Bad backs and long memories

The guilty pleasures of rainy day movie matinees, Hitchcock and a peculiar British film noir.

Thanks to a slipped disc I find myself horizontal on a sofa with nothing to do but watch movies and count the minutes to the next dose of codeine. Not so bad then.

The first time this happened, some years ago, I attempted to simultaneously assuage the pain and lift my spirits by reaching (carefully) for the funniest dvds I could find. A Will Hay box set as it happens. 

The incomparable Will Hay, Moore Marriot and Graham Moffat in Ask A Policeman (1938)

           
                                 
Others who suffer from back complaints should take note for future reference - films that make you laugh out loud and painkillers that cause constipation aren’t necessarily good when you’re trying to avoid straining back muscles.

This time I’m recumbent on my girlfriend’s sofa and without a dvd collection to call on (discounting her Final Destination Thrillogy), so I find myself at the mercy of the tv schedules.  For me there’s something gloriously nostalgic about watching old movies on tv. Like a lot of people my love of old movies stems from sick days and rainy school holidays when there wasn’t much else to do. Credit also to whoever had the bright idea to include Harold Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy, The Three Stooges, and Buster Crabbe serials as part children’s tv schedules. Of course daytime telly is a different beast altogether these days. So thank god for Film 4.

                                                     ODed on codeine and daytime t.v                                        

Scanning the Guardian guide my eyes immediately seized upon a short Hitchcock season.  I couldn’t believe my luck. Hitchcock was formative in my love of film - discovering Hitchcock was discovering cinema in a sense. Sure, I’d already fallen in love with movies but it was only with Hitchcock that I became aware of the craft of filmmaking, and the idea of a director. It was only after discovering Hitchcock that I started taking films seriously.

First up on Monday was the 1956 The Man Who Knew Too Much, a film I’d somehow contrived never to have seen. Now I must confess to having a soft spot for Hitch’s early British talkies: The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes and the original 1934 Man Who Knew Too Much particularly. Hitchcock himself was clearly dissatisfied with the original TMWKTM as he took the rather unprecedented decision to re-make his own movie.  
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1934

1956

                

I'm struggling to think of an example of another filmmaker doing this: Michael Mann remaking L.A Takedown as Heat , the same director re-imagining his Miami Vice t.v series as a movie two decades later, George Miller’s threatened Mad Max reboot? Don’t get me started on Gus Van Sant’s shot for shot Psycho remake – the only film I’ve ever walked out of due to the cinema erroneously advertising the original, Anthony Perkins poster and all… Shame on you Loughborough Curzon.

On the subject of his remaking The Man Who Knew Too Much Hitchcock famously said the original was the work of a talented amateur the remake that of a professional. Well… I still prefer the original. The original is a taut 75 min thriller, very much in the vein of Hitchcock’s other spy-chase movies (39 Steps, North By Northwest, Foreign Correspondent etc). The remake feels like a spoilt, flabby older brother. A case of a man knowing too much, or more accurately, having too much studio money at his disposal. The remake clocks in at 2 hours and spends an inexplicable 45mins establishing the main characters on holiday in Morocco, in a picture postcard fashion, seemingly because it can. Similarly inexplicably we have the saccharine Doris Day (was Grace Kelly unavailable?) performing Que Sera Sera no less than twice – presumably it was in her contract? There are some nice touches such as the assassination attempt at the Albert Hall concert with Bernard Herrmann as the conductor, but they are few and far between. No, give me gifted amateurism and Peter Lorre’s studied villainy anyday…   

                                                     The original MWKTM in its entirety

Rear Window was next up on Tuesday. Now there’s a film with a stunning exposition. With a languid tracking shot, and no dialogue whatsoever, the camera establishes the apartment block setting, panning across the various apartments and then finally in through James Stewart’s window. From here it roves like an eye, a curious onlooker, across his apartment, lingering on his broken leg, his camera and various photos of him at work. Through this single movement we have learned where we are, who the principle character is, all about his work, and even how it caused his accident. Pure cinema.

As brilliant as it is, I don’t want to dwell on Rear Window here.  In truth, a repeat viewing seemed a little too close to home given my incapacitated incarceration and my own Grace Kelly’s overactive imagination and rear window ethics.

The film that excited me the most during my sofa-bound cinematic marathon wasn’t a Hitchcock but a peculiarly English take on Film Noir called The Long Memory (1952). 

                                          

British Cinema wasn’t known for its Film Noir. Of course there are great British films that contain noir elements: The Third Man, Brighton Rock, Odd Man Out, etc. and memorably Jules Dassin made the brilliant Night and the City (1950) here, fleeing the McCarthy witch hunts.

                        Jules Dassin's Night and The City (1950) starring Richard Widmark and Googie Withers


The Long Memory's director Robert Hamer was best known for the brilliantly black Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets but he also helmed two other Britnoirs for the Ealing studios Pink String and Sealing Wax and It Always Rains on Sunday.

 Robert Hamer's It Always Rains On Sunday (1947) also starring Britain's leading femme fatale, Googie Withers

In some ways The Long Memory is less reminiscent of American Film Noir than the French Poetic realist films of the 30s that inspired Film Noir. John Mills' stubbly, neckerchief wearing, resolutely working-class hero bears more than a passing resemblance to a number of Jean Gabin characters. 

Jean Mills

Johnny Gabbin

                   

Dassin's London noir depicts the dark underbelly of the Metropolis whereas Hamer largely eschews obvious city locations for the North Kent marshes or bleak industrial docklands (below).

Again, in terms of setting the film recalls the French 'poetic realist' take on noir, particularly Marcel Carne's  Quai Des     Brumes (1938) starring Jean Gabin (below).

In terms of narrative and character The Long Memory is a curious tale even by noir standards. Good old Johnny Mills plays against type as our (anti) hero: snarling, unshaven, fresh out of prison and bent on revenge after being framed for a dual murder he didn’t commit. The conspirators include a femme fatale (Mill’s ex who, during his incarceration has somehow managed to wed the investigating police officer), a retarded ex-boxer (playing away from wife Thora Hird) and one of the murder victims (who it transpires is not dead but is living out a new identity as a scrap merchant with his gay lover/chauffeur). 

Anyone who thinks British cinema of the 50s was dull hasn’t seen this movie. Or has a short memory.