Reviews

The "tycoon" of the title is Frederick Alexander, a wealthy British industrialist with business interests in South America, but he is not the main character in this movie. That is Johnny Munroe, an American engineer who is building a mountain railroad tunnel for Alexander. There are two strands to the plot. One concerns a romance between Munroe and Alexander's beautiful daughter Maura. The other concerns a dispute between Alexander and Munroe as to how the tunnel should be built. Munroe (who would have preferred to build a bridge as an alternative, but was overruled) wants to line the tunnel with cement, which he believes would make it safer. Alexander believes that the cement lining is unnecessary and would make the project too expensive.

There are some good things about this film. There is some attractive photography of the mountain landscapes (supposedly in the Andes but actually shot in California) and there is a thrilling cliffhanger ending. The film's main problems, however, are firstly that it could have done with some judicious cutting, and secondly the inconsistent way in which the characters are written.

At first Alexander is strongly opposed to his daughter's romance with Munroe, and then he is virtually hustling them to the altar. The explanation for this sudden volte-face is that he wants to save his daughter's honour after she has been seen with Munroe alone and unchaperoned. Well, perhaps Latin American fathers might have behaved like this in 1947, but Alexander is clearly English, and I doubt if any Englishman of this period would have forced his daughter into a shotgun marriage unless she were actually pregnant. The marriage does not make Alexander any fonder of Munroe, and to express his dislike he cuts off the supplies which Munroe will need to build the tunnel. The scriptwriters seem to have overlooked the fact that, by behaving in this way, Alexander is acting against his own interests, as the tunnel is being built for his company. (The phrase "cutting off his nose to spite his face" comes to mind).

One reviewer writes that "Most people don't like this film at least in part because Wayne convincingly plays someone completely unlikeable - and that's the point". I cannot agree. Wayne did occasionally play villains, in films like "Reap the Wild Wind" or "Wake of the Red Witch". I don't think, however, that it was ever the intention to portray make him completely in "Tycoon" At the beginning Munroe comes across as the typical Wayne hero- a brave, strong man of action, something of a rough diamond but basically decent at heart. When Alexander seems to be doing his best to frustrate his project, Munroe tends to overreact by throwing his toys out of the pram, abandoning his previous concern for his men's welfare and for getting the job done professionally, leading Maura to leave him, but by the end of the film Munroe seems to have been rehabilitated and he and Maura are back together.

RKO were not the wealthiest of the major Hollywood studios, and this was their most expensive production to date. It was popular at the box office, but not popular enough to recoup the costs of production, and it ended up losing money. Today it comes across as overlong and difficult to watch, probably of most interest to John Wayne fans. 5/10.

Between 1971 and 1978 the BBC used to dramatise a ghost story every year under the title "A Ghost Story for Christmas", and the first five entries in the series were all based upon tales by that great master of the genre, M. R. James. The tradition has been revived in recent years, and ten more Christmas ghost stories have appeared at irregular intervals since 2005; "Woman of Stone" is the most recent episode, having been broadcast on Christmas Eve 2024.

When I was young I used to love the children's stories of E. Nesbit, such as "The Railway Children" and "Five Children and It", although I must admit that I have never read any of her works for adults. "Woman of Stone" is based on one of these, her short story "Man-Size in Marble". The film begins in the 1920s when Nesbit is an old woman with not long to live. She narrates the story to her Indian doctor. In the 1880s a young couple named Jack and Laura Lorimer move into a country cottage. Although they have not been married long, we learn that there have already been difficulties in their marriage, largely caused by Jack's unreasoning jealously.

Jack and Laura learn, partly from the local doctor (also Indian, and played by the same actor) and partly from their housekeeper Mrs Dorman, of a local legend about two life-sized marble effigies of knights in the village church. It is said that the two men murdered their wives whom they wrongly suspected of adultery. According to the legend, every Christmas Eve the two effigies rise from their tombs at midnight and make their way out of the church towards the site of their castle- which just happens to have stood where Jack and Laura's cottage now stands. The film explores what happens when Jack goes to investigate whether or not the legend is true.

The basic idea seems an intriguing one, but the denouement here is not very interesting. The knights come to the cottage and strangle Laura, presumably to punish her for her supposed infidelity to Jack; Jack is then arrested and hanged for her murder. The end of the story is so rushed that several important points are swept under the carpet. We never learn what evidence there is against Jack, apart from the circumstantial evidence that he is known to be a jealous husband. As another reviewer points out, if Jack really was guilty of murder, he certainly would not have invited the doctor back to the cottage where the dead body is lying. And a man who kept babbling about how his wife had been killed by a stone effigy would probably have been found not guilty by reason of insanity; no sane murderer would have invented such a story to explain away his crime.

Although the story is supposed to be part of the "Ghost Story for Christmas" series, Mark Gatiss, who wrote and directed the film, seems less interested in the ghosts than he does in the marriage of Jack and Laura and what this tells us about the balance of power between men and women. He gives both the elderly Nesbit and Mrs Dorman long feminist diatribes about the way women have been treated by men. Admittedly, the real-life Nesbit had good cause to complain, as her first husband, Hubert Bland, had been an incorrigible womaniser, but the story of her matrimonial woes doesn't really have much to do with the ghost story which is the ostensible subject of this film. Gatiss has produced at least one excellent "Ghost Story for Christmas", "The Mezzotint", but "Woman of Stone" is not in the same class. 5/10

A goof. Although the story is supposed to take pace around Christmas, the leaves are still on the trees and just staring to turn to their autumn colours, suggesting that filming actually took place in October.

"Born Free" is based on the book by Joy Adamson, the wife of George Adamson, a game warden with the Kenya wildlife service. In 1956 they adopted three orphaned lion cubs; two of them were eventually sent to Rotterdam Zoo, but they decided to keep the third, to whom Joy had become particularly attached and had named "Elsa" after a childhood friend. When they were told by George's boss, John Kendall, that they would not be able to keep Elsa as a pet, they decided to return her to the wild, after training her in the skills she would need to survive. The film shows how they set about this difficult task and how Elsa was eventually rehabilitated as a wild lioness.

Joy and George are played by another real-life couple, Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers. (Joy, whose real name was Friederike, was Austrian by birth, but no mention is made of this in the film, and McKenna plays her as an Englishwoman without any foreign accent). The film was to have a major impact on their lives; they became enthusiastic campaigners for conservation and animal welfare, and later set up the Born Free Foundation to support these objectives.

The film was shot on location on the plains of East Africa, using genuine wild animals, and has something of the look of a wildlife documentary, with the difference that the animals are effectively acting out a pre-written script. (How the film-makers managed to get them to do that remains a mystery to me). I first saw it as a child and was enthralled as I had a passion for wildlife which has remained with me into adult life. There are two fine performances from Travers and McKenna, and an even better one from Elsa the Lioness. (She might have been a nominee for Best Actress were that award not reserved for members of the species Homo sapiens). There is an excellent musical score by John Barry, who would later write the score for another East African epic, "Out of Africa", and a fine title song sung by Matt Monro. And the ending is genuinely moving. A film for all animal-lovers. 9/10. (8/10 for the film, with a bonus point for the music and the song).

"Land Girls" was the nickname given to members of the Women's Land Army, an organisation set up in Britain during both world wars. In wartime it was vital that Britain, which in peacetime relied heavily on imported food, should become self-sufficient. Many male agricultural workers, however, were away serving with the Forces, so women were recruited to take their place.

This film is set in 1941/42 in the Dorset countryside and centres upon three Land Girls from different social backgrounds- working-class Prue, middle-class Stella and upper-class Ag. (It's short for Agapanthus, although she is horribly embarrassed by her full name, and tries to pretend that she is really called Agatha). The three are sent to work on the same farm, but the film concentrates more on their love lives than it does on their agricultural duties. They become involved in a complicated web of romantic and erotic entanglements; all three, at one time or another, enter into a relationship with Joe, the farmer's son, even though they all have another man in their lives, and even though Joe is supposed to be engaged to a local girl, Janet. (Stella is also engaged, to Philip, an officer in the Royal Navy).

A criticism made by several on this board is that although the film is set in the 1940s its characters exhibit the moral and social attitudes of the 1990s, especially when it comes to sex. Now it is certainly true that people (especially women) in the middle years of the century, before the so-called sexual revolution, were less promiscuous than people in later decades, partly because of a lack of reliable contraception and partly because of more conservative social attitudes. That generalisation, however, is perhaps truer of peacetime than it is of the war years, when the ever-present dangers of war could give rise to a spirit of "Let us be merry today, for tomorrow we die".

Nevertheless, even if there may have been a certain psychological truth about the way Prue, Ag and Stella carried on, it did not make it easy to like them or sympathise with them. It just made them seem completely self-centred. What I disliked about "The Land Girls" was the way in which it expected me to care about characters who do not care much about anyone other than themselves. We are supposed to sympathise with Stella when she ends up having to marry Philip, who has been wounded in action, even though she would prefer Joe. The rationale is that she fears being looked down upon if she jilts a wounded hero, but it seemed to me that Philip was by far the more decent and likeable of the two men and that Stella didn't really have much to complain about. There could have been a decent film made about the Land Girls, whose contribution to the war effort has largely been overlooked by the cinema. This rather dull, novelettish romantic farrago is not it. 5/10.

"Rocky" was the film which first made Sylvester Stallone a major star; he wrote the script himself, and then insisted that he be cast in the leading role. (The studio, United Artists, had liked the script, but had initially wanted to cast a more established name such as Robert Redford or Ryan O'Neal). Stallone's gamble paid off; "Rocky" became the highest-grossing film of 1976 and won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

There is a convention that films about sport, regardless of whether they are based upon fact or wholly fictitious, should be based upon one of two plots. One of these can be titled "Triumph against the Odds", and the other "The Rise and Fall of a Champion". The "odds" in that first title can be either literal (stories about the underdog or rank outsider who defeats a more fancied opponent) or metaphorical (stories about someone who overcomes injury or some other personal disadvantage in order to achieve success).

"Rocky" is a good example of the underdog story. The underdog here is Rocky Balboa, a journeyman professional heavyweight boxer from Philadelphia. Rocky does not make much of a living from boxing, and has a second job as a debt collector for a local gangster and loanshark. The overdog is Apollo Creed, the reigning world heavyweight champion. Creed is due to make a title defence but his opponent has pulled out with a hand injury. None of the other leading heavyweights are able to step in at short notice, and because Creed is unwilling to cancel the bout, Rocky is drafted in, giving him an unlikely shot at the world title.

For me, Best Picture Oscar winners tend to fall into three categories. At one end of the scale there are films- "Gentleman's Agreement", "Gigi", "Terms of Endearment"- which are so unworthy of the honour that they make me wonder just what the Academy could have been thinking of. At the other end of the scale are films- "Casablanca", "On the Waterfront", "A Man for All Seasons", "Annie Hall", "Chariots of Fire"- which are so good that I couldn't possibly dissent from the Academy's decision.

And then in the middle you have films like "Rocky". Or, for that matter, something like "The Greatest Show on Earth" or "In the Heat of the Night". None of these are bad films- I would go so far as to say that "In the Heat of the Night" is a very good one- but in each case I have mixed feelings about their "Best Picture" wins, because they won ahead of a particular favourite of mine, "High Noon", "The Graduate" and, in 1976, "Taxi Driver" (although I would also have accepted "Network" as that year's best picture).

And yet I think that there is a reason why "Rocky" beat "Taxi Driver" and "Network" to the award. All three films came out at a bleak period in American history. The country had just extricated itself from a bloody, unnecessary and humiliating war in Vietnam. President Nixon had been forced to resign in disgrace over Watergate, and his replacement Gerald Ford seemed a dull, uninspiring figure. The economy was going into recession. Although 1976 marked the country's Bicentennial celebrations, many Americans felt that they had little to celebrate. The black comedy of "Network" and the sense of disillusionment which runs through "Taxi Driver" must have seemed all too representative of the national mood in the mid seventies.

"Rocky", on the other hand, aspires to rise above that depressed mood and to offer a message of hope. It is significant that the fight between Rocky and Creed takes place on 4th July 1976, the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, in Philadelphia, the city where the Declaration was signed. Creed chooses Rocky as his opponent largely because he is an Italian-American, and therefore a countryman of Christopher Columbus. The character of Creed is partly based upon Muhammad Ali- a street-smart, cocky African-American with a habit of spouting doggerel verse and of running down his opponents. He is, however, a Muhammad Ali minus the radical politics and the Nation of Islam. He is, in fact, a quite unashamed American patriot, wearing stars-and-stripes boxing trunks and dressing up as George Washington or Uncle Sam. We are never told whether Creed fought in Vietnam, but you couldn't imagine him refusing the draft as Ali did.

Rocky himself is less openly nationalistic than Creed, but he is in his way a symbol of the American Dream, the little man who can aspire to the big time. Stallone must have considered writing an ending in which Rocky wins his big fight, but probably rejected it because it would have seemed too much of a cliche. In the event Rocky loses, but his defeat can still be seen as a triumph against the odds because he puts Creed on the floor and takes him the full distance- the first man to have achieved either of these things- and only loses by a split decision.

Stallone has never been my favourite actor, and he has some dreadful movies on his CV. ("The Specialist", "Judge Dredd", the "Get Carter" remake, all the "Rambo" franchise except perhaps the first instalment. "Rocky" is certainly better than any of those, and the scenes of the big fight itself are well handled; director John G Avildsen manages to generate considerable tension. Nevertheless, I was left with the feeling that the film's Best Picture award was given more for its services to the cause of patriotic optimism than for its inherent merits. 7/10.

"The Franchise Affair" is a mystery thriller set in the quiet English market town of Melford. (Supposedly near Aylesbury, although the was actually shot in and around Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, more than fifty miles away). Betty Kane, a 17-year-old schoolgirl, claims that she was kidnapped by two women, a mother and daughter, kept as a prisoner and forced to work as a maid. The title derives from the fact that the two women's house, a large country mansion outside the town, is known as "The Franchise".

Betty's allegations bitterly divide the community. Although the two women protest their innocence, the local newspaper takes Betty's side and most of the inhabitants follow suit. The two women appoint a local solicitor, Robert Blair, to represent them, but the police believe Betty's story and bring charges. Blair is forced to turn detective to prove his clients' innocence, thus making himself very unpopular with many of his neighbours. The main obstacle he has to overcome is that, although his clients maintain that Betty has never set foot inside "The Franchise", she seems to have a detailed knowledge of the interior of the house. The case culminates in a trial scene. Another sub-plot deals with a growing romance between Blair and Marion, the younger of the two women.

The film is at times an engaging crime thriller, although to my mind it had one drawback. It is based upon a novel by Josephine Tey, who set her story in the mid twentieth century but based it upon a notorious eighteenth-century scandal. Now in the eighteenth century, before the institution of the modern police force and modern system of justice, it might have been credible that well-to-do ladies might kidnap young working-class girls in order to force them into domestic service. (Although generally they did not need to do so, as the working classes were generally forced into domestic service by poverty rather than physical force). It strains credibility to suggest that Marion and her mother might behave in such a way two hundred years later, believing that they could get away with such a crime. The surprise involved in this story is not that Betty is eventually exposed as a liar. What surprised me is that anybody, let alone the great majority of the townspeople, ever believed her story in the first place. This is a story which might have worked better with a period setting. 6/10.

In the early days of its history, racism was a problem which Hollywood preferred to brush under the carpet, largely because it was itself a part of that problem. It concentrated on films by white Americans, for white Americans, about white Americans. Black actors were relegated to minor roles (often as servants) and the experiences of black Americans ignored. It did not make many openly racist movies (although there were notorious exceptions such as "Birth of a Nation"), but it did not make many anti-racist ones either. When it did, it preferred to concentrate on anti-Semitism (as in "Gentleman's Agreement" or "Crossfire") rather on discrimination against black Americans. (Again, there were occasional exceptions, such as the excellent "Intruder in the Dust").

Things began to change in the late fifties and sixties, when Hollywood belatedly developed a social conscience about racial issues. Sidney Poitier was America's first big-name male black star (Dorothy Dandridge was the first big-name female black star), and therefore the default choice whenever there was a role which needed to be played by a black man, generally in an issue movie making some worthy point about racism. The days of casting black actors in leading roles which could equally well have been played by white ones still lay some way in the future. "The Defiant Ones" and "Lilies of the Field" were both issue movies of this type, and in 1967 Poitier made two more, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "In the Heat of the Night".

Although the story is set in the Deep South, most of the filming actually took place in Sparta, Illinois. (It was felt that making a film with an anti-racist theme anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line would not go down well with local people). The name "Sparta" was kept so that the town signs would not need to be changed, but for the purposes of the film the town is supposed to be in Mississippi. The film-makers were apparently unaware that there really is a small town called Sparta in Mississippi, although not in the same location as its fictitious namesake, which is in the north-west of the state, near the border with Arkansas.

Virgil Tibbs, a black police officer from Philadelphia, is passing through Sparta on the night that a wealthy white industrialist named Phillip Colbert is murdered. Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of the murder, on little evidence other than the colour of his skin. The Sparta police department is all white and, up to and including the local police chief Bill Gillespie, deeply prejudiced against black people. Upon learning that Tibbs is indeed a police officer, Gillespie reluctantly orders his release. Tibbs wants to leave town as soon as possible, but his superior in Philadelphia asks him to stay in Sparta to help with the investigation, as he is one of Philadelphia's top homicide detectives.

Like "The Defiant Ones" the film is about two men, one black and the other a bigoted white, learning to work together. The difference, of course, is that here the two are on the right side of the law; in "The Defiant Ones" the characters played by Poitier and Tony Curtis were escaped convicts. The process is a difficult one. Gillespie looks down on black people and finds it difficult to believe that Tibbs can hold a senior position in another police force. Tibbs despises Gillespie, not only for his bigotry but also for his crime investigation methods, which are crude and primitive by Philadelphia standards. Apart from Tibbs himself, Gillespie manages to arrest several other people (including one of his own officers) believing that they are the killer, before he is forced to admit that they are innocent.

Tibbs himself is not infallible. He suspects that the killer is Eric Endicott, Sparta's wealthiest citizen and a man with a prime motive to hate Colbert. Colbert was planning to build a new factory in the town, something to which Endicott was passionately opposed, believing that the factory would damage his own business interests. Endicott is also an overt racist; when Tibbs is questioning him he loses his temper and slaps his face. Tibbs responds by slapping him back, a revolutionary gesture in 1967 when Americans were shocked by the idea that a black man could strike a white man with impunity. It turns out, however, that Endicott had nothing to do with the killing and that the real murderer's motives had nothing to do with the factory.

When first released in 1967, the film was both a critical and a commercial success. It was nominated for seven Oscars, winning five including Best Picture and Best Actor for Rod Steiger. (Poitier was not even nominated, but then he already had an Oscar for "Lilies of the Field". It is always easier to win a first Oscar than a second one as the Academy likes to spread the honours evenly). I must admit that I have never agreed with this decision. My Best Picture for 1967 would have been "The Graduate" (with Disney's version of "The Jungle Book" as runner-up) and its star, Dustin Hoffman, would have been Best Actor. Yes, "In the Heat of the Night" is a well-made detective thriller which holds the attention, and Steiger is certainly good. It has a lot more going for it than the dull "Gentleman's Agreement", which seems to have won "Best Picture" on the strength of its worthy theme alone. In my view, however, it does not have quite the same depth of meaning as "The Graduate", one of my all-time favourites. 8/10.

The last Ingrid Bergman film I saw was "Indiscreet" in which a middle-aged bachelor pretends to be married in order to dissuade his girlfriend from getting ideas about marriage. And "Cactus Flower" is another film starring Ingrid Bergman in which a middle-aged bachelor pretends to be married in order to dissuade his girlfriend from getting ideas about marriage.

Julian Winston, a Manhattan dentist, is in a relationship with a much younger woman named Toni Simmons. Julian is unmarried, but tells her that he has a wife and three children. Despairing that Julian will never leave his supposed "wife" for her, Toni attempts suicide, but is saved by the intervention of her neighbour Igor Sullivan. Her suicide attempt finally persuades Julian that he should marry her, but he is unwilling to admit that he has been lying to her, so he tells her that he will divorce his wife.

Toni, however, insists upon meeting "Mrs Winston" to make sure that she is happy with the divorce arrangements, so Julian persuades Stephanie Dickinson, his dental nurse, to pose as his wife, and his friend Harvey to pose as his wife's supposed lover. The film then explores all the complications arising from this situation. The title refers to the fact that Stephanie grows cacti as a hobby; one of her plants flowers in the course of the film, and a parallel is drawn between this event and Stephanie, who has previously been rather prim and starchy, blossoming into a beautiful and confident woman.

In 1969 Goldie Hawn was already well known as a comedienne thanks to "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In", but this was her first appearance in a major role in a film, and brought her an Oscar for "Best Supporting Actress". (This was her only Oscar win to date; she has only received one other nomination, for "Private Benjamin"). Whether this really was a supporting performance is debatable owing to the film's rather lopsided structure; in the first half Toni is very much the leading female character, but in the second half more stress is placed upon Stephanie. Hawn is certainly cute and adorable here, and probably deserved "Best Supporting Actress", but I doubt if she would have won "Best Actress", where she would have had to compete against Maggie Smith who won that award for "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie".

"Cactus Flower" has one thing in common with Goldie's next film, "There's a Girl in My Soup" from the following year. Both films involve a romance between Goldie's character and a much older man. The classical romantic comedy rule book contained no prohibition against an ending in which a lovely young woman became the bride of a man old enough to be her father. Indeed, at one time such endings were positively encouraged in Hollywood, but by 1969/70 they were starting to look just a bit too nineteen-fifties and out of place in the brave new world of the swinging sixties and seventies. So Toni here (like Goldie's character Marion in the later film) does not actually end up with Julian but with a boy near her own age, in this case Igor.

Julian winds up falling in love with Stephanie, who is much closer in age to him and who has long cherished a secret passion for him. Ingrid Bergman at 54 was in fact several years older than Walter Matthau, although she certainly looked younger. When I reviewed "Indiscreet", made eleven years before "Cactus Flower", I said that Bergman. Whose previous experience had mostly been in serious drama, never really seemed comfortable with romantic comedy. Here, however, she is a lot better, and makes Stephanie a highly sympathetic character, a beautiful older woman who has hidden her beauty and her love of life for too long, but who eventually rediscovers them. I was less keen on Matthau, who seemed miscast. He was, certainly, a gifted actor in comedy, but his characters normally seemed to be grouchy or eccentric, as in "The Odd Couple" or (at a later stage of his career) "Grumpy Old Men", and he doesn't really seem right as a smooth rom-com hero like Julian.

The film was based upon a successful Broadway play, which was in turn based upon a French play, "Fleur de Cactus". ("There's a Girl in my Soup" was also based upon a hit stage play). Yet, despite its French origins, "Cactus Flower" comes across as typically American, reminiscent of the screwball comedies of the thirties and forties. (I could certainly imagine Julian being played by that great screwball exponent Cary Grant). It has the sort of witty dialogue and engaging characters one associates with the great screwballs, and still holds up well after more than fifty years. 7/10.