Youth (2015)

Directed by Paolo Sorrentino; produced by Carlotta Calori, Francesca Cima and Nicola Giuliano

Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) is a famous composer and conductor. Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel) is an equally famous cinema director and screenwriter. Fred, relaxing at his favourite Swiss hotel, has been asked by the Queen to conduct his most popular work for the Duke of Edinburgh’s birthday. Mick has come to the same hotel to work on one last film, his ‘testament’. Amid revelations and ruminations, each will resolve his current dilemma, not entirely in ways they expected.

Youth is very much an actors’ and director’s movie, so much so that one can almost see the acting and directing. After one gets over the fact that Caine and Keitel play two men who’ve been friends for sixty years – and these excellent players actually do persuade one of this – the two leads provide Youth with its best moments. That doesn’t mean there are many from which to choose.

Other actors do well here. Paul Dano portrays Jimmy Tree, a Johnny Depp-like actor who is cursed with ‘one moment of levity’: his part as ‘Mr Q’ in a light-hearted ‘robot-movie’. He feels an affinity and admiration for Fred, but his role is principally to allow Fred to voice some of his thoughts. Rachel Weisz plays Lena, Fred’s daughter, who is angry and bitter toward her father, and whose husband, Julian – Mick’s son – has just deserted her.

A number of characters are introduced, most of whom are anonymous and uninteresting. A prostitute, a masseuse, a soccer player, a silent couple, a little girl, a Miss Universe winner; some have a purpose of reacting to Fred and Mick, others seem to exist for no reason.

We see vignettes that consist largely of people eating, sitting, walking through corridors or across lovely Swiss landscapes. Often such sequences add to a film, even if they have nothing to add to the plot, the script or the outcome. In Youth, they appear as little more than an homage to the director’s great influence, Federico Fellini.

The big problem with Youth is the script, written by the director. Fred is retired, with no interest in working any more, yet Lena accompanies him to the hotel as his assistant. Why? And why would Mick come to a Swiss hotel to work on a screenplay? And with a group of minions who look like a 1940s comedy team, but without their talent (either to amuse or to write)? And would a Miss Universe contest send its winner to a hotel that is more a sanitarium for the old and tired than a centre of fun and excitement? The idea of a wide variety of people meeting at one place has worked well for dramas, comedies and mysteries since 1932’s Grand Hotel, but there should be some logic behind it.

Aside from these questions, there is trouble with the script even within its own context. Except in what happens to one major character (and even then, the event surprises more by its form than its occurrence), much is predictable. Fred’s decision can be seen coming; his reconciliation with his daughter follows on cue upon a revelation about his music. Jimmy, depressed by the popularity of ‘Mr Q’, is revived by a child – precocious, of course - who says one of his other movies gave her important insight. Lena, abandoned by her husband, is courted by a mountaineer. Fred and Mick both state, separately, that, as friends, they tell each other only ‘the good things’, yet at one point, it is obvious that they have discussed an impending disaster to Mick’s film. Predictable, nonsensical and, worst, uninvolving.

The title itself is misleading. It might be seen as irony, except that it is quoted earnestly by a very minor character as what Fred would find outside the hotel. It’s problematical that he does.

In fact, the point or message of the movie is hard to pin down. One gathers that it might be found in Fred’s claim that he likes music because one merely needs to feel, to understand it. And Mick states that emotions are all people have. A secondary character says all she feels is fear, to which a tertiary character responds that that is an amazing feeling. But the message is too diffused in its provision, and lost in what the writer/director probably believes are clever lines that must have sounded good in rehearsal.

Despite the fine performances, there is little warmth, except between Fred and Mick. Youth reminded me quite a bit of Wings of Fame, which I reviewed in January of last year. It too took place at an anonymous hotel, filled with disparate characters; it too tried to say things but was muddled about it; it too conveyed a chill that made caring about the people in the film, and the film itself, difficult.

Youth is a handsomely mounted work, with quality performances by several veteran actors. But it’s the sort of movie that makes one want to see something corny and sentimental, just to feel better.

High Treason (1951)

Directed by Roy Boluting; produced by Paul Soskin

An explosion on board a ship loading supplies for the Near East is the latest incident in what appears to be a campaign directed against Britain’s military. The case involves Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, headed by Commander Robert Brennan (Liam Redmond), and MI5, represented by Major Elliott (Anthony Bushell), in a race to find the culprits before more crimes are committed. What the authorities don’t know is that the sabotage is building to a climax that could paralyse the country’s defences.

A follow-up – a sequel in a way – to Seven Days to Noon, High Treason is a film from the successful Boulting Brothers team. It casts a number of the same actors as the earlier film (the Boultings used the same players from various of their movies repeatedly), though only André Morell plays the same character; in Seven Days to Noon, his Superintendent Folland leads the investigation; here he is subordinated to a superior.

Like its predecessor, High Treason is a combination of thriller and police procedural. Viewers watch as the authorities piece together clues, follow suspects, question the public. But the audience is also in on the saboteurs’ plans. This leads to some exciting moments as the two sides of the story intersect, sometimes deliberately, sometimes by accident.

The direction is very good, especially at the climax, which features a gun-battle at Battersea Power Station. One knows the writing and the direction are above average when one is certain the villains’ scheme will fail – such is the enormity of their intentions – but the final scenes thrill nonetheless.

The script is intelligent, and keeps away from extremes. There is no genius detective; rather, a number of smart investigators who know their jobs: what questions to ask, how to exert subtle pressure, where to look and when to keep quiet. The screenplay refrains from mentioning the ideology of the villains, though it is clear they are Communists (‘bourgeois’ is an insult, and one character is reading a book entitled Heroes of the Revolution); nor are they treated as fanatics.

Most of the villains believe in their cause; in fact, a major character, a young electronics expert (Kenneth Griffith), remorseful at his involvement in deadly sabotage, describes his initial recruitment to ‘the movement’, impelled by how he had seen his poor mother work herself ragged to support him and his brother. The exceptions to the criminals’ dedication is a crooked politician (Anthony Nicholls), concerned solely with power, and an assassin (John Bailey), whose Russian original name betrays the country behind the plot, without stating it.

The acting, as is usual of British movies of this era, is unspectacular but convincing. Especially good is Redmond, as the typically plodding but sharp cop, and Griffith. But all the players are of uniform quality, many of them remaining in the industry until they became familiar to audiences as much older actors. (Geoffrey Keen (portraying an ill-fated saboteur) ended his cinematic career in a recurring role as ‘the minister’ in James Bond movies, and Joan Hickson (as the mother of Griffith’s character) played tv’s Miss Marple into her late eighties; Roy Boulting’s last directorial work was one of the Miss Marple episodes.)

An involving movie with no gimmicks, High Treason is a straightforward and entertaining crime-thriller.

 

Pushover (1954)

Directed by Richard Quine; produced by Jules Schermer

Detective Paul Sheridan (Fred MacMurray) is assigned to get to know the lovely Lona McLane (Kim Novak), in the hopes that she will lead the police to her fugitive boyfriend, Harry Wheeler (Paul Richards). Sheridan gets to know her too well: he is quickly smitten with her, and she with him. She persuades him to find the $200,000 Wheeler stole from a bank, so the two of them can flee the country and be together. Sheridan succumbs to temptation but, when a cop turns bad, not much can turn out good.

At first glance – second and third glances, too - Pushover looks a lot like MacMurray’s much more famous movie, Double Indemnity, from ten years before. There is the investigator, rather swiftly corrupted by the femme fatale; the plan to get rich quick by theft or fraud; colleagues slowly closing in on the guilty parties. In fact, one wonders why MacMurray would have chosen to star in Pushover, given the similarities that must have been obvious to critics and audiences alike.

Double Indemnity also seemingly has many advantages over Pushover: the greater experience and star-power of Barbara Stanwyck over Novak (given her first credited role here), the bigger name in directors and writers, and of course originality. But judged on its own merits, as every movie should be, Pushover stands a little taller than average height.

MacMurray, a prolific and versatile actor, seemed at ease playing both hero and villain, perhaps because a number of his roles had qualities of both. He is entirely believable here. Novak was probably cast in Pushover for her beauty, but shows why she made a name for herself as an actress, too. The other actors are more than competent: Philip Carey as Sheridan’s partner, McAllister, gives a good portrayal of someone with growing suspicions; E.G. Marshall is a hard task-master as the detectives’ boss, Eckstrom, and Dorothy Malone plays a light-hearted but strong young woman.

Quine’s bigger movies were yet to come when he directed Pushover, but he shows a talent for tension. There is little doubt that Sheridan and Lona’s plan will fail, but watching it stumble along, never really going anywhere, is like seeing a car-crash in slow motion.

The story in one way has an advantage over Double Indemnity. The plan that Sheridan concocts to have both the girl and the money is never more than ad hoc, and observing his improvisations – no more than reactions to a tightening noose – one admires his cleverness while scoffing at his expectations. The disjointed scheme adds to the tension.

Interestingly, both Sheridan and McAllister start the movie as cynics regarding women, and the script shows how, in different ways, they are both proved wrong. On that subject, however, the writing has a flaw: it seems very unlikely that a worldly police lieutenant like Eckstrom would assign a middle-aged man with a, shall we say, lived-in face to romance a girl half his age, when his partner is tall, young and handsome. That Lona is immediately attracted to Sheridan lacks credibility.

If disbelief is suspended for that aspect, however, Pushover becomes an enjoyable semi-remake of Double Indemnity, covering much of the same ground, but in its own style.