David Shrigley

The man is far too popular for his own good, but he brings refreshing insight (and myopic neurosis) into the mundane. Nowhere more dazzlingly so than here… (poke his name, above)

Beans on toast

Beans on toast

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Detour

Told in flashbacks, Detour is the tragic tale of Al Roberts (Tom Neal), a New York nightclub pianist who hitch hikes to Hollywood to be with his girl Sue (Claudia Drake) who is has left to become a Hollywood star.

Al gets a lucky ride and the slightly shady Mr Haskell (Edmund MacDonald) is going all the way to LA. Well, Mr Haskell dies mysteriously and Al takes the car and assumes Haskell's identity. Unlucky for Al, a woman, he picks up at a gas station, Vera - played by the ferocious Ann Savage - turns out to have been romantically involved with Mr Haskell. The plot descends into a spiral of blackmail and murder.

Tom Neal is a little hammy in this, but it kind of works, especially when Ann Savage's Vera starts to tear him apart.

The film was made in just six days. An incredible feat when you see it, despite a few loose ends in the story. There is a certain gritty realism in retrospect. Tom Neal was a real rough guy. He served six years for manslaughter after his third wife died after being shot in the head.

This is without a doubt Ann Savage's finest role. She burns through the role like a spitting, hissing caged cat. Savage set a whole new standard of femme fatale in this fim.

The film is out of copyright and available as a reasonable quality download from www.archiveclassicmovies.com

Passport to Pimlico (1948)

Passport to Pimlico is one of the best of the Ealing comedies. Set in Pimlico, London during a summer heatwave. A building site is discovered to have an unexploded bomb underground (the film being made not long after WWII when London was still recovering from its battering by bombs). The bomb goes off accidentally and an Alladin's cave of treasure is found in the crater. The wonderfully batty Molly Reed, played by the equally batty Jane Hylton is the history expert who verifies the loot as belonging to the Earl of Burgundy.

One thing leads to another and Pimlico becomes an autonomous nation called Burgundy. Stanley Holloway who plays Arthur Pembleton - a grocery shopkeeper, becomes Prime Minister.

The script is sharp and typical of Ealing. Seeing the amiable working class of Pimlico taking on the mild buffoonery of Whitehall.

"We always were English and we always will be English - and it is just because we are English that we are sticking up for our rights to be Burgundians"

I wondered about the film location - featuring a raised overground railway in the background (which doesn't exist in Pimlico). The film was actually made in Lambeth, just to the other side of the river from Pimlico. The railway is actually the line between Vauxhall and Waterloo. A sharp eye can spot Hercules Road and Sail Street from the train and see where the film was made.

The film is now out of copyright and available (along with other great movies) as a reasonable quality download from: www.archiveclassicmovies.com.

Archive Classic Movies

Who remembers Black & White Flash Gordon on BBC2? I do. That was back when TV's had three channels: BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. You had to push the clunk buttons really hard to change channels. There was white noise between channel changes. Remote control? Use your legs, son. When you you switch the TV off, the picture shrunk into a white dot in the centre of the screen. If the TV had been on a while, the white dot stayed for ages.

Anyway, Archive Classic Movies have got Flash Gordon. They've also got José Ferrer's Cyrano de Bergerac (opinions - is this one or the Gerard Depardieu one better?). They've got La Ciociara - An amazing Sophia Loren movie. There is plenty of pulp, including Reefer Madness - the completely ridiculous film on the perils of smoking weed. Possibly more appropriate now with everyone growing their own strong hydronic versions.

All these movies are free to download. The site is beautifully simple and the amount of content is mind boggling. You can subscribe to the podcasts which makes searching and choosing even easier. It almost makes me want one of those video ipod thingys and commute two hours everyday - almost. I'd much prefer a large Chesterfield, daquiri in hand, watching on a screen that doesn't have tacky silver plastic around it - but these things seem are becoming more difficult to achieve in this modern world.

Well, more soon, I'm off to watch the entire series of Radar Men From the Moon!

Jules Dassin and his luck

On the Criterion DVD of his film Rififi, Jules Dassin talks of extraordinary luck in his film making career. A notable time was in Cannes. He was there with his wife. They were almost broke after Dassin was blacklisted by HUAC (see Jules Dassin and the Hollywood Blacklist). The producer and Dassin were in a casino. Dassin didn't have any money of his own and begged for some from his friend. "What day did we start filming?", Dassin asked. The producer replied "On the 18th". Dassin put all the money he had been given on the number 18. He won and lived for several months on that money.

Jules Dassin and the Hollywood Blacklist

The Hollywood blacklist destroyed the lives and careers of many actors, writers and fimmakers during the McCarthy 'Red Scare' era in America.

Having just watched Rififi again - a gripping film noir heist movie from 1955, I got thinking about Jules Dassin, the director. Dassin. He was brought in front of House Comittee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) after a fellow director, Edward Dmytryk - denounced Dassin. Dmytrk himself became known as one of the Hollywood Ten, when he and nine other film industry professionals were put in prison for a year for alleged un-american activities. The number ten is misleading as there were more.

Dassin was no longer able to work as a film maker for five years. However, the story of the last film he made before this exile is an interesting one. Dassin's friend and producer, Darryl F. Zanuck had assigned Dassin the film Night and the City. Aware of Dassin's impending interview with HUAC, Zanuck urged Dassin to start shooting - and start with the expensive scenes, so that the studio would be more likely to let him complete the film - having already shelled out the bulk of the production money. The gambit worked. However, with the heat on from HUAC, Dassin moved to France and was trying to work there. European film producers were informed by HUAC that any films in which Dassin worked on would not be allowed to be released in America.

It was the film Rififi that Dassin made after this enforced hiatus. Apparently, Dassin was a little reluctant to take on the film, but did so needing the work. The original book by Auguste le Breton was adapted to include the cinematically and stylistically famous safe breaking scene. In the book, the actual crime is fairly brief, but in the movie it is a tense half hour with no dialogue and no background music. The scene caused a stir with the gendarmes in France, where it was temporarily banned - fearing copycat safe breaks. The film enjoyed box office success as well as now being seen as an excellent example of Film Noir.

Judy Garland

Cole Porter Medley. She looks a bit spaced out to be honest, but I love the set. You can see the Liza Minelli look - Liza looks like her mum did later in life, when she was younger - if you get what I mean.

Barmy army on the beach

I am restoring and digitising a load of Super 8 films. They belonged to my father and grandparents. Rather than telecine them, which is copying the film frame by frame, I have opted to film them on the screen. This is much more like how I rememember watching the films the first time round. Sitting in my grandparents dining room, the projector sitting on the table and making the whole room hum.
This film is one of my father's. I can no longer remember which battle they are reenacting. I'm also not sure which beach they are on. It looks like somewhere near Birkenhead to me.