Ice Cold in Alex (1958)

Directed by J Lee Thompson; produced by W A Whittaker

Captain Anson (John Mills) of the Royal Army Service Corps has been ordered to evacuate his company of ambulances from Tobruk in the face of a renewed German advance on the north African fortress. Due to a blown bridge, he, his sergeant-major (Harry Andrews) and two nurses (Sylvia Syms, Diane Clare) are cut off from the convoy. To avoid being captured by the Germans, they have to drive their ambulance across 600 miles of desert to reach safety, aided only by a stray South African officer (Anthony Quayle) and menaced by everything else.

As opposed to the large scale British war movies, such as The Battle of Britain (1969) and Dunkirk (1958, also starring Mills), Ice Cold in Alex might be termed an intimate epic. More than two hours long, most of its scenes nonetheless feature just four actors, though others come and go in transient parts. Even so, it is an involving and entertaining film, with tension derived not just from situations, but from characters.

It is in those two elements - characters and situations - that the quality of the writing can be seen, rather than the dialogue. The characters in particular are well drawn. Anson is, as we would have said a few years ago, ‘burned out’. Sergeant Major Pugh remarks that ‘they’ kept Anson in the war too long. That, and the ordeal of his brief capture by the enemy and his subsequent escape - much more of an ordeal than the couple of days as a prisoner - drove him to drink, and makes him reckless, and obsessed with getting back to Alexandria. He is not an easy man to like, though very good qualities are there.

Pugh is not your stereotypical British Army sergeant major: he is tough but almost fatherly; sensitive and understanding; a foil for the bitter Anson. Van der Poel, the South African, is rather dismissive and abrasive, but he too has his reasons, while Sister Murdoch tries to maintain herself in situations she’s never experienced, while trying to mitigate their effects on the others.

As is necessary for the success of a movie with such a small cast, the acting is excellent. Mills manages to combine explosiveness with internal turmoil in creating Anson, which is not easy. His reaction when he realises he may have inadvertently caused a death is perfectly understated, and the viewer can understand how he could simultaneously achieve results yet alienate those around him. Andrews, who seems to have portrayed half the cinematic NCOs in the 1950s and ‘60s, shows a different side to a well-used character here; a character you’d want on your side.

Quayle is perhaps the actor who must show the greatest range of personality through the movie. He had starred with Syms in the previous year’s Woman in a Dressing Gown, which was the actress’s break-out role. Thereafter, Syms seemed to work as hard and often as Mills. She, Mills and Quayle re-united in 1965’s Operation Crossbow, though I don’t think they had any scenes together. A good and talented assortment of character actors fills in the small parts: Liam Redmond, Peter Arne, Frederick Jaeger, Walter Gotell and Allan Cuthbertson (the last-named is also in Operation Crossbow.)

J Lee Thompson directed a number of high-grade movies, such as the aforementioned Woman in a Dressing Gown, and The Guns of Navarone, but in later years ‘sold out’ (in his own words), with a crop of poor Charles Bronson films. In Ice Cold in Alex, though, he is at the peak of his form. He makes the desert the real enemy of the characters, though the Germans are encountered several times.

Incorporating a number of dangers, they are well-paced and never seem thrown in for the sake of the hazard. The scene in the Qattara Depression’s mire is the sort that makes the audience yell at the characters to hurry up because one of their number may perish before they can help him. And the finale, in the Alexandria bar, is one of the most satisfying and best-remembered in British cinema, and not just because it was used in television adverts.

Ice Cold in Alex’s reputation seems only to have grown over the years, and rightly so. With top-quality performances from four excellent actors, sharp direction and fine writing, it is well worth several viewings. (Beware the American edition, Desert Attack, which cut the 130-minute film down to 79 minutes (!), a version which one reviewer called ‘nonsensical’.)

Walk Softly, Stranger (1950)

Directed by Robert Stevenson; produced by Robert Sparks

Chris Hale (Joseph Cotten) shows up at the small-town home of Mrs Brentman (Spring Byington), and asks to see the house, as he grew up in it. Hale quickly wins over the widow and moves in as a boarder. He just as quickly comes upon Elaine Corelli (Valli), daughter of the town’s richest man, and fascinates her. As the two fall in love, Hale’s criminal background is never far away, and, though he’s hidden  himself from it, it may yet catch him up.

Walk Softly, Stranger is, despite its foray into crime and violence a third of the way through, a rather gentle movie that can’t make up its mind what it wants to be, so it doesn’t try hard enough to satisfy any goal. From the start, the audience suspects Hale of concealing something about himself - perhaps everything; indeed, the viewer isn’t really sure that he is actually Chris Hale. If this aspect had been the conflict in the romance, if the crisis had been treated as gently as the romance itself, it would have been more congruous. The criminal element is not unexpected, but neither does it fit.

This problem is the story’s fault. The actual script, however, is quite good. Especially involving is Hale’s manner of speaking to Elaine. She is confined to a wheelchair, paralyzed in a skiing accident. He doesn’t ignore her disability; neither does he coddle her because of it. The audience can see that that is something that appeals to Elaine. At one point, Hale takes her out to dinner, initially against her will, and then, at her insistence, dances with a woman he turned down for a date. We see Hale watching Elaine’s reaction, as if to determine whether her insistence was bluff.

This reflects also on the direction. The dance scene accentuates a woman’s movements not for the audience but for Elaine, as she watches someone do something she can do no longer. Illustrating another aspect of character, someone playing poker with Hale remarks that he, Hale, cannot let anyone win, even over penny ante stakes, yet we have already seen that when it suits him, Hale can do just that. The subtlety of the writing and direction are very good.

Cotten and Valli are creditable in their roles, though they don’t quite have the chemistry to make the romantic pairing involving. They acted together in The Third Man, which was made after Walk Softly, Stranger but released before. Though Valli was then and remains in retrospect the bigger star, Cotten shows that he can master the quieter, subtler roles he performed. Just as it made him a very effective villain in Shadow of a Doubt, his manner of showing his thoughts rather than speaking them is successful here. Valli, despite her stature and talent, is not as well served by her role, though she does what it requires.

A good, deliberately paced movie, Walk Softly, Stranger is hampered by being too little crime story and too little romance, sacrificing half of each genre to make room for the other. Nonetheless, its other aspects compensate admirably.

Back to the Wall (a.k.a. Le Dos au Mur; 1958)

Directed by Édouard Molinaro; produce by François Chavane and Alain Poiré

Jacques Decrey (Gérard Oury), a wealthy industrialist, has been married for eight years to Gloria (Jeanne Moreau), but has recently discovered that she is having an affair with a penniless actor, Yves Normand (Philippe Nicaud). Riven by misery at this betrayal, Decrey decides to make the two pay for their transgressions, and creates an elaborate scheme to ruin them.

A well-plotted and acted movie, Back to the Wall is also well-paced, at least until the last fifth, which seems not to be ill-fitting as much as unnecessary. Nonetheless, it does not ruin the film. The story is a good one. As is usual with tales which involve a character’s intricate plot, that plot does not run entirely smoothly, failing to take into account the ultimately unpredictable nature of people. Interestingly, this does not create complications along the way, but a result different than what Decrey intended, and the audience expects. The story is adapted from a novel by the prolific and best-selling French author, Frédéric Dard.

The acting is very good. Oury may be under-rated in his role. Though he himself became a distinguished actor and director, Moreau was, at this time, and after, the bigger star. Both give excellent performances here, but Oury’s, in particular, must be interpreted by his actions and his voice-over narration. His character remains stolid and largely - at least on the surface - unmoved by events. He must be, in order to conceal his knowledge of his wife’s infidelity, and his plans.

The minor characters are interesting. Claire Maurier plays a café owner with ulterior motives for intervening in the plot, while Nicaud’s character’s dedication to his affair seems less than his enthusiasm for acting. Jean Lefebvre has a slightly comic part as a private investigator, though his character, too, adds something to the movie.

The direction must be commended, as well. This was Molinaro’s first feature, though one wouldn’t know it. It is filmed in black-and-white, with plenty of shadows, which reflect the hidden nature of all that is going on: Decrey’s plot, his wife’s affair, other characters’ duplicity, as well as the camouflage of the Decrey’s married life. The opening sequence is especially good, as we see Decrey set out from his home one night; the sequence ends with him disposing of a man’s body. That in itself is, in a way, a trick of the light, as what happened and how Decrey arrived at that point are not as they appear at first.

A somber, though entertaining, examination of jealousy and revenge, with more than one twist thrown in, Back to the Wall will satisfy crime-movie fans, and those who value a good story in their films. And yes, the title is a double entendre.

Godzilla (2014)

Directed by Gareth Edwards; produced by Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Mary Parent, Brian Rogers

Mining in the Philippine Islands releases a giant yet unseen creature, which heads toward the nearest nuclear facility and demolishes it. Fifteen years later, the monster, having fed on the radiation it had unleashed, breaks free of its cocoon. It seems unstoppable, and mankind may have to depend upon the creature’s ancient enemy, an equally powerful being, to destroy it before it breeds and overwhelms the world.

The Godzilla series spans about thirty movies, all of them Japanese until an Americanized version was attempted in 1999. Though the Japanese films varied widely in quality, the 1999 version stripped away much of what made Godzilla an interesting character. She - and in that version he was a she - was not even featured in the climax.

This time, Hollywood gets it right. Part of the success is due to going back, at least in a form, to Godzilla’s roots. In the first movie, from 1954, he was the embodiment of the menace and fear of the nuclear age; born of radiation, he even had atomic breath, like a dragon’s fire. His destructiveness, indiscriminate killing and seeming invincibility were traits of the new weapon, of which Japan, and Japan alone, had had a full taste.

The 2014 version changes the creature’s origins. He is, in this story, a primordial being, evolved in the days when Earth’s radiation levels were much higher (that was, in fact, billions of years ago) and content to live deep under ground or sea, alone and untroubled. His species’ enemy, however, dubbed by humans MUTO (‘massive unidentified terrestrial organism’) is awakened; Godzilla, alerted to this, goes on the hunt.

The nuclear menace is not ignored. Radiation - in the form at hand in nuclear weapons - is still a threat to mankind, because the MUTO feeds on it, and each attempt by man to use nuclear weapons to destroy the monsters just makes them stronger. And a hydrogen bomb, armed and ready, is at one point poised to destroy a city. Like the original film, nuclear weapons just make things worse. Godzilla becomes the champion not of man, but of nature. One character urges the military to put away its arrogance, and let the monsters fight, knowing that that will be nature’s way of restoring balance.

The writing is good in other ways. Though some reviews have stated that there is not enough of the monster, Godzilla wisely creates three-dimensional characters: Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston), a nuclear engineer obsessed with what turns out to be a MUTO, his son, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a U.S. Navy officer caught up in events, and Ishirō Serizawa (Ken Watanabe), leader of Monarch, an international organisation studying Godzilla. Greater emphasis on the monsters would have allowed for more special effects, but would have dragged the movie into tedium.

It should be pointed out that Godzilla is given a character to an extent, as well. He is not the jokey hero of mankind that he became in the later Japanese movies, nor the enraged killer bent on annihilating everything in his path from the 1954 original. Neither good nor bad, he is a force of nature; humans seem not to be of account to him, their ships and automobiles strange little animals and his buildings just part of the landscape. There is an intriguing moment when he appears actually to see a human being, and the two look to share a moment of weary sympathy. That is the extent of his concern with humanity.

The director makes the interesting, and correct, decision not to show Godzilla immediately. Though well-known to audiences, to suggest such a thing would have been to wink at the movie, and to include the real world beyond it. Instead, we catch glimpses of the monster: his trademark dorsal scales; his silhouette in the ocean; even when he at last confronts the MUTO, we are given quick views of their battles - through closing doors, on a tv set - until their climactic encounter. This builds suspense for the final showdown, and is greatly in the movie’s favour.

An entertaining and involving film, Godzilla doesn’t suffer from too little of the monsters. With three or four big action scenes, there’s plenty of excitement and, since the players and the director treat the subject seriously, the movie becomes an exciting story that adults and older children can enjoy.

The Clay Pigeon (1949)

Directed by Richard Fleischer; produced by Herman Schlom

Jim Fletcher (Bill Williams) wakes in a hospital to find that he’s about to stand trial for betraying his comrades in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, an action resulting in the death of his friend. He can’t remember what had happened, so he flees the hospital and sets out to discover the truth. With the reluctant help of his late friend’s wife (Barbara Hale), who believes him to be a traitor, Fletcher has to outrun the authorities and some mysterious killers to clear his name.

What starts out as a promising film noir - albeit with a premise that was probably well-used even by 1949 - loses its potential as it goes. This is surprising, considering the writing and directing talent involved.

The screenplay is by Carl Foreman, who also wrote High Noon and The Guns of Navarone, and adapted 1950’s Cyrano de Bergerac. The dialogue in The Clay Pigeon is nothing outstanding, but what is disappointing is the story-line. If you can’t guess the villain within seconds of seeing him, you’ve probably never seen another film noir - or crime movie. I kept waiting for the villain’s personal motive to be made clear, or even implied, but this was never forthcoming.

The over-all plan behind the frame put around Fletcher is simplistic, and explained in about a minute and a half in the movie’s dénouement. This was a story that called for a more complicated plot, yet seemed rushed, as if Foreman were apathetic about it, and wanted to get on to other things. The Clay Pigeon was early in his career, it’s true, but it certainly is not like anything that came after. As well, the transition of Hale’s character from suspicious and hateful to sympathetic is too easy and rapid.

Richard Fleischer too is known for some good work, such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Tora! Tora! Tora! and Soylent Green. He is, perhaps, not considered in the top tier of directors but nonetheless has done better than this. Though The Clay Pigeon was early work for him, as it was for Foreman, he had an atmospheric and equally low budget movie in the same year - Follow Me Quietly - which, though flawed, was more entertaining.

The acting here is good but not exceptional. Williams might come across as benevolent and innocent with his baby-face, but he is able to give a semi-tough guy portrayal. Hale, unfortunately, is not effective as a leading lady, and is better in supporting roles. The two leads were married at the time of this movie, and remained married until Williams’s death. Their son is actor William Katt.

Predictability, lack of imagination and simplistic plotting ruin what might have been a decent crime film, and what could have been saved in The Clay Pigeon is thrown away by lacklustre direction and writing.

Project Hail Mary (2026)

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller; produced by Amy Pascal, Ryan Gosling, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Aditya Sood, Rachel O’Connor, Andy Weir

Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes without memories in a spaceship. He begins to realise that he is the sole survivor of a team sent from Earth, the sun of which is being destroyed by interstellar micro-organisms. It was discovered that many stars are suffering similar fates, but not Tau Ceti. Three people are sent to Tau Ceti to discover its immunity to the organisms, harness it and use it to save Earth’s sun. When Grace wakens, he finds an alien, whom he nicknames Rocky, has been sent on a similar mission: his planet’s sun is dying, too. The pair work together to solve the mystery of Tau Ceti, and rescue their people.

An interesting and entertaining movie, Project Hail Mary nonetheless has some flaws. I could not help comparing it to The Martian (2015), which concerns another, albeit more personal, rescue mission. I then learned that both movies are based on books by Andy Weir.

I felt that, though very good, Project Hail Mary was the lesser of the two, as it seemed slightly cartoonish in aspects. The character of Rocky - so called because his race appears to be silicon based, and he looks like a jumble of stones - is not played for laughs but is nevertheless used for humour in a variety of situations, including his misinterpretation of English phrases. As well, despite having some differences from Grace, Rocky acts much like would a human who has had limited exposure to Grace’s culture. He’s almost too cute a sidekick.

While it has its faults, Project Hail Mary is an enjoyable film. Gosling is in every scene, and his character is by far the main one, so much depends on his performance. Fortunately, he is a very likeable actor, snd he creates an equally likeable character though, as with the movie, Grace is not without his flaws. He is revealed as not really heroic, just a frightened man who must do what he can under the circumstances. This makes him more, rather than less, sympathetic.

The other actors have small parts compared to Gosling’s, but they do very well with them. Sandra Hüller has a good role as the head of the project, seen mostly in flashbacks, and James Ortiz, the puppeteer who is responsible for much of Rocky’s actions, provides the alien’s voice. Even if the character as written is rather too human, Ortiz does a fine job giving him a voice.

The story is intriguing. Like The Martian, there is no bad guy. All the characters are striving to do what is best with what they have to work with. It is almost invigorating to watch a movie in which the characters all have the best intentions at heart. The science, while reduced to what the average cinema-goer can understand, appears scientifically feasible, and the ‘enemy’ being an extraordinary single-celled creature is a refreshing change from the spaceship-flying invaders or shape-shifting villains that usually populate science fiction stories. There are problems with the writing, such as both human and alien showing up at Tau Ceti at the same time, and, unless I missed something, an explanation of how Rocky survives an accident is not given.

The writing is good, and especially clever in having Grace suffer amnesia initially. This allows the audience to learn what is going as he does, obviating the pointless explanation Grace would otherwise have had to provide to himself in order for the story to be comprehensible to viewers. There are some dull bits, some padding and some attempts at humour that go awry - Grace trying to put on a space-suit in zero-gravity is clumsy and boring - but for the most part, the script and the direction work well together.

All in all, Project Hail Mary reminded me rather of what Steven Spielberg would have done thirty-five years ago or so: a fun movie about people using their brains rather than their brawn, a film that provides entertainment with a large dose of science and optimism.