Third Man

Should it be a complaint, when we think of how Churchill had to court the American interest by going over to their own country and influencing them into why they should join us in the struggle against the enemy?

Simon

Steve Crook

No, surely they joined in because they saw 49th Parallel and that told them that being on the other side of an ocean was no protection against the Nazi menace

Steve

CaptainWaggett

Catriona has stayed in her own home (a long way from any danger spots) and lived much the same life as before the war. June has travelled to a different continent (presumably voluntarily - were American women called up to the air force?) to do a demanding and distressing job and she's made friends with the locals. I don't see that as weak and submissive. She seems to be playing a much larger part in the war effort than either Catriona or Joan (is Joan giving up her job to get married?). We don't know whether either of them can play chess (is that an important signifier of feminism?) and they don't seem the types to read poetry!

Moor Larkin

Well, I finally got my tongue out of my cheek and watched it last night. These bloody Powell and Pressburger fellows made me cry again; they really are the limit you know. First Blimpish tears and now this; it's not very British is it; damnation.



If it ever was on the telly back in the Sixties I'm pretty sure I remember the heaven scenes. I would have seen the whole thing in black and white, so wouldn't have *got* the Technicolour joke anyhow......

Such a simple, lovely story. I can imagine the devil is in the detail however...

Without in any way wishing to diminish it by dragging it into my own specialist interests, I couldn't help but reflect about some of the more imaginative writings about Patrick McGoohan and his writing of the Fall Out episode requiring mood-enhancing substances..................

The only substance he needed was the celluloid clicking through the projector gate in the ninepenny seats of the Odeon in Sheffield, in about 1946.........

! You'll never get to heaven that way !

[code]http://www.flickr.com/photos/29487363@N02/sets/72157606700675506/code]

Keechelus

Jeez, you guys have done it again.

I was gob-smacked (a Canadian term meaning astounded) by this forum's passionate discussion of Col Blimp, and now I have found an equally energetic give-and-take on AMOLAD.

Why is my world still in colour? I surely have ascended to a higher place, where eloquent arguments are made about another superb PnP movie.

An early moment that set the tone in AMOLAD: when Niven stumbles onto the beach, a Labrador retriever runs to him, then away across the dunes. Believing he's dead and in the afterlife, Niven says, "I always hoped there'd be dogs!"

A tiny scene, but it makes Niven's character even more likable, and causes us to really root for him as the story unfolds.

Moor Larkin

I must admit I had a moment of bafflement that the little goatherd boy had no pants on.................. but I decided not to dwell on it

TimR

Well, she does serve in the air force. That counts as doing something in my book...

Steve Crook

I do like June, and she is played superbly by Kim Hunter. I just often get the feeling that they could have made even more of her character.

There's hardly any mention of her having travelled so far or of the difficult job she does, talking to all those dying airmen struggling to get home. That she loses to Peter at chess is one of the few things we are told directly about her. As soon as she is told that Peter is a poet she just goes all google eyed again (and does it very well). There are various things that can be inferred about her, but we aren't told anywhere near as much about her as we are about Peter or Doc Reeves, or even about Abraham Farlan.

But that is really a very minor criticism in what, for me, is otherwise the perfect film

Steve

Steve Crook

And talking of dying airmen...



From the Big Train sketch show. It's a wickedly funny spoof, but done with a lot of knowledge of the film, and I think, a lot of love for it

Steve

Steve Crook

And when I went to visit the beach, Saunton Sands is a very nice beach, about 5 miles long, with very extensive sand dunes behind the beach. The dunes may well have changed quite a bit since they were filmed in the beach scene in AMOLAD but I took a lot of photos of all the fixed landmarks so that I can sit down with them & the film & try to get a clue as to where they did film from. I took a few "framing shots" in the hope that at least we'd be able to see where they were filming by seeing how far they were from each headland. As I was walking back along the beach towards the car park, I took another look at one section of the dunes that looked particularly hopeful. "But no," I thought, "it wouldn't be the same after 50 years." So as if to help convince me, what should happen but a black dog came running towards me!



"Oh, I'd always hoped there would be dogs"

Steve

Steve Crook

It's best not to dwell on it ...
The usual opinion is that it's meant to make Peter Carter think he's arrived at some sort of Elysian Fields - until the Mosquito flying overhead makes him realise that he's still on earth.

That scene was cut from the initial American release. But no contemporary review that I can find has ever mentioned it. The boy retained his modesty, so it was treated as innocently as it was intended.

Although if anyone can ever find out who that boy was...
Nobody knows. He's not listed in the cast, nor in any of the papers lodged at the BFI library about the film, nor in Powell's private papers. It's a mystery

Steve

TimR

It seems to me that June is not developed as a character because the romantic focus of the film is Peter. That was highly unusual then - to put a man as the romantic center - and it places June in the role of observer. The details of her life are not provided because they are not that interesting in that context. She is primarily a reflection of him.

Third Man

The Elysian fields where on in the western margins of the earth encircled by Oceanus. Oceanus was considered the ocean of the world - certainly sounds like Saunton Sands which is on the west coast of England surrounded by the Atlantic. Powell when he shoots that scene when Peter is walking in to the dunes makes sure the shot is very spectacular even dream-like the sea gets special attention, I very much like that part we are already being set up for something quite mystical.

Simon

Third Man

.. but as mentioned before it is unlike a film by The Archers to have a subdued women they have given great onscreen presence to a number of ladies previously so I think it's been done for a reason and that was to make her even seem more powerful by the end the film but we do a get a precursor of her powerful character in the opening exchanges over the radio with Peter.

I still see June a representing war-time America - at first it slept but by god when it was awoken there was hell to pay.

It reminds me of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora! saying:
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

Simon

TimR

Yes - that is a good point. Those opening exchanges are powerful between both of them.

She is a powerful presence all through the film, but she is not a fully dimensional person at the beginning. I compare her with Bob Johnson, where we know all we need to in a short time. She seems rather mysteriious. I have mentioned her voice, because she doesn't have an accent. So even that made it impossible to place her.

Well, Simon - you are making a good case, I must say.

When I first read about the symbolic representation of our two nations, I thought it might be far-fetched. But it is becoming increasingly compelling.