April 2018 movie review

SEA FURY (1958) D- Cy Endfield
A crusty old tugboat captain (Victor McLagen) plying his trade on the coast of northern Spain is seen as the ideal husband for a Spaniard’s lovely young daughter (a very young Lucianna Paluzzi, who you may remember as the red-headed assassin in SPECTRE’s employ in the film Thunderball). Unfortunately she has eyes only for the first mate, a young and virile Stanley Baker. They keep their affair under wraps, but in a small town no secret remains secret for long. And when McLagen finds out he is being usurped, he is not best pleased, as we might imagine.
           Cy Endfield achieved cinematic immortality when he directed Zulu, and in this earlier offering demonstrated his potential. This film, so British in its conception, is thoroughly engaging and really quite moving in its straightforward analysis of age versus youth.
This is one of the first films I watched on the relatively new “Talking Pictures” channel, to be found at no. 328 on Sky, and available on most other platforms too. It specialises in films from the 30s, 40s and 50s, many of which have expired copyrights and are therefore free to screen. See below for more.

THE STRANGER (1946) D- Orson Welles
A Nazi war criminal hides in plain sight in a small American town. He even manages to snag beautiful Loretta Young on the way, but Edward G Robinson is the Nazi hunter on his trail and determined to bring him to book.
          Orson Welles is a one-off. Impossible to categorise, he secured his immortality with Citizen Kane, and spent the rest of his career trying to emulate that success. He never managed it, but got pretty close at times. Chimes at Midnight, A Touch of Evil, and perhaps this film, with its gothic feel and oppressive atmosphere are perhaps his best efforts. Gripping stuff.

THE SQUARE RING (1953) D- Basil Dearden
At a seedy pro boxing stadium a number of hopefuls and has-beens prepare to do battle for limited purses but with the dream of the big money that might one day come their way. Jack Warner plays the coach, worrying about his charges but doing the best he can to help them along.
          What emerges is a fascinating series of vignettes of low-life aspiration to the big time which always stays just out of reach. Quality Brit cinema.

THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER (1949) D- Anthony Pelissier
A young lad is bought a rocking horse by his doting parents who can only just afford it. His mum is a would-be socialite spendthrift; his dad is a lousy card-player who loses every night. The boy is befriended by the handyman, who confesses his love of the gee-gees, and teaches him how to “ride” his rocking horse. He becomes obsessed by the horse, and then finds that if he rocks hard enough he enters a kind of trance in which the names of winners of real races are revealed to him. He passes the names onto the handyman, who begins to make a packet, for our young man’s predictions are never wrong...
            Based on a short story by D.H. Lawrence, this strange little piece is really a very good film indeed. All the players are excellent, and the director does an extremely good job with his material. Highly recommended.