Pure Movies looks at a range of classics released recently on DVD including The Moonraker, Cry The Beloved Country, The Lost Continent, Spring and Port Wine, The Proud Valley, Night Boat To Dublin and Nine Men. Nine Men The North Africa campaign in WWII: when their convoy is destroyed by enemy aircraft, nine British soldiers are forced to make a stand in an abandoned desert hovel against almost overwhelming Italian forces. The first feature from celebrated documentary maker Harry Watt after his arrival at Ealing, Nine Men helped set the pattern for Ealing films in the later part of the war, with an emphasis on ordinary heroism from the ranks rather than the officer class. Gritty, violent and exciting, it is highly lauded as a portrayal of character under duress.
- 2/25/2010
- by Dan Higgins
- Pure Movies
1943/45, PG/U, Optimum
Having released DVDs of all the familiar Ealing titles, Optimum is now bringing out largely forgotten ones like this pair that resulted from Ealing boss Michael Balcon hiring documentary film-makers during the Second World War to bring a new realism to the studio's output.
Nine Men, the feature debut of documentarist Harry Watt, director of Night Mail (1936), is a morale-raising propaganda entertainment set in North Africa but shot on a Welsh beach. Character actor Jack Lambert, then serving as an army officer, plays a tough training sergeant inspiring a platoon of recruits by recalling how nine gallant soldiers (a regional cross-section including Ealing stalwart Gordon Jackson) held off a numerically superior Italian force in the Libyan desert.
Charles Crichton's semi-documentary Painted Boats is a quieter affair, both realistic and lyrical, about life on England's canals and a romance between a boy and a girl from rival barge families.
Having released DVDs of all the familiar Ealing titles, Optimum is now bringing out largely forgotten ones like this pair that resulted from Ealing boss Michael Balcon hiring documentary film-makers during the Second World War to bring a new realism to the studio's output.
Nine Men, the feature debut of documentarist Harry Watt, director of Night Mail (1936), is a morale-raising propaganda entertainment set in North Africa but shot on a Welsh beach. Character actor Jack Lambert, then serving as an army officer, plays a tough training sergeant inspiring a platoon of recruits by recalling how nine gallant soldiers (a regional cross-section including Ealing stalwart Gordon Jackson) held off a numerically superior Italian force in the Libyan desert.
Charles Crichton's semi-documentary Painted Boats is a quieter affair, both realistic and lyrical, about life on England's canals and a romance between a boy and a girl from rival barge families.
- 1/10/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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