Movie Review: The Sea Wolves (1980)

Genre: War Adventure

Director: Andrew V. McLaglen

Starring: Gregory Peck, Roger Moore, David Niven, Trevor Howard, Barbara Kellerman

Running Time: 120 minutes

Synopsis: In British India of 1943, Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Pugh (Gregory Peck) and Captain Gavin Stewart (Roger Moore) uncover a German transmission station located on a ship anchored in the Portuguese-controlled port of Goa. Unable to mount a military operation in neutral territory, Pugh and Stewart turn to Colonel Grice (David Niven) and his aging Calcutta Light Horse volunteers to coordinate a raid. Meanwhile, Stewart initiates a romance with the alluring widow Mrs. Agnes Cromwell (Barbara Kellerman).

What Works Well: Inspired by the actual events of Operation Creek (chronicled in James Leasor's 1978 novel Boarding Party), this is an old-fashioned World War Two adventure featuring clever allies outfoxing evil Nazis, with a bit of suave sleuthing and dangerous dalliance on the side. The on-location filming ensures plenty of organic local texture, and the climactic raid is decently engaging.

What Does Not Work As Well: Director Andrew V. McLaglen is caught between delivering a spy caper (leveraging Roger Moore's Bond charisma) or a throwback to World War Two movies from the 1950s and 1960s (reuniting Gregory Peck and David Niven). Unsurprisingly the movie falls into the yawning gap. Shallow characterizations and careless inattention to the hairstyles and wardrobes of the 1940s do not help, and the over-long duration succumbs to tedium well before the action finally starts.

Conclusion: These wolves are more bark than bite.



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Movie Review: Von Ryan's Express (1965)

Genre: World War Two Escape Thriller

Director: Mark Robson

Starring: Frank Sinatra, Trevor Howard

Running Time: 117 minutes

Synopsis: In 1943, US Air Force pilot Colonel Joseph Ryan (Frank Sinatra) is captured in German-occupied Italy and thrown into a POW camp. He becomes the highest ranking prisoner, clashing with his predecessor British Major Eric Fincham (Trevor Howard). In the chaos of Italy's surrender all 400 inmates escape, but are eventually recaptured by the Germans and placed on a prisoner train. Ryan and Fincham lead the men in overpowering the guards, but plotting a path out of Nazi-controlled territory will be a challenge.

What Works Well: The adaptation of David Westheimer's book offers compelling dilemmas: Ryan's more humanistic approach to war backfires more than once, causing serious harm, earning him the title von Ryan, and pitting him at odds with the crustier Fincham. The production qualities are high, with sparkling on-location cinematography by William H. Daniels. Once the journey approaches Milan, the final chapter perks up considerably and director Mark Robson orchestrates stellar war action: the prisoner-commanded train plots a course towards freedom, but the Nazis pull out all the stops to recapture their prisoners.

What Does Not Work As Well: The plot tries too hard to amalgamate The Bridge On The River Kwai with The Great Escape, and is often stranded in search of purpose. The supporting cast is underpowered and lacking in memorable characters. The middle act on the rail tracks notably sags, both Sinatra and Howard taking a back seat to repetitive scenes of an American Chaplain impersonating a German commander and an Italian mistress introduced for decorative reasons.

Conclusion: Uneven but ultimately satisfyingly raucous World War Two adventure.



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Movie Review: Ryan's Daughter (1970)

A grand romantic epic, Ryan's Daughter enjoys lavish visual splendour and a surprisingly spry story of an impetuous young woman seeking fulfillment.

The setting is a small rural oceanside town in Ireland during the late stages of the First World War. Father Hugh Collins (Trevor Howard) keeps an eye on everyone's behaviour, including Rose Ryan (Sarah Miles), a spirited young woman of marriageable age. She sets her eyes on widowed schoolteacher Charles Shaughnessy (Robert Mitchum), and they do get married. Rose quickly realizes she made a mistake: Charles is exceptionally polite and adores her, but is also boring and uninterested in physical intimacy.

Meanwhile Ireland is chafing under British rule. Rose's father Tom Ryan (Leo McKern) runs the local pub and expresses hatred towards the British, but harbours a hidden agenda. A small nearby British garrison welcomes handsome Major Randolph Doryan (Christopher Jones) as a new commander. He is a war hero but suffers from a damaged leg and severe shell shock. 

Rose and Doryan fall in love at first sight and embark on a steamy affair. The village idiot Michael (John Mills), who has an incurable crush on Rose, is the first to spot the scandalous liaison. Meanwhile Irish revolutionary Tim O'Leary (Barry Foster) is in the area plotting a gun smuggling operation from the sea, while a massive ocean storm approaches.

Director David Lean returns to the theme of love set against political upheaval, this time exploring unfulfilled expectations and the consequences of illicit lust. Robert Bolt wrote the script drawing inspiration from Madame Bovary, and the jagged Irish setting provides Lean with a bounty of breathtaking landscapes. 

The focus on characters helps offset the mammoth 195 minutes of running time. Lean maintains tight interest in a relatively few characters, and teases out several themes with Roses' arc underpinning the narrative. She is warned by both Father Hughes and Charles Shaughnessy her spirit is too big for a tiny Irish village. She anyway chases after Charles, and her disappointment is immediate, leaving her exceptionally vulnerable to the dashing young Major. With her father and pub owner Tom playing a dangerous game, the sturdy father-daughter bond will confirm her destiny.

Charles Shaughnessy is Rose's counterpart, a man so satisfied with domesticity he marries her flaming spirit then does his best to snuff it out through neglect. Yet when the world closes in on Rose, Charles' attributes come to the fore in a vindication of substance over style. Father Collins is a provocative and in many ways progressive character, using his man-of-religion status to poke his nose into everyone's affairs, but also exhibiting the necessary judgment to account for humanity ahead of strict morality.

Lean's storytelling is both luxurious and languid, Ryan's Daughter pausing frequently to admire wild natural beauty captured by cinematographer Freddie Young. Although the film always moves at the slowest possible pace, moments of drama and tension drawn from the political backdrop and the harsh terrain do provide jolts of momentum, with the mammoth storm battering the Irish coast a particular highlight. An undercurrent of almost unstated humour permeates through the film, most of it conveyed through Maurice Jarre's playful music score.

Robert Mitchum and Sarah Miles are adequate in the two central roles, although both yield towards staid and sober. Trevor Howard and John Mills make up the difference in showy displays of Irish character, Mills in particular getting too much screen time as the mute but observant sensitive soul trapped in a malfunctioning body.

Ryan's Daughter is one young woman with a disproportionate impact, her spirit clashing with her culture, both ready to confront and neither easy to tame.



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Movie Review: Brief Encounter (1945)

A romantic drama, Brief Encounter is a poignant story of an impossible yet inescapable love.

The setting is England, just before the Second World War. A prologue features Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) awkwardly separating from Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) at the town of Milford train station refreshment room, as the insufferably talkative Dolly Messiter (Everley Gregg) interrupts their final farewell before he relocates his family and life to Africa. In a daze Laura makes it home to her husband Fred (Cyril Raymond) and two kids. In her mind, she recounts the events of the past few weeks.

A happily married middle-class housewife and mother, Laura visits Milford once a week for shopping and a movie. She first meets Alec at the train station where he helps remove grit from her eye. He is also married and has children, and works at the Milford hospital one day a week. They bump into each other a few times after that, start to enjoy each other's company, and over a few weeks a deep love develops between them. Extreme guilt competes with affection, Laura starts to layer on the lies to hide the affair, and has to decide how much she is willing to risk.

Directed by David Lean and based on a Noël Coward play (Lean and Coward also co-wrote the script), Brief Encounter is a slice of real-world romance heaven. Devoid of glamorous stars or exotic locations, this is love most unexpected, most unwanted, in a most unlikely place. The train station, often dark and shrouded by steam, is a mystical transfer point between real life at one end and a compelling dream fantasy at the other, the nondescript refreshment room a decision area where suddenly anything is possible and futures can be rewritten.

The storytelling draws enormous power from Laura's matter-of-fact yet agitated narration, methodically spilling her secrets to her husband Fred but only in her own head. With Celia Johnson delivering a superlative and understated performance, the terrible guilt that Laura feels, torn between duty to her family and the suddenness of a new and exciting love, is the fuel on the fire of her raging emotions.

Through Laura's devotion to her family and a modest lifestyle, where a trip into town one day per week provides a highlight, the film hints at the role of Britain's middle class as the backbone of a society where structure rules, habits are entrenched, expectations managed and roles defined. The country functions because of this discipline, and Laura senses the broader damage her liaison can cause.

Stylistically Lean presses film noir shadings into the service of romance, finding the stark contrasts between light and shadow, often a single of source light penetrating an otherwise black screen. The film runs for a compact 86 minutes, and yet Laura's aching experience is made eternal. Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 provides the rich soundtrack, supplementing everything from budding hope to the precipice of consummation and the creeping comeback of cold realism.

Lean populates the edges of the film with the humdrum of common people, mostly oblivious to what Laura and Alec are experiencing. The refreshment room proprietor, the server, the ticket handler and the chatterbox Dolly go about their routines, which suddenly seem so dull as Laura rides an emotional rollercoaster filled with thrills and palpable danger.

Brief Encounter is explosive in its restraint: two quiet and normal people consumed by a forbidden love, torn between the uncontrollable urge of what feels so right, and the cerebral pull of what is simply right.

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The Movies Of Trevor Howard

All movies starring Trevor Howard and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Brief Encounter (1945)

The Third Man (1949)

Operation Crossbow (1965)

Von Ryan's Express (1965)

Morituri (1965)

Battle Of Britain (1969)

Lola (1970)

Ryan's Daughter (1970)

Meteor (1979)

The Sea Wolves (1980)

Gandhi (1982)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Third Man (1949)

A missing man murder mystery set in post-war Vienna, The Third Man is a masterpiece of ambiance. Director Carol Reed creates a world of intrigue populated by men and women hiding secrets, and captures it all with stunning visuals filled with uneasy shadows and glistening surfaces.

Vienna after the war is divided into five sectors. Each of the French, British, Americans and Russians control one, while the centre of the city is the international sector, where the four countries run hopelessly inept joint police patrols. It is here that all the criminals have congregated to run the assorted dangerous rackets that flourish in a devastated city. American Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), a little-known writer of bad pulp westerns, arrives in the city at the invitation of his old friend Harry Lime only to find out that Lime has just died in an accident after being run over by a truck.

Martins meets British police Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) and his assistant Sergeant Paine (Bernard Lee), and they are keenly interested in any friends of Lime. Martins also gets involved with the cryptic Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), Lime's former lover. But more intriguing is the collection of Lime's former associates, including  "Baron" Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch), Dr. Winkel (Erich Ponto) and the Romanian Popescu (Siegfried Breuer). In addition to the coincidence of all having being present when Lime died, they appear friendly and keen to meet Martins, and just as eager to see him leave town.

In talking with Lime's porter (Paul Hörbiger), Martins discovers inconsistencies in the narrative about Lime's death, including the possibility that a "third man", in addition to Kurtz and Popescu, helped carry Lime after he was struck by the lorry. Martins is drawn to the troubled Anna but out of his depth investigating the death of his friend. Another man dies and Martins himself is now a suspect, before the truth gets further entangled in a growing web of deceit.

Written by Graham Greene and directed with panache by Reed, almost every frame of The Third Man is a piece of art. Making outstanding use of film noir techniques including oblique angles, enormous shadows, acute light, reflective surfaces and stark blacks and whites, Reed and his cinematographer Robert Krasker create a world unhinged by the aftereffects of war, occupied by desperate men profiting from a vacuum of civil order and the slow creep of anarchy. Almost everything important appears to happen in the dark hours, Vienna at night the playground of the twisted and evil.

For a story set in the land of Mozart, Strauss, Haydn and Schubert, Reed goes looking for a unique music score and veers sharply away from anything resembling convention. Composed by the unknown-at-the-time Anton Karas, the music consists of simple, rural tunes played by Karas himself on the zither. The music adds enormously to the sense of a world gone halfway insane, and is a timeless, playful and instantly recognizable accompaniment to the dazzling visuals.

As for the plot, it is sturdy enough to compete with all the dramatic style on display. A classic investigation into a dense mystery by an unwelcome outsider, it is evident early on that nothing about Harry Lime's death is routine. It is equally clear that not much good will come from Holly Martins' well-intentioned but ultimately misguided search for a better truth.

Before long a bad situation is just getting worse thanks to his meddling, Anna landing in trouble with the Russians, another dead body landing on the Vienna streets, and Martins fingered as a suspect and on the run from both an unruly mob and more clinical goons. It's a cat and mouse game in the half abandoned back alleys of a wounded city, and Martins is never sure until it's too late whether he is the hunter or the hunted.

And then there is Orson Welles. Appearing for less than 20 minutes of screen time, Welles turns a glorified cameo into an unforgettable experience. His lines of dialogue have entered movie folklore, and his searing, beady-eyed and ruthless intensity leaves an indelible impact. Joseph Cotten, Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee and Alida Valli are steady, but once Welles appears he dominates with effortless composure, and the film becomes about a man controlling the strings while hiding in the literal and figurative shadows.

The Third Man ends brilliantly, with an exquisitely framed encounter that doesn't happen, full of words that aren't spoken, and the tantalizing promise of a better life that is not fulfilled. The war may have ended, but for many the misery will continue.

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