caroline-macafee Reviews

Klondike Annie (1936)

Out of the frying pan into another frying pan

[8/10 · 25 August 2022]

Whether or not the Code had anything to do with it, this film tells a different kind of story from the enjoyment of sexual power in many of Mae West's other films. It's a story of moral redemption - very old-fashioned, and sincere.

Mae's character can deploy her sexuality to use men, but she then becomes trapped by their jealousy - first Chan Lo, then Bull Brackett, whose closing declaration that he would kill her rather than lose her echoes the threats of Chan Lo at the start of the film. But the story doesn't just cycle round to the same point - the Doll's character has traversed a very large arc in the meantime. The real Sister Annie, whose identity the Doll assumes after her death, has succeeded in awakening the Doll's conscience, and this brings the realisation that she must face up to her past. So when she surrenders to Bull in the end, it's not just to get what she needs from him - conveyance back to San Francisco to face trial for the murder of Chan Lo - but also a great sacrifice, as she is giving up the handsome lawman who would have sacrificed his career for her.

Another thing that's different is that the genuine relationships are between Mae and women. There is mutual trust and affection between the Doll and her maid Fah Wong. When the Doll uses Bull first it's on Fah Wong's behalf. But the pivotal relationship is between the Doll and the real Annie, which turns the course of the Doll's life completely around.

The Doll was a good sort from the beginning - a tart with a heart of gold - as we see from her relationships with her Chinese servants, who are all willing to take great risks for her. The measure of her rapport is that she speaks Chinese with them (but of course the dialogue is in English when the audience needs to know what is being said). Since she killed Chan Lo in self defence, and since the servants will no doubt vouch for her, she has a good chance of a happy ending - if she can escape the clutches of Bull, which can hardly be beyond our resourceful heroine.

Taken on its own terms, this is a very watchable film, with scenes of comedy and jeopardy, great musical numbers, convincing acting from Mae West as the Doll goes through her emotional and spiritual trials, and terrific support from Victor McLagan as Bull.

Die Försterchristl (1952)

Compares well with the 1962 in a few ways

[6/10 · 9 May 2022]

This is a black and white film of the light operetta, all in German. A much less lavish production than the 1962 version, but the story is better told, and the snowy setting is very pleasant. The singing is obviously dubbed, but is lovely. The violin playing and dancing, though, aren't nearly as good as in the 1962 version, and the dancing, with knickers showing all over the place, is kind of sleazy. The Hungarian costumes don't have the benefit of colour, and they're not all that exciting, but Christal's everyday trachten and hair are much better than in the 1962.

Die Försterchristel (1962)

Delightful musical, in German, set in the Austro-Hungarian Empire

[10/10 · 7 May 2022]

It's a light operetta with a folksy plot. You get what it says on the tin. Lovely singing, stirring violin playing, beautiful dancing, wonderful costumes, wonderful horses, not very funny comic characters - all hung on a simple plot of misunderstandings, coincidental meetings, and lèse-majesté.

And Then We Danced (2019)

Lust and self destruction

[10/10 · 24 November 2021]

Levan Gelbakhiani is superb as Merab in this tragic tale of self-destruction. I was reminded very much of Brokeback Mountain. The film seems to be following the usual script - that traditional society destroys gays by giving them no place to live as couples. But, like Brokeback Mountain, what is actually happening in the story is reckless destructiveness. In this film, it is self destruction, as the disappointed Merab neglects his work and loses his job, spends a night with dangerous strangers, wilfully injures his foot, and destroys any hope of resuming his dancing career by giving a very personal expressionist performance that the head of the National Ensemble quite correctly describes as making a mockery of Georgian dance. We are supposed to join his former dance partner, Mary, in applauding his courage and self assertion, but I'm afraid I was with his teacher in feeling horror and pity.

Merab's brother epitomises toxic masculinity, on the surface, but there is a hint that he knows Irakli, Merab's object of desire, better than it may appear. And Irakli clearly has some previous homosexual experience. One suspects that Georgian society, like other traditional societies in the region, can tolerate homosexuality so long as it is discreet and is merely an outlet for sexual needs, and not the basis for barren relationships.

We get a good sense of the meaning of traditional dance, not just Georgian - it presents whatever that society's ideal is of the maiden and the youth. Disappointingly, there are only a few dancers. Apart from a brief glimpse of a duet by the National Ensemble, it is Gelbakhiani (as Merab), Bachi Valishvili (as Irakli) and Ana Javakishvili (as Mary) who are doing all the dancing in the studio, while the other 'dancers' look on. The only massed dancing that we see is in some black and white archive film at the start. This is understandable - dancers who can also act as well as these must be thin on the ground anywhere, never mind Georgia. It was a bit disappointing, though.

The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)

ET meets Buster Keaton and the Keystone Cops at the Ist Ladies Detective Agency

[10/10 · 31 October 2021]

Two worlds face each other across a massive gulf of incomprehension. Trying to understand the mission of Xi (the bushman hero), Mpudi (the sidekick of the modern-world hero, Steyn) can only say, "I understand the words, but I don't understand the meaning." Nevertheless - and this is the wonderful thing about the film - almost none of the comedy (and none between the central characters) comes from incomprehension. That is handled with great goodwill and kindness. The general impression is thus very much like that captured later by the 1st Ladies Detective Agency for Botswana.

The laughs come instead from Steyn's awkwardness around the heroine, allowing the actor, Marius Weyers, to do a great line in physical comedy. Also from encounters with animals, and from struggles with the beaten-up landrover that is a major character in its own right. Even Xi (played with great charm by N!xau) has a slapstick scene with the landrover.

The film has the feeling of an old black and white silent film. Xi talks, but we don't understand a word he says. The police and the bad guys career around in their vehicles at a speeded-up rate. Nobody who matters really gets hurt. It's delightful.

Beauty and the Beast (2014)

Love child of Cocteau and Disney

[5/10 · 25 October 2021]

I bought a DVD of this film after seeing Belle's frocks praised on a costume blog. I could only get the original French version with French subtitles - this is fine if your understanding of written French is tolerably good.

One word that you have to know is 'biche', meaning 'hind, doe' and also 'darling'. The prince (later to become the Beast) is hunting a golden hind, which turns out to be his wife, leading to her father, the God of the Woods, putting a curse on him. This is one of several plot holes - his wife has begged him to give up the pursuit of the golden hind, but maybe she could just have told him why?

This film is worth watching for its visual splendour. The costumes are indeed splendid. I was actually more impressed by the men's frock coats, collars and hats than by Belle's dresses, which have lovely details but stiff bodices that make the actress look as though she's been popped into a container.

The film is at its best when it follows Cocteau, but owes some of its rather serious failings to the Disney live-action version. Belle has been re-imagined as a grumpy, petulant modern girl, quite unlike the lovely, gentle woman of Cocteau's film. The cartoon dogs are completely de trop. The stone giants are unexplained, and confusingly there is also a life-size fallen statue of the dead wife - or is it herself turned to stone?

As others have said, there is a lack of chemistry between the Beast and Belle. And the actor is far too old - 48 at the time. There is a very close physical resemblance between the actresses who play Belle and the dead wife - I was distracted wondering whether they were actually the same, in an inversion of the duality in Cocteau's film, where the Beast and Belle's childhood friend and would-be lover are played by the same actor.

I'd say it's worth watching, but it will be necessary to watch the Cocteau version asap afterwards to reaffirm the definitive La Belle et la Bête.

Don't Take It to Heart! (1944)

An excellent silent film hybridised with a droll talkie

[9/10 · 27 June 2021]

Not much to add to what other reviewers have said, but what some found silly struck me as silent film comedy. As such, I enjoyed the scenes with little or no dialogue - the catastrophe-courting bus ride, the butler's expeditions through the massive old pile to reach the front door or the phone, the errand boy ringing the doorbell and the mechanism over several floors of the house that eventually strikes an actual bell.

The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne (2000)

Well worth seeking out for Michael Praed fans

[8/10 · 1 May 2021]

This is a fascinating series, with a terrific set-up, well-drawn characters and excellent acting, but, as other reviewers have said, very variable storytelling.

Both the hero and heroine, Phileas Fogg and his cousin Rebecca, have tremendous sang froid, but for different reasons - Phileas is a haunted man, careless of his life, while Rebecca is a devil-may-care adrenalin junkie. These complex (especially Phileas) and very action-oriented characters are beautifully realised by Michael Praed and Francesca Hunt. At the same time as he is gambling with his fortune or his life, Phileas remains a perfect gentleman, punctilious in his behaviour and fastidious in his appearance. Everyone from Queen Victoria downwards regards him as a safe pair of hands, but things do sometimes go disastrously wrong, for which he finds it hard to forgive himself.

Phileas and Rebecca have an intense bond of affection and loyalty, but as this is a family, rather than a romantic, bond, it also leaves the character of Phileas free to be a romantic hero, ready to fall in love. Rebecca also has her share of flirtations, not least with the delightful Mark Twain, played by Jonathan Walker. And sometimes she is called upon to risk not only her honour, which she is well able to defend, but her feelings. Some critics have seen the central relationship between Phileas and Rebecca as one of unresolved sexual tension, and there are occasional hints that they are not so closely related that romance is out of the question. On the other hand, it appears that they were brought up together, so it's just not on. This adds another dimension to the air of tragic stoicism that makes Phileas so attractive.

The third character in the ensemble is the gauche young Jules Verne, ably acted by Chris Demetral. For me, the idea that he is somehow mystically seeing, rather than inventing, visions of the future detracts from him as a character. The inventiveness is incongruously conferred instead on the final member of the team, the valet Passepartout. Like Phileas, he is drawn from the original Verne novel, but, as with Phileas, that is only a point of departure for the tv character. Personally, I didn't find Michel Courtemanche's buffoonery funny, but others seem to think very highly of him, so I guess this is a matter of taste. Happily, as the series goes on, both characters develop: Jules is allowed to have some engineering skills, and Passepartout settles down to being a reliable and resourceful, though frequently terrified, member of the team.

In principle, Rebecca is still employed by the British Secret Service, but having means of travel - Phileas' powered airship, the Aurora - that aren't matched by means of communication, she is often detached from them and operating with the informal team on the Aurora. The Service does, however, provide her with some nice gadgets - my favourite is the skirt hoop that unwinds to become a ladder.

The travel element of the set-up gives the storytelling a lot of scope, and it's interesting to have a panoptical view of the 1860s, drawing our attention to the contemporaneity of, for instance, Queen Victoria and the French Empire (under Napoleon III), the American Civil War, Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne. The time travel story line adds even more scope. With all this to play with, it's a pity that Gavin Scott's concept also included fantastical elements such as vampires, demonic possession, and the undead but mechanically preserved antagonist, Count Gregory. The need to have opponents worthy of the Foggs has dragged the story into comic-book territory.

Riders (1993 TV Movie)

Very watchable romp

[8/10 · 29 April 2021]

I haven't read the book, but this mini-series stands as a well-made piece of entertainment. The handsome and dashing, but dastardly, Rupert is contrasted with the home-loving, all-round decent, underdog, Jake. The characters are drawn with a broad brush, but there are many colourful characters, and it's tightly plotted, with unexpected twists. The horses and the men are very good-looking, and Michael Praed and Anthony Calf do a great job as the more complex characters in the story. Great fun altogether.

Tanu Weds Manu (2011)

What did I miss about this feminist wish-fulfilment fest?

[4/10 · 23 April 2021]

I'm not Indian, but I like old Bollywood films, and sometimes I make the mistake of watching modern ones. Of course I'm missing subtleties, as I'm relying on subtitles, but I see from other reviews that I'm not the only one who found Tanu thoroughly unpleasant and the romance beyond unbelievable.

There seems to be a sort of role reversal going on, where the girl is the one sowing her wild oats. But just in time for her to settle down and be tamed by marriage (the traditional scenario for the red-blooded male), a decent, virginal guy, with a prestigious job in London, appears and is inexplicably smitten by her.

He's a poor judge of character all round, as he becomes pally with her current squeeze, although the script is signalling to the audience very clearly that the guy is a bad lot.

I can only imagine that the success of the film means that it has somehow caught the zeitgeist in middle-class India. There is some demographic rooting for Tanu as an ideal modern woman.

Robin Hood (1984–1986)

Ingenious and complex plotting

[10/10 · 20 March 2021]

So many good reviews here, but I'd like to just add my appreciation of the story telling. The constant element is that we have a small band against large odds. Although they're highly skilled with their weapons, there are too few of them to overcome those odds without clever stratagems. Episode after episode, ingenious stratagems keep coming. But the writing keeps it real - sometimes things go horribly wrong.

The complexity of the plots is also admirable. The sub-plots that are used to get particular characters into particular places never seem contrived, as they always develop the characters as well, or reveal more back story.

The thing that really had me open-mouthed, though, was the way the new Robin was introduced into the story and into Marion's growing regard. Sheer genius.

Sleeping Beauty (I) (2014)

Clearly amateur but somehow pulls it off

[6/10 · 11 February 2021]

Everything about this is amateur, but it's played sincerely, and the storytelling is good, with original elements and a twist at the end. It's not the traditional 'Sleeping Beauty' story - the idea of a sleeping beauty is more of a trope than a narrative in many other films as well. This film is unironic: the good guys have a simple decency about them, and nobody makes excuses for the bad guys, so it's a refreshing change from Hollywood offerings referencing the same traditional fairy tale. The central romance, featuring the elf character, is poignant. I found it rewatchable.

A Challenge for Robin Hood (1967)

Barrie Ingham has a lovely voice

[7/10 · 4 August 2020]

I agree with other reviewers who found this romp surprisingly good. There's a background realism to the fun - for instance, the lincoln green cloth has to be acquired and paid for, and without any comment being made on it, it's apparent that there isn't quite enough to go round. The forest settings are better than usual in such a low-budget film - they've used a conifer woodland with wide walks, rather than the sort of recent-growth scrub than one sometimes sees. As others have said, Barrie Ingham seems an odd choice for the hero - he's far from being the most handsome man in the picture - but he has a wonderful rich voice. And like all of the serious parts, he delivers the lines with great sincerity. The dialogue has a good period feel as well.

The Spirit of Christmas (2015 TV Movie)

Not a Xmas movie as such

[1 January 2020]

This is an enjoyable film that doesn't insult the intelligence. Credible emotional arcs for both leads demand some real acting, which the actors deliver in full. (And the leading man, Thomas Beaudoin, is exceptionally handsome.) The story is basically that of 'The Ghost and Mrs Muir', a 1947 film with Rex Harrison, but with added wish fulfilment. The ending rather defies the logic of the spirit world as generally imagined, but what the hell.

Sanditon (2019–2023)

A guilty pleasure - rubbish, but gripping rubbish

[5/10 · 13 October 2019]

I dislike the heroine, Charlotte, for the same reasons many like her. She's a feisty, 21st century feminist, and a bit of a Mary Sue. There's no way a mature man like Sidney would consent to be schooled by a girl like this (lower social class, barely out of her girlhood, wears her hair down), or would be contrite because he hasn't been sensitive to his ward, Georgiana's, emotional needs. He is presumably spending a lot of money discharging his duties as her guardian, and has provided her with a female companion, and removed her from the vicinity of her bad-news gambling beau. He would be quite satisfied with himself.

Georgiana is stereotyped as wild and ungovernable - rather like the choice to make Tattycoram a black girl in the BBC's 2008 *Little Dorrit* series. While we can feel sorry for her, she has no redeeming qualities, unlike Marianne in *Sense and Sensibility*, on whom the character is perhaps partly based.

The dialogue is full of anachronisms, which is quite unnecessary - a good copy editor could have sorted that easily. Worse, though, people habitually speak in an unconstrained way that is completely anachronistic. Lady Denham could have been acerbic without being openly rude in public - I'm thinking of the scene with Georgiana.

Having said all that, it's gripping, with cleverly constructed plot lines, suspense and hooks. The cricket match is made to do a lot of useful work in that respect. Some of the acting is excellent - Anne Reid as Lady Denham in particular and Kris Marshall as Tom Parker. The two young women, though, who play Charlotte and Georgiana are completely outside the period - probably not their fault as the characters seem to have been written as very modern girls.

The costumes and sets are impressive, and I like the fact that Lady Denham is wearing very old-fashioned gowns.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)

Tone-deaf rubbish

[18 August 2019]

I caught a little bit of the middle of the film on television, and immediately abandoned my intention to continue recording it to watch later. It is neither a children's film - too much horror - or an adults' film - too childish. The acting by the children is wooden. The fantasy element is the wish fulfilment of a maladjusted adolescent. The plot just keeps pulling rabbits out of hats.

November (2017)

What if it were all true?

[10/10 · 4 May 2019]

This ethereally beautiful film transports the viewer to another, wholly unfamiliar, world. You don't know what on earth is going to happen next, but there is a coherence and logic to it, since the world is based on the folk tales of a particular country, Estonia. Estonia did not become Christian until the 13th century, and the belief system of the peasants portrayed in the film is essentially pagan with a very thin veneer of Christianity. For instance, the priest's servant is caught stealing and protects herself by violently tearing out some of the priest's hair, which is then used by the local witch - successfully - to turn the priest into a docile moron. Score one for paganism.

I was surprised that some other reviewers found the film funny. Certainly there is plenty of incongruity and a lot of human folly on display. But you can't afford to laugh at the beliefs of these people because they are all coming true in front of your very eyes. The film gelled for me when the ghosts take their sauna on All Hallows Eve. (The dead are supposed to walk, so here they are, looking like themselves in life but dressed all in white, enjoying a meal and a sauna.) A character had earlier remarked that she had peeked into the sauna on one of these occasions and saw human-sized chickens. The camera goes inside the sauna and - lo and behold! - human-sized chickens. Nothing is too absurd to happen if these people believe it.

The film is set in the 19th century, but I wasn't surprised that some other reviewers thought it was set in the Middle Ages. The peasants' clothes, tools and squalid living conditions are timeless. You have to look to the clothes of the Baron and his household for a fix on the period, but these are often old-fashioned and/or locally idiosyncratic.

It's perhaps explained in the book, which I haven't read, but the village is oddly short of young people. There is one baby, but otherwise the three characters in the love triangle are the only young people. The elderly villagers are really struggling to keep their smallholdings going and also do the forced labour demanded by their German overlord. And yet they can summon a woodland demon (it doesn't seem to me to be the Devil of Christian teaching at all), create robotic workers, and use magic and potions to turn themselves into animals, avert the plague, or even cause a person's death. Why aren't they rich and powerful? The scope of their pagan powers seems very circumscribed, as is their lives. Hans can reasonably ask for a girl to fall in love with him - but not for the Baron's daughter to fall in love with him.

The black and white photography is staggeringly beautiful, and the peasants' weather-beaten faces are mesmerising. I was very happy that I had the good fortune to see this in a cinema, but I will be buying it on DVD to watch over and over again.

Shadow of the Eagle (1950)

Beautiful and entrancing

[10/10 · 16 April 2019]

This is a film I can watch over and over again, for the beauty of the black and white photography, the Venetian interiors and exteriors, the Carnival, and the costumes. But above all for the romance - Valentina Cortese's assured, dignified, brave, and lovely Tarakanova, and the commanding air of Richard Greene as Count Orloff, with his unflappable right-hand man Captain Sergei Nikolsky ("I am within my rights at present, and that suffices").

Rams (2015)

Disappointing

[7/10 · 28 September 2018]

I was disappointed with this film. Possibly I was unlucky and got a dud copy, but the English subtitles failed about three-quarters of the way through and though they eventually came back, I had missed the crucial interactions, and so never found out what the quarrel between the men had been. The ending also left major questions unanswered. My disappointment also came partly from the expectation that I had of an ethnographic film. I expected traditionally-built houses and farm buildings, traditional crafts, traditional celebrations of the annual round of the agricultural year, and so on. These are modern, though small, farmers, living in modern houses, and the folksiest event they have is the judging of the best ram. There isn't even much about sheep husbandry - I'm none the wiser, for instance, about what the symptoms of scrapie actually are.

What Men Live by (1938)

Sweet innocent fable

[9/10 · 1 April 2017]

From a Tolstoy short story, transferred to post-Napoleonic England, this is a simple, sweet moral fable. The film is only 45 minutes long.

It reminded me of the films of Borzage - unsentimental in its depiction of the hardships of working-class life, sentimental (to modern tastes) in its Christian piety. The milieu is one of decent, ordinary people, struggling to survive, not overly bothered about man- made laws (at least as far as a bit of smuggling is concerned), but buoyed up by unquestioned religious faith. It's a film that couldn't be made nowadays, when the characters would have to be shown as downtrodden, oppressed, and thus not responsible for their own actions.

Into their lives comes a fallen angel, temporarily exiled for disobedience and sent to learn the answers to three questions about the human condition. The acting is excellent, in the theatrical style of the time, but not over-stated. There is a very effective contrast between the naturalistic dialogue of the ordinary people (well done, considering it originates in a Russian short story), and the limited speech and affect of the angel, until his final long declamatory speech.

If you like Chaplin or Borzage, or Victorian moral novels, I would very much recommend this if you ever get the chance to see it. (It was recently on Talking Pictures TV in the UK.)

The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

Sorry, I prefer Stewart Granger

[9/10 · 22 October 2016]

I've long loved the 1952 version with Stewart Granger as Rudolf Rassendyll/the King, and only recently discovered that it's a re- make (almost line by line and gesture by gesture, with only a few additions and changes) of the 1937 film with Ronald Coleman. Both do well to stick closely to the coolly witty dialogue of the novel (via an earlier stage adaptation). This is a large part of the enduring attraction of both films.

I agree with the other reviewers who praise Douglas Fairbanks Jr in the role of the villain, Rupert of Hentzau (though James Mason in 1952 is excellent too, with his more cynical take). But I was disappointed in Coleman's performance. As the King's double, which is his role for the larger part of the film, he seems perpetually anxious and slightly bewildered, which might be realistic for somebody in that position, but doesn't convey the dashing Rassendyll of the novel. Granger does. It's easy to see why Flavia falls in love with Granger, but Coleman lacks that charisma. His performance reminds me of his role as the sad figure of a WWI officer with amnesia in *Random Harvest*. The girl credibly falls in love with him in that film from a starting point of pity. How does that work with Flavia? It shouldn't.

The swashbuckling is well put together, but it's pretty obvious that Coleman isn't doing any at all - when he's filmed from the front, the picture is cut off so that we don't see his sword arm. The rest is done with doubles and shadows. One reviewer mentioned that Fairbanks also had a double, but at least there are frontal shots of him credibly waving a weapon about.

The Last Wagon (1956)

Family-friendly western romance and adventure

[9/10 · 1 April 2016]

This is a terrific women's film. Richard Widmark's character, Comanche Todd, is everything a man should be in the Wild West – brave, resourceful, resilient, stoical, astute, firm but fair with children, tender with women, able to lead and command, not violent by nature but able and willing to use violence to protect or avenge. Moreover, he is devastatingly handsome, with his golden tan, physical agility and unsophisticated eloquence. And this is combined with an extremely literal vulnerability: in the first scene he is captured by his brutal enemy and is dragged behind a horse, starved, parched, manacled and lashed to a wagon wheel. As the story progresses and he has to save the young people who survive the massacre of a wagon train, he is freed by gradual stages, as they come to trust him.

Some commenters have complained that the action is too tame, and the threat from the Indians is not made real. Indeed, the film is family friendly, and there is no gore on screen. But we are continually reminded that Todd's every action is under the shadow of the gallows, we see and hear the Indians massed for attack, we share the tension of what might be the party's final night, and the adult viewer will be aware of what children will miss – Todd twice makes sure that their remaining three bullets are kept for the girls, to spare them the fate that befell the females of the wagon train. He fights two Indians barehanded rather than use the gun. Stoicism is a quality that is at a premium in this setting, and the member of the party who doesn't have it, the younger of two sisters, has to develop it.

This is a different world from our modern one. The same man can be a hero to the young boy, Billy (Tommy Rettig), and a romantic figure to his older sister, Jenny (Felicia Farr). For most of the film, the boy is ahead of his sister in his admiration and growing affection, and gives it frank expression for both of them. The love scenes between Jenny and Todd are very well written and played. The characters are clumsy and unsubtle as they signal their interest in each other, but their sincerity saves them from awkwardness.

The final courtroom scene does clunk a bit, as various members of the party give their testimony in support of Todd, apparently unasked, or in response to an unspoken, off camera gesture from the judge. But it is satisfying, nevertheless, as it ties up the character arc of each of the young people, their growth measured by their relationship with Todd, who embodies the best qualities of both the Indians and the settlers.