mel walton

Hi George.
Didn't realize I had but you're welcome. With my spelling and typing, I, certainly, shouldn't be correcting anyone. We saw her again last night in'Weekend with Lulu'
You're right, she's good. regards, Mel

smudge

BRASS TARGET (watched this morning, really)

Director John Hough's character driven thriller about a conspiracy revolving around the theft of Nazi gold and the death of General Patton shortly after the end of WWII.

Despite not having great pace, Hough keeps your attention by grabbing your interest with a succession of strong and distinct characters. He drives your curiousity as to what will happen to them next and gets you deeply involved in the plot and investigation threads, as John Cassavettes' OSS-man-turned-investigator tries to deal with the gold heist and suddenly finds himself with an assassination plot on his hands.

The strong cast helps - for the first half hour we get Patrick McGoohan barnstorming his way through the film as an eccentric US Colonel with a penchant for girls and a little thievery every now and then. Add to the mix Robert Vaughn as his co-conspirator and George Kennedy as Patton, and you can hazard that there might have been some great cast parties on this film !

However, it is very much Cassavettes' film, with Max Von Sydow coming a close second as the icily ruthless assassin. Cassavettes' gives a confident performance and is well supported by the strong cast. Only Sophia Loren comes across as a weak link, but then her character is pretty much just a cipher...

Also helping to move the film along are the excellent locations, with the coup-de-grace delivered stylishly up in the snowy alps.

All in all not in the same league as DAY OF THE JACKAL, but a film worth seeing, nevertheless.

Smudge

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paddyhoo

richard the lionheart is on ebay

Moor Larkin

Nice to read a positive review of this film for once (was it on TCM? I've spotted it in the schedules a few times - but never on 'terrestrial'). Usually it's just dismissed as a complete Big-Name-Cast-Flop. I hope to see it myself some day...

Lord Brett

A cast member of Brass Target (who is, sadly, no longer with us) told me once of the amusement of the rest of the actors on location when a 'special package' arrived for Robert Vaughn.

It was the lifts for his shoes!.

Steve Crook

I only ever seem to see parts of Brass Target. Often the end but sometimes parts from the middle which I watch for a while before realising that there's something better on somewhere else or that I have something else to do.

I don't think I've ever put the whole story together. It's just bits of vaguely related stories to me :

Steve

Steve Crook

San Demetrio, London (1943)
They showed this under-rated old classic on daytime TV on Channel 4 yesterday. I recorded it and started to watch it and couldn't stop. That's the sign of a good film.

No real high drama, the acting is all quite understated. The shots of ships at sea are all obviously models in the tank although some of the waves crashing across the deck were very well done in the studio.

For those that don't know it, it's a story of the Merchant Navy early in WWII.
The San Demetrio is an oil tanker, sent to Galveston to collect a cargo of oil and bring it back to the UK. The outward journey is uneventful but on the way back their convoy is attacked. They had a single escort, HMS Jervis Bay. But her small guns and depth charges were intended to fight off a U-boat attack. The convoy was attacked by the Admiral Scheer equipped with radar controlled 11" guns.

The order is given for the convoy to scatter and the Jervis Bay steams straight for the Admiral Scheer. Of course she is blown out of the water before she can fire a shot. But that gives the convoy enough time to get some protection as it gets dark and behind the smoke laid by the Jervis Bay. The Captain of the Jervis Bay was awarded a posthumous VC for his action.

The Admiral Scheer manages to land a few shells on the San Demetrio and she starts to burn so the skipper orders that they abandon ship. Most of the crew, including the skipper, are picked up by ships sent to the rescue, but one boat can't be found. We follow the men in that one boat as they battle the Atlantic for a couple of days and then they see a ship in the distance. Hoisting a sail they head for her. But she doesn't show any sign of having seen them. And she appears to be on fire. Yes, it's the San Demetrio, still afloat and still burning.

So they re-board her and manage to put the fires out and get the engines restarted. But she's badly damaged. They have no compass and have to steer from the auxiliary steering position. As there's been so much spillage from the cargo they daren't light the stoves but the manage to keep themselves fed and warm with some ingenuity from the Chief Engineer. Some of them were injured in the attack and evacuation and one of them dies. But steering by the stars they manage to get the old San Demetrio back to Britain. Fortunately they declined the offer of a tow into the Clyde. That meant that they were eligible for the salvage fee which the owners gladly paid them.

This was quite accurately (in general terms) based on a true story.

There aren't many films about the Merchant Navy during the war. This and Western Approaches (1944) are probably the only ones that most people have seen. But the Merchant Navy suffered more casualties than any branch of the armed services and their war was almost continuous from 1939-45. But theirs wasn't a glamorous war face to face with the enemy. It was as much a war against the Atlantic itself (and other seas, especially the Russian convoys) as against the attacks by U-boats and the occasional surface raider.

The film itself is a bit odd. As I said, it's quite understated throughout. It's full of interest rather than high drama. How will they solve each problem? There's an almost obligatory Yank in the crew (Robert Beatty). The others are all stalwart character actors (Wlter Fitzgerald, Mervyn Johns, Gordon Jackson etc.). The Yank (that's what they name him) might be thought to be there to make it interesting for a US audience. But many of the rest of the crew speak with quite strong accents and they use a lot of slang which would probably have made it quite difficult for an American audience to understand in 1943.

But despite those oddities, I think it's a wonderful film.

Steve

batman

Chelsea vs Liverpool .... mwaaaaaaaaahhh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wish I had claws.

veel03

i watched too!!!!!!!!!! my husband supports chelsea and my son supports liverpool - i was torn in two!! poor mourinho . . . poor gerrard . . . poor drogba . . . poor, tired carragher's legs!!

Steve Crook

Aww diddums. Poor babies.
They get paid a fortune to run around a field for a while and then complain when they have to.

Steve

DB7

Backwoods

Throwback to cult 70s psychological thrillers with an American influence like Deliverance, Straw Dogs, and even a nod to the ending of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Gary Oldman and Paddy Considine head out to a remote Spanish holiday home with their wives but the summer idyll is destroyed by the discovery of a malformed child discovered held captive in a nearby house. Whilst the two Londoners try to contact the police, a gang of armed locals search for the missing child. Considine is initially mellow and laidback, but the rape of his wife (Ledoyen from The Beach) sparks a cycle of violence. The script is awful, the plot cliched, but sometimes bad schlock actually manages to be engaging - aided by some atmospheric locations and a Leonard Cohen soundtrack.

ChristineCB

TCM graced us with GIDEON OF SCOTLAND YARD Thursday evening. Just a fine jaunt thru a day's episodes with Jack Hawkins. I love the sense of rush-rush, calm-calm, rush-rush again. Regardless of the quantity of law-enforcement miracles jammed into each hour of his day, Hawkins still delivers a respectable character. Maybe not realistic, but like someone grandly suggested, "have some respect for the characters, for the story".

That's what this film reminds me of - a storyteller who respects the audience's ability to enjoy a good entertaining ride in a long, long day of a Scotland Yard inspector. "Just make it respectful". Indeed.

It's definitely a film I'll enjoy seeing time and again.

smudge

Have you read any of the Gideon boooks Christine ? I have to say that I enjoy them, particularly for that quality of interwoven narratives which was so successfully brought out in the film by Mr. Ford.

A perfect piece of casting in Jack Hawkins ; he's always in my head when I read them.

Smudge

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ChristineCB

Smudge, do NOT entice me with books! Lordy, I've got 3 series that I'm chomping to get into, and if you DARE tell me that the Gideon books are any good - grrr!!

Actually, TCM's host Robert Osbourne said he loved 'em, and hearing him chatter about so many films over these past few years lets me evaluate his tastes - which are, unfortunately, all too similar to mine. Or vice versa...

This "day in the life" approach to the tale was just about perfect... I was frankly hoping the film would end in darkness, maybe with the credits rolling up and Mrs Gideon turning on the lights, or opening the shades to morning light. And Jack Hawkins groaning but starting the routine, just like he always does...

My next question would probably be, "Does Hawkins' perfect film role ruin the TV series' character? Or is it a case where 'Good Is Good' and good writing and acting overcomes any need to compare?"

One more point about this film... after sleeping on it, this is definitely a film I would watch again and again. Any weaknesses of the film do not seem to lessen its allure. I get the sense I could pop this film in, and enjoy one scene or two, five or ten - whatever I caught, I'd always enjoy, and might stand there and watch more and more. This is probably a Hawkins thing... he's a rather compelling actor. I loved the scene where the wife is left 'on hold', and he and his mustachioed mate are sharing raised-eyebrows over the good-looks of the woman in the picture. "Uh oh -!" and Jack takes the phone... just excellent. Perfect timing, perfect reactions. Rehearsing the timing was probably necessary, but jiminy, when actors so perfectly nail a small action, it's amazing to see how that weaves into the whole picture.

It's also interesting to see that Jack was sandwiching this TINY FILM into his BEN HUR and RIVER KWAI efforts. He was a secondary character in those, and the star in this one, but he is SO incredibly good in this one.

smudge

Christine (She - as in She of the Avatars which inflame the Crooked one..) -

The books ; yes, the books are good. I have read some of Creasey's other serial titles (The Baron, The Toff) but neither of these really have the hook that Gideon has in my opinion. The GG books are very descriptive and it's quite easy to play them 'cinematically' in your head as you read - good atmospheres.

The John Ford film ; as you say, a lot of this is down to Jack Hawkins and his solid, reliable screen persona. He comes across as a more avuncular type of policeman, but you are still convinced of the strength of character just below the surface. The 'day in the life' style is very good and does leave you wanting more.

The TV series ; I find John Gregson's GG to be a touch more abrasive than Hawkins - not that this spoils the show one bit. Probably just a reflection of the times. I do think that Gregson doesn't give off that 'solidity' feel of Hawkins and this is probably the only thing slightly lacking. Regardless of this, however, I feel that both the fim and the series are successful in their own right and I can happily watch either.

I agree - if this film is ever on (rarely these days though) it is one you can pick up anywhere and still get engrossed...

Smudge

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