism for "bastard"). But the film version slumps down into tedium because Shaw can't resist trying to make his characters, especially Barbara (wonderfully played by Wendy Hiller), into something like real people whenever he wants the audience to feel something instead of just laughing at the bright repartee. The film remains a three-act play, despite attempts to provide some scenes -- the initial meeting of Barbara and Adolphus Cusins (Rex Harrison being archly ardent), the fight between Bill Walker (Robert Newton) and Todger Fairmile (Torin Thatcher), Barbara's tossing her Salvation Army bonnet (and almost herself) into the Thames, and the tour of the hellish munitions factory and its heavenly benevolent-capitalist planned community -- in between the ones we would ordinarily see on stage. We are supposed to continue the dialogue of ideas among ourselves after the movie's over, but the effect of the two-hour-plus barrage of wit is to make me want to be stupid again. The film was rightly celebrated for the skill of its performers and for the tenacity with which it was filmed during the Blitz, but as a whole it's an achievement that hasn't stood the test of time.

Hopscotch (Ronald Neame, 1980)

Glenda Jackson and Walter Matthau in Hopscotch

Cast: Walter Matthau, Glenda Jackson, Sam Waterston, Ned Beatty, Herbert Lom, David Matthau, George Baker, Ivor Roberts, Lucy Saroyan, Severn Darden. Screenplay: Brian Garfield, Bryan Forbes, based on a novel by Garfield. Cinematography: Arthur Ibbetson, Brian W. Roy. Production design: William J. Creber. Film editing: Carl Kress. Music: Ian Fraser.

Hopscotch is an engaging trifle with just enough bite into the hindquarters of international espionage bureaus to make it seem more substantial. It also has the improbable teaming of Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson, who have a kind of chemistry that recalls Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn at their best (which was mostly when George Cukor was directing them). It was their third film together, and Jackson reportedly accepted the part because she liked working with Matthau so much. With good reason: Their first film together, Melvin Frank's 1973 A Touch of Class, won her an Oscar, and their second, House Calls (Howard Zieff, 1978), was a solid box office success. Hopscotch actually doesn't give Jackson much to do: Her character, Isobel, is an old flame of Matthau's Miles Kendig, a CIA agent who decides to write a tell-all memoir to even the score with his blustering boss, Myerson (Ned Beatty), a far more committed Cold Warrior than Kendig, who sees the spy games for what they are. Isobel's role is mainly to help out occasionally when Kendig needs it, which he mostly doesn't; he's almost always ahead of the game. They have a few good scenes together, including their first encounter in the film, when they pretend not to know each other -- a scene that was actually written by Matthau. There are also some breezy moments between Kendig and his opposite number from the KGB, played with weary good humor by Herbert Lom. There's a special buoyancy to the film contributed by abundant borrowings from the music of Mozart, along with some Rossini and Puccini -- Matthau was an opera lover, so these bits of filigree are probably his contribution to the film, too.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Ronald Neame, 1969)

Maggie Smith and Pamela Franklin in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Cast: Maggie Smith, Robert Stephens, Pamela Franklin, Gordon Jackson, Celia Johnson, Diane Grayson, Jane Carr, Shirley Steedman. Screenplay: Jay Presson Allen, based on her play and a novel by Muriel Spark. Cinematography: Ted Moore. Production design: John Howell. Film editing: Norman Savage. Music: Rod McKuen. 

My problem with the title character of the film version of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is that she seems to have sprung full-blown -- mannerisms, catchphrases ("I am in my prime"), ideology and all -- from the imaginations of the people who created her, screenwriter Jay Presson Allen and actress Maggie Smith. I'm no more able to envision a backstory, a childhood, or an inner life for her than I am for a Dickens character like Mr. Micawber. At least in Muriel Spark's novel there are hints of something more, but they haven't translated well to the screen. Which is not to say that Smith didn't deserve her Oscar for playing the role; it's a fascinating, nuanced performance, from Jean Brodie's initial dominance to her comeuppance to her final defiance. If we don't know how Jean came to imagine herself an Übermensch, that's our problem, the film eventually suggests. Better to sit back and watch some fine performances: Robert Stephens as the randy art teacher, the always wonderful and welcome Celia Johnson as the headmistress, and 19-year-old Pamela Franklin convincingly transforming the 12-year-old into the post-pubescent student whom Jean underestimates. But anathema upon the producer or whoever decided to commission Rod McKuen to write a goopy song that unaccountably was nominated for an Oscar. At least it plays only over the end credits when you can easily escape it.

 

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.

Great Expectations (David Lean, 1946)

Great Expectations (David Lean, 1946)

Cast: John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Jean Simmons, Martita Hunt, Finlay Currie, Alec Guinness, Bernard Miles, Francis L. Sullivan. Screenplay: David Lean, Ronald Neame, Anthony Havelock-Allan, Kay Walsh, Cecil McGivern. Cinematography: Guy Green. Production design: John Bryan. Film editing: Jack Harris. Music: Walter Goehr.

Blithe Spirit (David Lean, 1945)

Blithe Spirit (David Lean, 1945)

Cast: Rex Harrison, Kay Hammond, Constance Cummings, Margaret Rutherford, Hugh Wakefield, Joyce Carey, Jacqueline Clarke. Screenplay: David Lean, Ronald Neame, Anthony Havelock-Allan, based on a play by Noël Coward. Cinematography: Ronald Neame. Art direction: C.P. Norman. Film editing: Jack Harris. Music: Richard Addinsell.

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.

Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)

Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter

Laura Jesson: Celia Johnson
Dr. Alec Harvey: Trevor Howard
Albert Godby: Stanley Holloway
Myrtle Bagot: Joyce Carey
Fred Jesson: Cyril Raymond
Dolly Messiter: Everley Gregg
Mary Norton: Marjorie Mars
Beryl Walters: Margaret Barton
Stephen Lynn: Valentine Dyall

Director: David Lean
Screenplay: Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean, Ronald Neame
Based on a play by Noël Coward
Cinematography: Robert Krasker
Art direction: Lawrence P. Williams
Film editing: Jack Harris
Music: Percival Mackey, Muir Mathieson

It had never occurred to me until I started reading essays about Brief Encounter that the movie is a period film: It's set in 1938, which explains why there is no visual evidence of or reference to World War II, which was still going on when it was made. This also helps explain some of the film's jitteriness or reticence about sex. Why, given the facility with which Laura Jesson lies about her relationship with Alec Harvey, don't they just go ahead and have sex? The film is a portrait of prewar middle-class morality, something the war helped break down, especially with the arrival of American troops, proverbially "oversexed and over here," in Britain. When it gained great popularity after the war ended, it was possible to debate whether Brief Encounter was a validation or an indictment of this morality. Is it really healthy for Laura to spend the rest of her life with her pleasantly stuffy husband, dreaming of what might have been? Is it necessary for Alec to uproot his family and emigrate to South Africa just because of sexual frustration? The resolution to their dilemma seems easier to us: We wish Laura and Alec could unbend, the way the working class characters Albert and Myrtle seem to do. (For all her pretense at refinement, it's easy to see that Myrtle has a healthy off-duty sex life.) But then we get glimpses of the social milieu in which Laura and Alec move: He has to contend with the catty nudge-nudge-wink-wink of Stephen Lynn, the friend whose apartment almost becomes a venue for the consummation of their passion; she is surrounded by friends whose only pleasure in life seems to be to talk. There is a real brilliance in the way which Lean, greatly aided by Robert Krasker's noir-expressionist black-and-white cinematography, suggests the entrapment of the lovers in a world they are afraid to break out of. Celia Johnson is magnificent, of course, and it was a stroke of genius to cast Trevor Howard opposite her. For all his kindness and attentiveness, there is something faintly menacing about him, a hint of danger and possibility that can only attract but also subtly frighten a woman whose life consists of helping her husband with the crossword and spending Thursdays in town returning her library book and shopping for an ugly desk tchotchke for his birthday. Everything in this movie is so well judged and efficiently presented that it only makes me regret that Lean turned from such intimate stories and entered on his epic phase.