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Reviews
Upstairs, Downstairs: The Swedish Tiger (1972)
Jarringly inappropriate? Or delightfully adventurous?
As a youngster, I watched this one with my parents. As the credits rolled, my mother shook her head and proclaimed, "That was a load of rubbish!" My father concurred. 'The Swedish Tiger' has a reputation as the only truly bad episode of 'Upstairs, Downstairs' and it is easy to see why. It is certainly the least representative of the series as a whole.
'Upstairs, Downstairs' generally made a good job of mixing naturalistic humour with serious drama but 'The Swedish Tiger' is pure light comedy. As such, it is well done: with clever, witty, deliberately-artificial dialogue. James, Elizabeth, Sarah and Edward are the only series regulars in it and they, along with the guest cast (which includes the genuinely-Swedish Sven-Bertil Taube), handle the sophisticated shenanigans with aplomb.
On the one hand, the tone of the production is egregiously out of kilter with that of the rest of the series. On the other hand, it surely deserves some credit for daring to be so boldly different. I can see why many people disliked this episode - but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Screen Two: Nervous Energy (1995)
Very disappointing
I could hardly believe that this was scripted by Howard Schuman, who wrote the outstanding, 'Rock Follies', as well as other good programs.
Jet Pilot (1957)
A potentially good movie spoiled by one fatal flaw
Both upon its release and afterwards, some reviewers have found themselves turned off by what they saw as this movie's crude Cold War propaganda. They have a point - but this does strike me as being rather a harsh judgement. OK - so the door-knobs in Russia keep coming off in the characters' hands and a flaming cigarette lighter is hailed with, "So you finally found one that works!" Although it is exaggerated for comic effect, the movie's suggestion that an awful lot of things in the USSR in those days (filming began in 1949, although it was not released until 1957) were very cheaply and shoddily made was not without foundation. However, there is no attempt to depict the Soviet Union as a poverty-stricken hell-hole in which frightened, starving people are tyrannised by grim-faced communist functionaries. Given how brutally oppressive Stalin's USSR could be and given how terrified of the Red Menace was the film's producer, Howard Hughes (and many other people at the time), the film's Cold War propaganda could very easily have been far more strident and condemnatory than it actually is.
Life in contemporary America is depicted as wonderfully opulent, with Anna/Olga enjoying all of the succulent steaks, fancy cocktails and fashionable clothes she can eat, drink or wear but, given that she is hanging out with a Colonel in the US Air Force (and not a Brooklyn street-sweeper or a labourer in a Pittsburgh steelworks), there is nothing particularly unrealistic or dishonest about this.
This movie has quite a lot going for it. It is not intended to be a serious examination of the Cold War, or of the rival societies represented by Colonel Shannon and Anna/Olga and it has no aspirations toward deep, meaningful or even subtle drama. The colour photography makes it look nice. The aerial sequences with those jets are terrific and are certainly the best thing about the film. The story has an intriguing premise and,there are several twists to the plot that are sufficiently interesting and unpredictable to be entertaining. The one and only Big John is his irresistible self; Janet Leigh is beautiful, charming and sensual and the two leads work well together; handling the light comedy with aplomb. The humour generated by their interplay, although never anything more than mildly amusing, is agreeable.
And yet - in spite of all of these points in its favour, 'Jet Pilot' is not a satisfactory film, even on its own unambitious terms: and this is entirely down to one egregious blunder that seriously undermines everything that happens on screen (except the stunning aerial sequences). What is this fatal flaw? 'Simples!', as the Meerkats say in their cod-Russian accents - and zat, comrades, is ze problem! Meerkats do it. Ensign Chekhov does it. Ilya Kuryakin does it. So why can't Janet Leigh do it? Had Ms. Leigh played Anna/Olga with the Russian accent that the role demands, I could have believed in her character, believed in the story and thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Alas, she plays the character using her own colloquial American tones, without even a hint of foreign-ness in her voice and, as a consequence, you cannot for one moment accept her as a Russian. This is NOT some peripheral detail that can be cheerfully disregarded on the grounds that this is a light-hearted film. Anna/Olga is a Russian, in complete cultural and political opposition to the Americans she finds herself among, and, since this clash is the ENTIRE BASIS for the movie, you HAVE to believe in her Russian-ness for the proceedings to carry any conviction whatsoever. Obviously, the right sort of Eastern European accent could have given Anna/Olga a much-needed touch of mystique and added to her allure but the point is that even a comically bad attempt at a Russian accent would have been better than no attempt at all because you can no more believe in a Russian character who sounds as if she were born and raised in Middle America than you could have believed in. 'The King's Speech' had King George VI been played by Telly Savalas using his own Noo-yawk accent instead of one appropriate for the Royal Family.
This COULD and SHOULD have been a good movie, worthy of at least a 6/10 rating, and it WOULD have been so, had Janet Leigh only bothered to give her voice the merest hint of a Slavonic lilt, so that the viewer would be able to accept her as a Russian. As it is, I can give the film no more than 3/10. Shame!