Reviews

I've just watched this film for the first time and it's simply an absolute mess. John Boorman wrote, produced and directed the film based on his childhood memories of the war with Sebastian Rice-Edwards playing him as a child (named Billy rather than John) an an assortment of out-of-their-depth actors and actresses playing his family. The trouble is that, if this is anything to go by, his family, especially his mother and older sister and aunties, were insufferable bores of the worst kind and this was fatal for the film. The characters are dull and uninteresting and I was completely unmoved by the film and never became involved with the characters or their story.

Boorman couldn't get any film company interested in financing the picture and spent a fortune of his own money on it...a million pounds alone on building, on an old, abandoned airfield, a reproduction of the street of semi-detached houses where Boorman lived as a little boy. Eventually, he ran out of money and couldn't finish the film. But David Puttnam, a friend of his who was now running Columbia Pictures agreed to finance the rest of the film and distribute it.

One wonders what a top director of the calibre of Fred Zinnemann would have done with this subject in his heyday. Probably the first thing he would have done would have been to have it completely re-cast and re-written. So are there any good points about it? Well, the film has great attention to period detail and looks just about as good a recreation of wartime Britain as could possibly be achieved and Sebastian Rice-Edwards, although he's not called upon to do much in the way of acting, at least looks lovely as Billy...a sort of cross between Rupert Osborne in "Konga" and Simon West in "Swallows and Amazons". He's certainly very photogenic and the centre of attention, but I know that if I had been him, I would have walked off the picture when I realised what Boorman wanted me to do and say in it. "You can't walk off the picture like this", he would have protested, "I've got a lot of money invested in you!" "Well now, ain't that just too bad!", I would have sneered and walked off the set. I wouldn't have wanted to be associated with such a disaster and have people make fun of me. Obviously, when I was nine (in 1956), I was far more of a rebel than Sebastian was thirty-one years later.

I can see why this wasn't chosen for The Royal Film Performance in 1987, with Sebastian called upon to use a choice four letter word on two occasions...not something to present to the Queen even in 1987...especially when being spoken by a nine year old. My verdict: The cast and script and director prevent it from becoming the classic it should have been. Two stars out of five for effort (maybe even that is being overly generous).

The Sony DVD CDR 11368. Excellent transfer of the film with very clear image and sound. 1.85:1 and anamorphically enhanced for 16 x 9 computers and televisions. A far better transfer than this dreadful film deserves.

When I went to see this film at the now long gone Focus cinema in Longton, Stoke on Trent on Thursday, September 12th, 1957, it marked the first time that I, then aged 10 and a half, had gone to the pictures on my own. The film was an eternal triangle love story set against a background of the preparations for the Normandy landings in June, 1944, which, when this film was released, had happened only twelve years earlier. Set in England as it prepared for the invasion, but filmed in California, the film told of the love of married American Captain Brad Parker (Robert Taylor) for English girl Valerie Russell (Dana Wynter), who is engaged to be married to English Colonel John Wynter (Richard Todd) and the film posed the question of which of the two would get killed in the forthcoming battle and not get the girl. I had recently met and fallen in hurtful unrequited love a with local girl of my age, Ann Barlow, and the music in the film by Lyn Murray was very haunting in the romantic interludes and reflected just how I felt in my feelings for Ann and it also featured the hit song of 1944, "You'll Never Know".

That side of the film is what I remember it for. But sixty-two years later in 2019, I can see the flaws in the rest of the film. Notwithstanding the usual hilariously inaccurate Hollywood view of wartime London, there were scenes in it that must have been so insulting to British war veterans who went to see the film that it must have gone down like a lead balloon with them and it's a wonder that the film didn't get banned shortly after release, as "Objective Burma" had been. In one scene, a group of American G.I.s, fresh over on the troop ship, were seen making fun of a Home Guard platoon as they drilled in a village square and in another, one American soldier says to Captain Brad Parker "I don't go for those Limey's. They talk fast and fight slow". I can't remember if I noticed how insulting this was to the British army when I went to see the film in 1957, but I certainly notice it now and I don't like it one little bit. I hope whoever was responsible for these scenes was reprimanded over them at the time. They should never have been included in the final release version of the film.

This ruggedly authentic thriller chronicles the sinister events that happen to two boys in Britain following the 1968 Prague Spring uprising. Adapting David Line's best seller "Run for Your Life", "Soldier and Me" won the BAFTA award for Best Children's Drama.

The story's main protagonists are two schoolboys. Richard Willis plays the youngest of them, Pavel Szolda (Soldier), a bespectacled Czech refugee in short trousers in a tough inner city comprehensive school, and Gerry Sundquist plays Jim Woolcott, the older, bigger, tougher, streetwise youth who sticks up for Soldier against the local bullies and then can't shake him off afterwards. The plot is commendably straightforward. Soldier, studying in the library, overhears two men speaking in Czech who are plotting the assassination of a crippled old man, a Czech dissident, in a nearby language school at 11 p.m. That night Pavel manages to persuade the very sceptical Jim to go with him to the school to try and prevent it, but when they get there, events take over, leaving Jim in no doubt that Pavel was speaking the truth, and the pair of them with no choice but to run for their lives from some very ruthless villains...

It really is a fabulously mounted chase story, well acted; well filmed and edited but, as was commonplace on British television in the 1970s, shot entirely on 16mm Eastman Color film (so don't expect 35mm VistaVision Motion Picture High Fidelity image quality). I was amazed to see that a lot of it was shot on location in Stockport, my home town, including one of the assassins chasing them through a very crowded Stockport market and people; shopping and fruit and veg stalls being pushed over like ninepins. Somewhere in the midst of all this chaos, there is a magnificent shot of hundreds of oranges rolling down a slope. There are also scenes shot on Stockport Edgeley station and most of it was filmed on very picturesque locations in the Lake District, where the bulk of the story takes place. I highly recommend this set. Richard Willis as 'Soldier' is absolutely wonderful in it. He had previously been seen in the 1972 CFF colour feature film "The Zoo Robbery". Tragically, Gerry Sundquist, while suffering from depression, killed himself at the age of 37 in 1993 by throwing himself under a moving train in a London railway station.

And now a brickbat. Jim Woolcott, through whose character the story is narrated, is a thoroughly unlikeable youth. He is callous; selfish and totally uncaring towards Pavel Szolda and throughout the serial treats the younger Czech boy like dirt and as though Pavel is a total pain in the neck whom he can't tolerate. He shouts at him; kicks him while he's on the ground and hits him against walls. Pavel is entirely the opposite. He is a very lonely boy from a one parent family, a refugee from the 1968 Czechoslovakian uprising with no friends who has so much love to give but no one to share it with. He is very caring and loving and very intelligent. The kind of person anyone of any sensitivity would try all their lives to find. But Jim does in no way appreciate this. You would think that, with them spending all that time on the run together, Jim would have bonded with him. But it doesn't happen until near the end of episode 9, the last episode. Only then does Jim show any concern or feeling for the younger boy, and even then not all that much anyway. All this ensures the audience only have sympathy for Pavel from the start. I would have re-written the story before filming started and made Jim's character far less antagonistic and uncaring towards Pavel.

This is a superb anti-war film, filmed in 1933, but not released in Great Britain until late 1934 and directed by Frank Borzage. I've been thinking how I could describe, to those who haven't seen it, how wonderful this film is and I've decided to paste in this 1934 British film magazine review, the sentiments of which I agree with entirely.

"NO GREATER GLORY" (Columbia Pictures, 1933).

From Film Pictorial dated December 15th, 1934.

This week's honours to: GEORGE BREAKSTON.

We have had film children smart and clever, showing skill and ability above their years. But in "No Greater Glory" we get from George Breakston not cleverness or smartness, but sheer acting ability and naturalness. This from a boy of such tender years is an achievement indeed. He is only eleven: he has never acted before. Yet in this plea for greater understanding among men, in a picture that needed so much courage to produce, he lives. He plays the part of a weakling boy with the heart of a lion. Throughout the film he will play havoc with your emotions and at the end you will shed a tear for him. But you will want to see this lad again. And you will.

REVIEW.

It needed courage in abundance to make this film. Whether the director has succeeded in what he set out to achieve will probably be a subject for warm discussion. But there can be no two opinions about the sincerity of this ambitious effort. And in these days, when war talk is so much in the air, the moral he tries to point will inevitably have its effect in many places.

Showing, first of all, the terrors of battle, in 1917, with a private screaming a tirade against war, its horror, its pain, its suffering, and being obviously afraid to die, the scene is then switched to 1934. A professor is lecturing his class on the glory of dying for one's country - and then we see two rival schoolboy gangs, or armies, if you prefer it. There are the two leaders struggling for supremacy, culminating in a pitched battle for a playground. Throughout, the seemingly weak character of the boy, Nemecsek, is thrust to the foreground; frail in body though he is, he tries so hard to be courageous. He would do anything for his leader; anything for the cause he loves. The end is inevitable.

Grim though the production is, it is brilliantly acted by the boys, with George Breakston giving a performance that is supreme. Here is a mere child of eleven, playing his first part, who lives on the screen as few actors have ever lived. His terror, his forced bravado in moments of battle - every scene, in fact, is perfect. Unless you are the type of filmgoer who must be amused every time you go to a cinema, you really should see this film. It points a moral, but it is so vividly and beautifully done, that it should appeal to every person who seeks the "different" in his filmgoing."

THE SONY DVD. This is an excellent transfer of an obviously remastered print of the film. The image and sound quality are amazing, taking into consideration that fact that this 85 years old picture is an early sound film and the sound is as loud and clear as you would wish it to be. Highly Recommended!

Filmed in London, in and around the River Thames in the summer of 1974, this classic BBC / Swedish co-production six part television film serial is about two schoolboy friends, Sam Leigh (Simon West) and Paul Redmond (Mark Dightam) who between them disrupt the well laid plans of a gang of diamond smugglers on the River Thames. Each episode is never less than very entertaining and the theme music is very catchy. The colour cinematography is gorgeous with plenty of sunlit location filming and we even get treated to a helicopter flight with our two heroes over the River Thames and see such well known landmarks as the Palace of Westminster and Tower Bridge from the air. The then very photogenic 12, going on 13 years old Simon West lights up the screen throughout.

Slight spoiler here, but no more than you'd see in an actual trailer. In episode 5, there is a chase scene between two power boats on the river, where the villains are chasing Sam because he's made off in his boat with a cache of diamonds that the villains had smuggled into the country by flying them in from the continent in a model aeroplane and this sequence is particularly well filmed and edited. Highly Recommended.

In August, 2017, this much sought after serial, which many had believed to be lost, finally made it onto DVD, but only in Germany and dubbed in German. However, don't let that put you off, for, as long as you have a simple synopsis for it, it's easy to follow the story and it will do until the original English language version is released on DVD. Look for it on amazon under the title "Tom und die Themse". It's an excellent transfer and well worth buying...although I don't know why the Germans changed the title from "Sam and the River" to "Tom and the Thames". Maybe 'Sam' is a swearword in Germany.

This fllm proves that you need something more than 'Scope and colour to make a film watchable...you need a good script and a good director, two things that are totally lacking here. Child actor Clement Van Den Bergh appears to be on valium throughout the film and displays a kind of passionless zero interest in the events and things going on around him. The film is incomprehensible and just a total mixed up mess, as if someone cut all the scenes out separately, jumbled them up and stuck them back together again in any old order. I couldn't make head nor tail of it. I stuck with it to the end just so I could see if it might get any better...it didn't. It's hard to see how talented (or talentless) the actors and actresses are, because the script they are given to work with is banal in the extreme. Which are the fantasy and dream sequences and which are the reality ones? Your guess is as good as mine. I've never heard of the director, Claude Miller, but whoever he is, he's no Carol Reed or Julian Duvivier. I see the film won a prize at Cannes Film Festival. Well, if the judges considered this load of rubbish to be worthy of a prize, just think how awful the rest of the films must have been that year. The only plus factor in this mess is that it is beautifully photographed, but that doesn't maintain interest for long.

While not in the same league as that in "The Fallen Idol", Bobby Henrey's performance in his second and last film, "The Wonder Kid", is just as charming and fascinating to watch. He is totally convincing and often very touching as Sebastian Giro, a ten years old French boy and child musical prodigy found in an orphanage by Mr Gorik (Elwyn Brook-Jones) who exploits the youngster's talent as a classical pianist and turns him into an international celebrity. He even tells everyone that the boy is only seven years old in order to make the boy wonder's talent seem all the more remarkable. But Gorik is also a crook who embezzles the takings so that he has almost all the money and Sebastian gets hardly any. Coupled with that, Gorik won't allow Sebastian to enjoy the simple pleasures of being a little boy, like having a pet dog or playing with other boys or even reading comic books, because, when Sebastian isn't performing, Gorik isn't making any money out of him. He works the over tired boy like a slave who must continually practise on the piano. Sebastian's elderly English governess, Miss Frisbie (Muriel Aked) is very concerned about the boy and confronts Gorik about his crooked activities. But he dismisses her from her post. Miss Frisbie then pays a gang of junior league crooks to "kidnap" Sebastian and take him to stay in a remote lodge in the Austrian Tyrol and Gorik won't get him back until he's paid over a huge ransom which is, in effect, all the money he has stolen from the boy. It is here, in this beautiful setting, that the boy finds a freedom and a happiness he has never known and just wants to stay there forever with those who have become his friends. But trouble is on the horizon for him...

This now unjustly forgotten little film is thoroughly entertaining and wonderful to watch and definitely deserves to be restored properly and released on DVD. Apart from the truly picturesque scenery, Bobby Henrey's performance as the cruelly exploited child prodigy who moves from misery to happiness is just wonderful. Highly recommended.

I don't wish to duplicate other members synopses of the storyline of this wonderful, classic film, but I would like to say something about the performance of the then eight years old Bobby Henrey as Phillipe and how crucial he was to Carol Reed's realisation of The Fallen Idol. Bobby's parents were writers and he had initially been chosen to star in the film both for his looks when Reed had seen a photograph of him peering out of the window of his London apartment on the dust jacket of one of his parents books and because he was bi-lingual, having spent his early childhood in both France and England and spoke English with a French accent, which was called for in the script. Bobby had never acted before, but Reed, a man of infinite patience where children and child actors were concerned, persevered with him over an incredible shooting schedule of five months (a long time for those days) shooting numerous takes of every scene involving the boy and his dialogue, which paid off handsomely, as he managed to coax out of him the most incredible and natural performance by a child actor ever seen on the screen and certainly not bettered since.

No better example of all this can be found than in the scene where Philippe is convinced that Baines, his only friend whom he idolises, is going to be sent to the gallows for a murder he did not commit. At this point, he realises just how much he adores and loves Baines and that he cannot live without him. With all the passion in his heart and soul, Phillipe pleads with the police to listen to him as he finally decides to tell the truth about what happened in the hope that this will save his friend: "Oh, please, you must listen to me! I have something to tell you! Oh, please listen to me! Oh, please! Please listen to me! You have to listen to me! You must listen to me! It will only take a moment and it will put everything right." But the police completely ignore him. This scene is so gut-wrenchingly heart-breaking, that it's almost too upsetting to watch and you become totally involved in it and feel very deeply for this increasingly desperate little boy. It is an incredible performance that is so perfect, it has to be seen to be believed. I cannot recommend this film highly enough. It is one of the finest films ever made in the history of the cinema.

The DVD cover of this made for television film features a beautiful photo of Timotei Cresta as Edward V, aged 12 and Correntin Combeau as Richard of York, aged 10…the princes in the tower and this photo gives the misleading impression that the film is all about them, whereas they are only seen in it for a few seconds here and there in grainy flashback sequences.

99% of the film is about the adult Perkin Warbeck (Mark Umbers), a pretender to the throne who, sixteen years after the disappearance of the two princes, claims to be the adult Richard, Duke of York and then follows the very long interrogation of him by the king and his officials to try to discover the truth of the claim. The story is largely fictional, but the acting is of a very high order in what was obviously a very cheaply made production.

However, some characters and scenes are superfluous to the drama and could have been dispensed with and the film makers missed a great opportunity here to have more of the film devoted to the princes of the title, with Perkin Warbeck's interrogation taking up the rest of the drama. Instead, the princes are portrayed as very fleeting and ghostly images of the past when their presence could have been far more substantial. A good try, but it could have been done far better in more talented hands. The bonus material on the DVD, the princes in the tower excerpt from the documentary series The Tower, is actually far more entertaining and the DVD is worth getting just for the picture on the front cover alone.

A beautifully filmed (in VistaVision and Technicolor) and very interesting character study. A sort of Eternal Triangle story where the three main characters are male. Adapted from A. J. Cronin's controversial 1950 novel of the same name, the plot concerns a middle aged diplomat at the British Consul in Madrid, Harrington Brande (Michael Hordern), who is posted to a sleepy coastal town on the Spanish Costa Brava. His wife has left him and all he has is his eleven years old son, Nicholas (played by eleven years old Jon Whiteley), on whom he dotes and of whom he is so possessive that he will not allow him to go to school or to make any friends at all, even of boys his own age. Brande wants his son all to himself. His excuse for this is that Nicholas is "delicate", having suffered a serious childhood illness and must be "protected." When Brande hires Jose (Dirk Bogarde) as a gardener for the villa, Jose and the lonely Nicholas become firm friends from their first meeting, much to the consternation of the insanely jealous Brande, who goes to much trouble to destroy the friendship between his son and the gardener.

At the time, Jon Whiteley's parents were concerned about the implied sexual relationship between Jose and Nicholas in Cronin's novel and were assured by the director, Philip Leacock and the producer and screenwriter, John Bryan, that "the darker side of Cronin's novel would be omitted and the film designed for family consumption." One scene from Chapter 15 of the novel that was cut entirely from the film was where, at Brande's insistence, his friend Professor Halevy (the character changed to Doctor Harvey for the film and played by Geoffrey Keen) has a "man to man" talk with Nicholas as the boy lays on his bed in his semi-darkened bedroom and talks to Nicholas about the boy's sexual feelings and tries to get him to admit to having a sexual relationship with Jose…especially when he and Jose went fishing together in the isolated countryside…something which, much to the consternation of Halevy, who is convinced that there is something of a sexual nature going on between them, Nicholas will not admit to. Even though all this was left out of the film, the film still comes across as ambiguous and the viewer is left to put their own interpretation on the relationships between Jose and Nicholas and between Nicholas and his very possessive father.

Overall, the performances are uniformly fine, only in one instance coming across as contrived…the scene where Nicholas runs into Jose's arms and sobs. Good as he was within his range, Jon Whiteley just couldn't handle this scene and comes across as the worst sounding and most unconvincing sobber in film history. Whether or not he could have handled the scene of the "man to man" talk about his character's sexual feelings and his feelings for Jose if it had been left in the film is a debatable point. Certainly, he had the right director in Philip Leacock to help him through such a scene, as it was Leacock who, three years earlier, had directed him in "The Kidnappers", for which Jon had won an Academy Award.

From the opening scenes of Hunted, directly after the credits, when the dramatic music accompanies a little boy running through the streets of London clutching a teddy bear, we just know this is going to be a great film and it certainly is. Filmed in England and Scotland in late 1951 and released early in 1952, this truly is a wonderful film. The boy is six years old orphaned Scots boy Robbie Campbell (a truly outstanding debut performance by six years old Scots boy Jon Whiteley), who is running and searching for somewhere to hide after accidentally setting the kitchen curtains on fire in his adoptive London home and, believing he has set the house on fire, is fleeing the severe punishment that he believes will be meted out to him by his cruel and violent adoptive father. He ends up running into a derelict building on a bomb site some distance from home where he accidentally comes upon a man, Chris Lloyd (Dirk Bogarde), having just murdered his wife's lover in a crime of passion. Seeing that Robbie has seen the body and is the only witness to his crime, Chris abducts him and takes him on the run with him as he attempts to flee the country and the long arm of the law. Robbie, unloved at home and cruelly treated by his adoptive father, dare not return home and a bond develops between the two fugitives as Robbie flees his adoptive father and Chris flees the police and the hangman's rope.

Chris is at first completely uncaring and rough in his attitude to Robbie, but he gradually takes on the responsibility for Robbie's devotion as the two flee from London and travel up through the midlands to Stoke-on-Trent and then north into Scotland. As the journey gets tougher, Chris has to force Robbie to keep going, to carry him in his arms and to hold him, against the cold, as they sleep out in the wilderness.

It really is a superbly made drama and I read somewhere that, of all the many Rank films Dirk Bogarde made during his long career, this was his personal favourite. It is also a film record of a bygone post-war Britain; from its bomb sites and tramcars and horse drawn traffic in the capital, to the now long gone pottery factories of Stoke on Trent, belching forth their black smoke from huge bottle ovens and covered with industrial grime. The railway scenes in the film were filmed on the equally now long gone Potteries Loop Line at Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, one of hundreds of lines that fell under the Dr Beeching axe in the 1960's. All completely gone now, but captured for posterity on 35mm black and white film in Hunted.

The film is also a social record of the UK in 1951, a time of general poverty; of post-war austerity and ration books, when everybody dresses so drably. The police in the film may, by modern standards, seem to be having great difficulty in tracking down Chris and Robbie. But you have to take into account the fact that in those days, television was in its infancy; the police had no personal radio communications or computers or helicopters and the pace of life was very different. In real life 1951, a man on the run could quite easily abduct a little boy and take him all over the country with him without being apprehended. So this film then is a contemporary account of how things would have been back in 1951.

Today, in an increasingly paranoid age when, in the minds of many, man abducting little boy equals sex, this film is from a time when characters in films apparently didn't even think of such things. This mindset is no better demonstrated than by one of the police officials in the film who confesses to a colleague that he can't understand what Chris Lloyd wants with the boy. "Why does he hang on to him?" These days, the police would probably put two and two together and make five. However, the story is far more complicated than it would seem at first glance. For the film is not really as much about child abduction as it is about two people of very different ages teaming up in a common cause. Neither of them can go home again and all they have is each other.

Early on in the film, before the loving relationship between Chris and Robbie develops, Chris says to the boy: "You don't like me, do you?" "No", says Robbie. "Well, why don't you go off home, then?" asks Chris. "I don't want to go home", answers Robbie. Hence his decision to stay with Chris. As soon as Robbie gets over the initial shock of being dragged off by Chris at the beginning of the film, he comes to realise that from now on, his only future is with his co-fugitive.

At only six and a half years of age, Jon Whiteley is perfect for this film and comes across variously as scared; devious;furtive and, for a short time, happy to be with Chris and away from his abusive home. His sheer delight at seeing men hay making in a field during the long journey north has to be seen to be believed. Dirk and Jon got on so well together that when the filming finished and they had to part, Jon was reportedly inconsolable. Dirk wanted to adopt the boy, but his friends persuaded him against it. The chemistry between Dirk and Jon is plain to see and what a team they make.

This film is an absolute classic. Beautifully acted; directed and photographed. One of the best British films of the 1950's. 10 out of 10 for this black and white gem.