Tag Archives: Michael Powell

‘This Above All’: Soap Box Derby

Stylized version of original poster.

Stylized version of the original poster.

Before I say anything else about “This Above All” (20th Century-Fox, 1942), I want to make it clear that I have a great affection for this picture. Probably far more things are wrong with it than are right or good, but it’s extremely atmospheric and stirring if you’re willing to meet it halfway. It’s full of decency, earnestness, romantic yearning and — this above all — emphatic patriotism. Much of it is well written; all of it is beautifully photographed (by Arthur C. Miller, who was nominated for his work, but lost to Joe Ruttenberg (“Mrs Miniver”)); the story — ludicrous as some of it is — is well-paced by director Anatole Litvak. It’s full of faults, but it’s never boring. Overall, I find it thoroughly entertaining and emotionally satisfying.

The title, however, made me approach the picture with considerable trepidation the first time I saw it. I was pretty sure it must be a reference to Polonius’ admonition to his son . . .

This above all: to thine own self be true.
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

. . . but I hoped it wasn’t. Unfortunately, the title is indeed a reference to Polonius’ speech, and it is quoted for the purpose of moral instruction. It comes at the end of the picture, and is underscored by Alfred Newman’s idiotic note-spinning, which is of a genre I call “Choir Celestial Claptrap.” I’m sick and tired of hearing this Shakespearean passage quoted out of context as if it were the Wisdom of the Ages, rather than what it is: perfectly sensible advice, marred by a nonsensical conclusion.* One can quite easily be true to oneself and a cheat to the rest of the world: that’s what villainy is all about. Besides, Polonius is, number one, a humbug, and a scumbag too. It is no wiser to take his advice about personal conduct than to receive moral instruction from Iago.
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* For me, the nadir of misinterpretation came away back in the seventies, when “60 Minutes” did a feature about arch anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly (author of “The Power of the Positive Woman”), who quoted the passage and placed heavy emphasis on the final word, “man.” Schlafly explained that Shakespeare’s intention was to instruct women to pretty themselves up for their hard-working men! Evidently, she confused Polonius and “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” with Jack Jones and Bacharach/David’s “Wives and Lovers.”

Original poster.

Original poster.

“This Above All” features enough undisguised “We’ve got to win this war — we’ve got to!” speeches to fill a half dozen morale-boosting pictures. (“We’ve got to win this war — we’ve got to!” is, in fact, its antepenultimate line.) The plot is full of borderline ludicrous episodes and accidents, and yet it works quite beautifully if you’re willing to embrace the foolishness. It strikes me as entirely heartfelt and done in a blaze of passion. With few exceptions, little of the acting is first rate, but many of the second raters are better than usual. As Joan Fontaine’s father, Philip Merivale is particularly good; so is Miles Mander in a tiny part. The screenplay by R.C. Sherriff is what I like most about it. I find his patriotic bunkum to be of a very high order. His speeches are not nearly as exquisite as Emeric Pressberger’s in “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” but they get the job done. Moreover, Sherriff actually gives the opposition a chance to make a strong case for its side. The opposition will, of course, have to change its mind by the last reel, but not before it has strutted and fretted its hour upon the soap box.

A Few Words about R.C. Sherriff

Robert Cedric Sherriff (June 6, 1896 — November 13, 1975) wrote an excellent anti-war play, “Journey’s End,” in 1928, which was based on his own experiences as a captain in the Great War. He was seriously wounded at Passchendaele in 1917 and invalided home. Success as a playwright did not come easily to him. By the time he wrote “Journey’s End,” he was an insurance broker and had written six unproduced plays. “Journey’s End” very nearly did not happen. Producers at the time had little interest in plays about war, especially those that featured no leading lady. (“No Leading Lady” is the title of Sherriff’s autobiography.) As they saw it, the War to End All Wars was also the War that Everyone Wished to Forget. Eventually, the script found its way to an eccentric producer, Maurice Browne, who gave it its West End premiere at the Savoy on January 21, 1929, where it played to packed houses for two years. It was Laurence Olivier’s first big break, also James Whale’s, who directed it. Three years later, James Whale hired Sherriff to write additional (uncredited) dialogue for “The Dark Old House,” and in 1933, hired him to write the screenplay for Claude Rains’ career-making picture, “The Invisible Man.” Sherriff went on to write many hit movies, including “Goodbye, Mr Chips,” “Random Harvest” (both based on novels by James Hilton) and “That Hamilton Woman.”

The Opening Argument

This opening scene hooked me at once. It immediately establishes the tone of the movie: it’s the middle of World War II, and the lazy immoral complacency of the Old Guard is vehemently attacked by a latter-day version of the Bright Young Thing — and the Bright Young Thing is in the right. Gladys Cooper, always a welcome old cat, must receive and endure a proper old pasting from a patriotic young beauty. As in nearly every picture Gladys Cooper ever appeared in (with the notable exception of “My Fair Lady”), she is thoroughly in the wrong. The tongue-lashing she receives from Joan Fontaine is wonderfully satisfying.

“One day we may look back and thank Hitler for some of the things he’s done to wake us up, but we’ll never look back and thank you!” How do you like the manners of this aristocratic young firebrand? Of course there’s a war on and dear old Albion is fighting for her very life, but does that give Prue the right to compare Miss Cooper unfavorably to Herr Hitler? The first time I saw this scene, the intensity of the rebuke just about knocked the breath out of me. But this is one of the things that makes Sherriff’s patriotism palatable. All through “This Above All,” Sherriff argues that the English class system is riddled with injustice and cruelty: many inequities will have to be put right if the country is to survive. But first, they must all pull together and defeat Hitler.

On her first night in WAAF training, Prudence goes out with a friend whose fiancé introduces her to a dark, handsome man of mystery named Clive Briggs (Tyrone Power). The two are simultaneously attracted and antagonistic to each other. And both of them are allowed to be right. Very unusual in a wartime propaganda picture.

Stolen Moments

“This Above All” captures beautifully the poignant yearning and the thrilling stolen moments that are the most delicious part of falling in love. Here are two examples of what I mean. First, Clive and Prue make plans to take a holiday together on her first leave:


I wish he were a better actor. He’s much better in the silences: in them, he’s very good. But oh man, those bum line readings of his . . .

And here is how their holiday starts. This sequence is a bouillon cube of the entire picture: it has nearly all of its essential elements: patriotic fervor (hers) and its opposite (his), the dream of romance colliding with the class struggle (theirs), England herself (courtesy of the Fox backlots and Robert Kane’s process shots) . . . and Gladys Cooper, who’s there to be disapproving of the way the improvident world keeps disarranging her table neither with her consent nor to her liking.

It isn’t terribly well acted, is it. No, she lets her eyebrows do most of her emoting, while he nearly always sounds as if he were reciting. Yet I find their inadequacies rather touching: the artificiality of her eyebrow acting and his inability to make lines of text sound like conversation strike me as near-virtues with this particular material. Besides, both of them are extremely attractive and they have real chemistry together. She’s better than he is. She does scorn and vehemence well, and she is better than good in the final reel, when things have become quite literally a matter of life and death. And he is good in the silences. Still, better acting would have made for a much better picture: the first time I saw it, I kept wishing Deborah Kerr and Laurence Olivier had played the leads, but there it is — mustn’t grumble. There was a war on.

A Ham Spills a Mess of Beans

Power and Fontaine part company with Mitchell. I love the atmospheric lighting.

Power and Fontaine part company with Thomas Mitchell. I love the atmospheric lighting.

From the “laddies” and “ayes” that pepper Thomas Mitchell’s sentences in this next clip, I take it we’re supposed to believe this proud Son of Elizabeth, New Jersey, is a Scot, but his accent is such a Hollywood Irish stew, it’s hard to know for sure. I have always been allergic to Mitchell’s boisterous, rubicund leprechaun act. He’s perfectly awful: with his face eternally aflame with riot, he reminds me of a fiery Brussels sprout. But it seems that mine is very much the minority opinion. At any rate, in this scene, in which his character provides us with an enormous amount of exposition, he has the twin merits of swiftness and energy. He’s also a bit less sentimental than usual. And I have been careful to end the clip a split second before he begins to roister.

I’m crazy about the song Brenda Forbes sings at the beginning of the clip. We don’t get to hear the entire song, and some of the lyrics are obscured, so I think they bear repeating. They go like this:

VERSE
A certain German chancellor has lost his head,
He’s going to get a headache somewhere else instead,
And he will be retiring very soon,
To join a certain Kaiser down in Doom,

CHORUS
Adolf, you’ve bitten off . . . much more than you can chew.
Come on, hold your hand out,
We’re all fed up with you. (Cor, blimey!)
Adolf, you toddle off, and all your Nazis too,
Or you may get something to remind you
Of the old red, white and blue.

VERSE
We’re sick of all the muddle and the mess you’ve made.
You’ve gone and stuck your fingers in the marmalade,
So now you’re going to get a big surprise.
You’re nothing but a basket full of lies.

Words and music by Annette Mills, ©1939.

Original sheet music.

Original sheet music.

Ty Complains, Joan Waves the Union Jack

This clip features the most extreme example of back-to-back soap box orations in the whole movie. They both mean what they say, but they’re in over their heads.

Poor Joan Fontaine! I’m sure she really does mean every word she dutifully recites; she pulls out all her stops; she changes tempo; her voice goes up hill and down dale; she varies the speed of her tremolo; she employs aposiopesis (Greek: ἀποσιώπησις, “becoming silent”: in oratory, it’s the breaking off of speech to indicate fullness of emotion); she does everything great actors do to ennoble big speeches — but all in vain: she simply doesn’t have the chops to make this sort of thing work. Halfway through, when she lifts her eyes to the heavens and lets the words come cascading out of her in a great frothing curd of sentimentality and ham, it’s almost painful how inadequate she is. She’s working so hard . . . ! I really am touched by her earnestness and diligence. Her pantomime of emotion at the very end, when she executes a hiccough-like facial contortion, eyebrows aloft and working like mad, a sudden widening of the eyes, and finally a little frown just as she buries her face in Ty Power’s chest — pathetic . . . I confess it always gives me a shame-faced chuckle.

After this oration, and for the rest of the picture, Tyrone Power is in for a rum go of it — oh, a very rum go. Among other miseries, he seriously injures his hand and must seek the help of a district nurse named Emily Harvey, who patches him up, but tells him plainly that she will have to report him to the authorities. German spies have been reported in the vicinity and she must do her duty. Nurse Harvey is played to perfection by Jill Esmond, who was recently divorced from Laurence Olivier after ten years of marriage.

Jill Esmond gives a beautifully restrained performance as Nurse Emily Harvey..

Jill Esmond gives a beautifully restrained performance as Nurse Emily Harvey.

The School of Hard Knox

Quite a while later, after having endured many indignities and close calls, Clive fetches up at the rectory of the Reverend Alexander Knox. Knox is another actor I’ve never much liked, but he handles this stuff well — though he has a bad habit, when making his significant points, of staring into the middle distance — a cliché that is endemic among ham actors. We are offered no explanation of why Jesus has called the rector’s left hand home before the rest of him; I assume his loss is intended to give his moral authority additional weight — that old sophism: he has suffered, therefore he has wisdom. (Thirteen years later, a similarly handicapped Spencer Tracy brought justice to Black Rock — single-handed, as it were.)

Out of context, the rector seems mild enough, but I bristle when he says, “I see you as a symbol of our age — an Age of Reason that’s driven out the Age of Faith.” Quite apart from its being intolerably patronizing, I find it maddeningly wrong-headed for the clergyman to complain that the main problem of living through the Age of Hitler is that everyone is behaving too reasonably.

‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’: The Greatest British Motion Picture

Criterion Collection Blu-ray cover.

Criterion Collection Blu-ray cover.

I’ve admired “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” (Rank Organisation, 1943) for decades, but until Criterion released it on Blu-ray, my enjoyment has always been impaired somewhat by the quality of the Technicolor. Criterion’s DVD release from about a decade ago was a vast improvement over what I’d seen before, but I still disliked the Easter-egg pastels. British Technicolor, as I understand it, uses different chemicals from American Technicolor, which creates an entirely different palate. Most of the aficionados I’ve heard talk about color (Martin Scorsese, for instance) prefer the British Technicolor process; I do not. I like the vividness of American Technicolor — “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “An American in Paris” and “Magnificent Obsession” are three great examples of the kind of color I like best. Perhaps I’ll go into this in more detail in another post, but for now the point I want to make is this: with the new Blu-ray transfer of “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” one of the only two real objections I had with the picture has been removed: it looks fabulous. (There is, however, one challenging aspect that comes as a result of the new, super-sharp image: the age makeup that is used throughout the picture is unmistakable. Whether or not this is distracting, however, will surely depend on the individual. I rather like the additional layer of artifice it adds to the story, which is decidedly artificial and artistic, rather than realistic and documentarian.  Many of the outdoor locations (especially the battlefields) are obviously shot on sound stages (I like this, too).  But I can quite understand how a lot of people will find greasepaint wrinkles and white shoe-polish in the hair difficult to accept as indications of the depredations of age. C’est la guerre.)

Let me get my remaining objection out of the way at once: it’s the crummy score by Allan Gray. Mind you, it’s crummy, but hardly appalling in the way that so many modern scores are appalling: it isn’t used as aural wallpaper; it’s used with discretion and it’s nearly always clear what purpose it serves. The only problem I have with it is that I don’t like the way it sounds: the romantic theme is the most satisfactory thing in the score, but to my ear, it’s not as gorgeous as it should be (I can’t help wishing Korngold could have scored this picture!) — it’s not as fine as the writing and the acting. The comic underscoring is too broad and corny — it doesn’t tickle my funnybone; it digs its elbow into my ribs in a most disagreeable fashion.  Of course, it could be a whole lot worse: Allan Gray’s wretched score for “The African Queen” is far more bumptious and irritating — he’s at his worst when he thinks “it meet/To put an antic disposition on,” which he does throughout that picture.  In “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” which is less comic than “The African Queen,” he’s less overtly antic . . . but, alas, it appears that I am not merely anti-antic, but also anti-semi-antic.

The history of “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” is a long and tortuous one, beginning with Winston Churchill’s failed attempts to stop the picture from being made, to its being hacked to bits and restructured for American audiences in its first run, then to its almost total disappearance, and finally to its complete restoration in the 1990s. What must have audiences thought of it when it was slashed from 163 minutes to 90? On the commentary track, Martin Scorsese, who first saw it on a black and white television back in the 1950s, says it was impossible to follow what was going on. In its pristine restoration, it is a masterpiece: the single greatest British picture of them all. As far as I know, there’s not even a close second. It’s one of only a handful of works of genius ever put on film. Unlike many great pictures, it’s also a huge amount of fun. It is alternately hilarious, serious, charming, poignant and heartbreaking. It is lovely to look at and even more delightful to know. The more often I see it, the deeper my love for it grows. But do yourself a favor and watch it on Blu-ray, which will give you the truest experience. The DVD will do in a pinch, but the Blu-ray offers a much better picture and soundtrack. (The clips I have included are not, alas, from the Blu-ray — but they’re good enough to get the idea across.)

The acting from everyone in the cast is superlative. Deborah Kerr was only 21 when she made the picture; according to director Michael Powell, he was constantly astonished by her intelligence and talent. After one romantic scene halfway through the picture, Powell says on the commentary track, “Isn’t she fine? She always hit the right note. Most actors — even actresses — are not particularly intelligent; Deborah was particularly intelligent.” During another scene Powell says, almost in a state of bewilderment, “And she never put a foot wrong. She knew things in the part that she couldn’t have possibly known as a girl.” And indeed, her performance is almost unimaginably superb. She plays three separate roles that add up to what I think may reasonably be considered The Eternal Feminine: three young women who come into the life of our hero over the course of his career. Take for instance, this scene, in which she handles the dialogue with the finesse of an actress (I mean a great actress, of course) twice her age and with the sort of moral authority that comes only from extraordinary intelligence. Though I’ve admired Deborah Kerr for as long as I can remember, her performance in “Colonel Blimp” fills me with something more exalted and exhilarating than mere admiration.

Commonsense and Bad Manners

Her intelligence and diction remind me always of that line from “The Agamemnon,” which Taplow construes for Mr Crocker-Harris in “The Browning Version“:  θαυμάζομέν σου γλῶσσαν — “We marvel at thy tongue.” That’s the wonderful Roger Livesey who gets cold tongue for his supper. Michael Powell hoped to cast Laurence Olivier in the lead role, but the military refused to grant him temporary leave from active duty. Olivier was a much bigger star at the time, but I don’t think he had nearly the soulfulness and conspicuous honesty of Livesey — and none of the pathos. Once you’ve seen Roger Livesey in the part, no other actor seems possible: he’s just about the most charming and lovable actor who ever performed in front of a camera.

“Colonel Blimp” tells of the forty year military career of General Clive Wynne-Candy, running from the Boer War until the middle of the Second World War. In the course of those four decades, we see how manners, morals, styles and warfare change — we see whole ways of life come to an end and old duffers who try to figure out how they fit in in a world they don’t understand — a new world that is being created by young men who know nothing about who and what came before them. Clive Candy meets his greatest friend by accident. After a chance altercation over a point of honor in a Berlin café, Candy finds himself challenged to a duel (with sabers) against an opponent he has never met. Both he and his Prussian officer opponent give each other a good pasting — Candy takes eight stitches to the upper lip; his Prussian opponent, twelve stitches to the forehead. While they are recuperating in the same hospital, they meet over a rubber of bridge and become lifelong friends. This is the scene where they meet in hospital.

Very Much

The charming German lady, Frau von Kalteneck, is a wonderful actress by the name of Ursula Jeans. She was the wife of Roger Livesey and also the sister of the sublime comedienne, Isabel Jeans, who was the first Mrs Claude Rains. Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff is the great Viennese ham, Anton Walbrook. Walbrook is awfully wonderful as Lermontov, the demented ballet master in “The Red Shoes,” but I don’t think he was ever better than he is in this one.

Several weeks go by in a hurry and we arrive at this, the next scene in the picture. Clive (Livesey) has fallen in love with Edith (Kerr), but doesn’t know it. Theo (Walbrook) has also fallen in love with Edith, and does know it. Edith has fallen in love with both Theo and Clive and doesn’t know what, if anything, will become of her.

I Came to Berlin to Find a Rat, and I Found Two of the Grandest People I’ve Ever Met

While it is certainly tempting at this point to go into some detail about at least a few of the major themes in the picture, I think I will forswear that temptation for the time being. Instead, I’ll show you two of my favorite scenes, both of which present thematic material forcefully, beautifully and, I think, poetically. (They are both certainly beautifully spoken and acted — “Colonel Blimp” has more interesting, beautiful voices than any other picture I know.) Both scenes are in the way of being quite unabashed propaganda; both present the most enchanting propaganda I’ve ever come across.

The first comes at the end of The Great War, a war we’re to accept as a fable with a moral, which, in as few words as possible is:

Right Is Might

I can’t tell if the scene, out of context, seems a bit thick. But in the context of the picture, Clive Candy’s world has been so thoroughly created in the two hours that precede it, the moralizing is entirely earned and very moving indeed. I don’t know of another picture that makes decency so exciting and satisfying. It’s propaganda of the very highest order. I particularly admire the set, which took a month to set up and two weeks to clear away after shooting wrapped.

In the last third of the picture, Theo, having lost his wife Edith, and wanting to get out of Germany before it’s too late, arrives in England, seeking asylum. When the official gives him a hard time about not leaving Germany in 1933, as so many others did, Theo delivers a thrilling monologue. When Michael Powell handed him the pages and told him that it would be shot in one long take, Herr Walbrook almost passed out. While you watch this scene, notice how Powell removes, little by little, the ambient sound as the monologue progresses till there are no street noises, typewriters, bells, footsteps . . . nothing but the human voice. I find the effect magical. I won’t do this often, but I’ve included two versions of the scene. One is the full scene, nine minutes long; the second is the great monologue with a little set up dialogue preceding it. If you don’t have nine minutes to spare, by all means, check out the second one first. Then you can always come back and see the scene in its entirety some other time. As I say, I won’t do this often, but this seems to me a special case. (N.B.: The short version is much louder.)

The Full Scene

http://youtu.be/HbyDwfOWS6c
Few of the actors in the smaller parts are familiar to modern audiences, but many of them were lions of the London stage — some of them shared the stage with Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. The President of the Tribunal in the scene above is played by a popular West End actor, A.E. Matthews. In his youth, Matthews worked at a London bookseller; when he learnt that Sir Henry Irving had worked not only in the same bookshop, but at the very same desk as he, he decided to devote his life to the theatre. During his long and distinguished career, he worked with everybody from Ellen Terry to Elaine Stritch.

The Great Monologue Only