arty-dave

Went the Day Well?
Today on C4 - not seen for some time, a cracking little film [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/thumbsup.gif[/img]

Captain Casper

A couple of in-jokes too. "There is a clause in all of my contracts, that my liver is to be buried seperately, and, with honors. " referring to Richard Burton and Richard Harris's contracts with the studio that insisted they remain "dry" for the filming. This happened apart from one little lapse. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif[/img]

Steve Crook

Did you get the blank-out on the sound? Or was that only in some areas?
I checked it on the cable (Telewest, SW London) and the signal down the aerial) they were both silent just at one of the most dramatic parts, when the wronged woman picks up the pistol and confronts the squire (Leslie Banks). From then to when David Farrar get shot it was silent.

But it came back in time to hear one of the kids call the old lady yellow, just before she picked up the granade and carried it out of the room the children were in. And then the banter between the Land Army girls.

I missed the start of it, but I know it well. The killing by and of the old lady in the Post Office never fails to shock.

Steve

arty-dave

The sound came through loud and clear [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/thumbsup.gif[/img]

Fellwanderer

It was the same in the North East - both on digital and down the aerial.

FELL
[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/angel_not.gif[/img]

All the best
FELL

A signature is no substitute for a life

arty-dave

I knew the North West had something going for it [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif[/img]

Freddy

Here in the Isle of Man the sound went off at the most dramatic parts as well. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/no.gif[/img]
Freddy

"What I owe you Colonel Lawrence, is beyond evaluation."

theuofc

SAMK FOR PRESIDENT! [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/king.gif[/img] [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/clapping.gif[/img]

Barbara

ollie

Theatre Of blood,
Vincent price camping it up as edward lionheart going from bard to worse(groan) and a Fab cast getting bumped off,hendry,andrews,morley,dors,hawkins,horden [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/clapping.gif[/img]

Cheers Ollie.

"Bullseye !!"

ollie

OOPS nearly forgot received the 3rd series of steptoe and son and ploughed through 4 eps,including the lead man cometh,and the one where harold takes albert to see fellinis 81/2 [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/clapping.gif[/img]

cheers Ollie.

"Bullseye !!"

Steve Crook

Odette (1950) with Anna Neagle and Trevor Howard.

A lovely little film, based quite closely on the true story of a very brave woman. Odette (Anna Neagle) is a Frenchwoman, married to an Englishman and living in England. Grateful to the country that accepted her, when the chance comes to do her bit for the war effort she does so willingly despite having three daughters. After training she goes to France to act as a courier for Peter Churchill (Trevor Howard) - no relation to Winston - and his radio operator, Arnauld (Peter Ustinov). They are successful for quite a while but then they are betrayed and captured by the Germans. At first they are imprisoned by the Abwehr (Army intelligence) led by Colonel Henri (Marius Goring) who is forever trying to aplogise for having to be so mean to them.

Odette manages to convince the Germans that Churchill is just a playboy and is related to Winston. She claims that she was the real leader of the circuit. This means that Churchill doesn't get treated too badly - but Odette does. She is tortured, having her toenails pulled out is only part of it - but she doesn't give anyone away.

They send her to Fresnes prison and then on to Ravensbrück where she is kept in a darkened cell for some months. But she survives that, she's one tough little cookie.

Come the final collapse of Nazi Germany and the Commandant has the bright idea that he can take Odette to the advancing allies and bargain his freedom. She of course promptly denounces him and he is taken prisoner.

Odette made her way back to London and was reunited with Peter Churchill who had survived thanks to her.

That's where the film ends, with Odette and Peter Churchill reunited just after she'd phoned her children.

I said it was quite close to the real story. In reality, she married him - but it didn't last for too long.

There was an interview with her on TV in about 1990 (she died in 1995). She said there that she'd been lucky (lucky??) in many ways. When she was being tortured they'd left the window open and there was a tree outside. This let her totally disassociate from the experience and think back to her happy time in England. When she was in Ravensbrück the darkened cell didn't bother her because she'd been blind for some time due to a childhood illness. One one of her few exercise periods outside the cell she'd picked up a leaf that had blown into the camp. It was little things like that that reminded her that there was a life outside and made her determined to get back to it.

But the most amazing thing was that she said, and I believe her, that she didn't hate her captors or torturers. Hate is a negative emotion that only harms the one doing the hating. Unless it's accompanied by a physical act (which it couldn't be in her case) it does no harm to the target of the hatred.

She said that through her experiences she saw the worst of humanity, but she also saw the best.

It's also a very interesting film because it was introduced by Maurice Buckmaster, the head of F-Section, SOE throughout the war.

One oddity was the officer in charge of the allies that stopped the car driven by the Commandant. He was meant to be American but his accent kept wandering back to English after a few exclamations like "Gee ma'am" [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif[/img]

Steve

theuofc

Was that Michael Balfours? I couldn't resist. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/hypocrite.gif[/img]

On a serious note, I agree, Steve. Odette is a lovely film about a gutsy, memorable woman.

Barbara

Steve Crook

I assume it's John Hunter who is credited as "American Officer".
It was his only role in a film - I'd guess he was a friend of the producer. He certainly wasn't a good actor.

Steve

penfold

Special preview at the NFT of the forthcoming feature documentary on British Silent Film, preceded by a panel discussion on the merits of BSF, and why the films have been so undervalued until the work being done to reclaim them from the footnotes of film history these last ten years. Put simply, the film is part history, part polemic; this is the programme that Shepperton Babylon should have been, basically it corrects the mistakes in tone made there, and uses the most fantastic clips and sequences...it may even make a star out of Guy Newall again. It analyses the cinematic techniques and grammar of editing seen for the first time in British film, exported round the world, whereby other filmmakers adopted them, and 'invented' them, in that order...visits the locations, uses what few archive interviews were made.....
When this programme is shown, BBC4, and released on DVD with extras (Yes, the day after) together with first-time broadcasts of three of the jewels; Maurice Elvey's Hindle Wakes, Dupont's Piccadilly and Anthony Asquith's A Cottage on Dartmoor (with the new score by Stephen Horne, THE GREATEST music to a silent film for 75 years IMHO - and a few other's opinion too), please, please, watch them. If you know British films but don't know silent film, you will be captivated; If you do know silent film but have never seen the British silent films, you will be astounded; this is what has been kept from you all these years as a result of over-influential academics in the 20's and 30's bowing down to whatever came out of Weimar Germany or Soviet Russia and denigrating everything else...Inventive British filmmaking didn't start with Hitchcock and Powell, they were far from alone. Find out what the others could achieve..

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Rob Compton

Sounds unmissable, penfold. When will it be shown?

rgds
Rob