Lies, Damn Lies and Film

The good book posed the question, What is truth? 2,000 years later radical and all-round contrary film-maker Jean-Luc Godard posited an answer.  Truth he said, is 24 times per second – a reference to how the illusion of movement and reality is re-produced on the silver screen by the passing of 24 frames of film per second through a film projector.

As every film student knows the stirring Odessa Steps sequence in Eisenstein’s masterpiece BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1926) never happened, although it clearly happened for the benefit of the director’s cameras. If you are privileged enough to visit the location of the steps then you can join a tour that is conducted on the basis that you are visiting the hallowed ground of a real event, made famous by the film. No harm there you make think. Just an amusing little con by the tour operators. What’s new?

NANOOK OF THE NORTH (1922) depicts an Eskimo building an igloo, fishing through a hole in the ice and other folksy activities associated with the intriguing life of a people who are at home in the frozen North. Explorer/director Robert Flaherty turned young Nanook into an international celebrity and gained kudos for his documentary style.  Only problem was that Nanook and his contemporaries had long since given up such a way of life by the time Bob came along with his camera, and what you see is a re-creation of a collective memory that had joined the mists of time. Nanook with his engaging smile became an icon overnight but had trouble coping with fame. Eventually he took to the bottle and died long before his allotted three score and ten.

Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini are film makers who were granted unrestricted access to an Iranian divorce court. Their fly on the wall DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE (1998) is a fascinating insight into what in many ways appears to be a fair and open albeit idiosyncratic system. However there exists a troubling moment when the amiable judge turns to the film makers and asks them their recollection of an incident that took place outside the court room when they were filming the woman who was a party to the matter. They gave an answer that was clearly at variance with what we the audience had already seen. In other words they lied. Admittedly, they were not under oath or acting as officers of the court. Such film makers would have you believe that their raison d’etre is to document events, not make an intervention. Yet when questioned about the matter they volunteered that they felt they had an obligation to support the woman as she was in danger of losing her child. As it turned out the judge found in the woman’s favour but we will never know to what extent the film-makers’ evidence influenced the court.

One wonders if they would have acted any differently, had they been granted similar access to an English Family court. One can only speculate although I suspect the answer would be in the negative, which then raises the question of how they viewed the quality of law obtainable in Iran, and just as importantly how they viewed their role as documentary film makers.

So we have a conundrum. Whilst on the one hand Godard with film in mind, says that truth is 24 times a second, he also memorably uttered that, every edit is a lie and that cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world. Perhaps Byron should have the last word when he said that truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction. Although come to think of it, if film had been around when the lad was tagging the Parthenon for posterity, he may well have added the rider,

except for film, where truth is fiction, and fiction is truth.

The Biggest erection in Cinematic history Or, how Douglas Sirk circumvented the law

Hollywood. 1943: A preview film theatre.

A German language film is being screened, and a middle aged man sits alone fixated by the flickering black and white images. Suddenly he sits up and shouts,

Stop. Rewind. freeze frame  

He gets up and goes close to the screen, where he lovingly caresses the image of a blonde haired young man in a nazi uniform. Tears are streaming down his face, as the image of the young man is superimposed on his face. Eventually, the frozen frame starts to disintegrate, and burn .

Fast Forward

Hollywood studio 1956

An older version of the above man is directing a key scene from the classic weepie ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS. Posh widow Jane Wyman has had to give up her younger lover, gardener Rock Hudson, for the sake of her selfish teenage children.

Christmas Eve, and there’s a knock on the front door.

A man walks in with a large parcel that looks uncannily like, what used to be called a console television set. It’s a present from the ghastly children to their mother and they unexpectedly announce that this will be their last Christmas in the family home. News to mum who is framed in the television screen looking rather fearful.

                                             TELEVISION MAN

                       Merry Christmas, and a happy new year Mrs Scott.

                       All you have to do is turn that dial.

                       All the company you want.

                        Right there on the screen.

                        Drama, comedy.

                        Life’s parade at your fingertips.

No longer will Jane be a participant in life. All that’s left now, is for her. to be a lonesome spectator of television melodramas. Such a scene with its ambivalent meaning was to become the hallmark of the director Douglas Sirk.

Whilst Sirk was developing his directorial career in pre-war Germany, his wife was embracing the nazi doctrine. She enrolled their son in the Hitler Youth and his good looks quickly attracted attention from the nazi propaganda machine. Very soon he was a national film star playing the definitive Ayrian hero. Being of a totally different persuasion, Sirk had no option but to leave his homeland unaccompanied by his beloved son.

Hollywood beckoned but the only work he could get was at Universal working on melodramas for the millions of American housewives with sufficient time on their hands to attend matinees at their local cinema. Known in the trade as weepies, they were considered to be the lowest form of cinematic life. But the intellectual Sirk grabbed the opportunity and his success in the genre would eventually earn him the accolade, King of the Weepies.

Prior to ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS Sirk made MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION which had playboy Rock being responsible for Jane losing her sight in an accident. Seeing the error of his ways, so to speak, Rock trained as an eye surgeon in record time and then gave Jane her sight back after a state of the art operation. Fantastic you may think? But not quite as fantastic as Sirk’s life. With the advent of peace, the flow of nazi films to Hollywood dried up, which meant that he could no longer savour those bitter-sweet images of his son in that lonely film theatre. So at the height of his career he left Universal, and returned to Germany to start his filial search, which would prove to be fruitless, and eventually he had to accept that the happy ending which defines his work would not apply to his own real life melodrama.

And as for Jane and Rock? Yes of course they got back together again after Rock had an accident. Jane rushed to his side and her mere presence not only brought him out of his coma but also, it activated the biggest erection ever seen on the silver screen. Erection? 1950’s? But sex hadn’t been invented yet, and anyway there were laws against such apparitions, weren’t there? Mind you, that slow rising blanket could after all have been Rock’s knee, couldn’t it? But that doesn’t quite explain the stag in the garden sniffing around in the snow, now does it? Over to you Mr Freud for a quick gloss if you may.

You see Sirk was a bit of a wag and his low art melodramas can be seen as subversive critiques of American society. So all you widows out there, be warned of children bearing gifts this Christmas, particularly if one of the gifts is a console television set, circa 1956.

                               A Happy Sirkian Christmas to my reader(s)

How 2 Fugitives from Justice gave us 2 of Britain’s greatest films

The good doctor asks felicitously after his patient’s health.

“Excellent” replies the young American who also happens to be chained to his bed. The immaculately dressed doctor moves over to the bathroom in the bombed out house and pours the contents of a hot-water bottle into the bath. It is 1948 and US émigré Edward Dmytryk is directing Obsession in post-war London. Loosely based upon the real life acid bath murders the story finds Robert Newton playing an obsessively jealous husband who kidnaps a US serviceman after discovering the latter ensconced with his wife - played by the hugely talented but now largely forgotten Sally Gray.

This intriguing film forms part of The Morbid Cycle– a clutch of previously little known films that explore the darker side of life as the country re-emerged into peace.

Dmytryk was recuperating in London after spending 6 months in a US penitentiary for refusing to co-operate with the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

Meanwhile over the pond in Hollywood, Connecticut- born Jules Dassin’s career had never been better His prison drama Brute Force had catapulted him from B-feature director to an A-lister.

In order to get back to Hollywood Dmytryk, who had been secretly co-operating with HUAC, suddenly announced that that his fellow director Dassin was in fact a fully paid-up member of the communist party. So whilst Dmytryk was leisurely booking a first class flight to LA poor Dassin was scrambling on board the first flight out in the opposite direction. Poetic licence dictates that their Stratocruisers must have crossed somewhere over the Atlantic.

It didn’t take long for Dassin to get work in London. With Richard Widmark on board and together with a host of home-grown talent he busied himself with Night and the City which turned out to be the definitive British film noir. Largely eschewing the studio, in favour of war damaged locations he produced a perfect depiction of low life crime in 1940’s London. Tiring of this pursuit, he hopped across the channel to the land of his forebears and made the legendary heist movie Rififi. Then to Greece and a comedic re-make of Rififi, called Topkai with his new wife Melina Mercouri. It did well at the box office but the critics gave it the thumbs down, which marked the beginning of the end of a glittering career.

Things weren’t much better for Dmytryk in sunny Hollywood. The director of the much admired film noir portrait of anti-semitism, Crossfire, was now reduced to directing a British-financed western Shalako, starring Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot.

Oh how the mighty had fallen. But thanks to the extreme right winger Senator Joe McCarthy and his HUAC we in the UK now have two great movies in our National Pantheon of Cinema, and it is right to say that we definitely benefited at the expense of others. Without America’s paranoid scare of reds under the beds we would never have had, Cy Endfield’s Zulu, Joseph Losey’s The Servant, and can you believe, the 50’s ITV series Robin Hood?

So if, or rather when a HUBAC (House of Un-British Activities Committee) is set up, and you are ordered to appear, and are asked the time-honoured question, “Are you, or have you ever been a member of the Middlesex Law Society?”, you must answer “No, but, actually I could name a few names and now you mention it, I just might be able to throw in a couple of fellow travellers to boot.” Then do a bunk to Panama city where according to Canoe Man you can buy a cosy 2-bedroom flat for £30,000.00.

Now that the dreaded Oscar’s are upon us once more, my thoughts turn to which films in my opinion were worth the inflated entrance fee. How about:-

Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet , Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop, Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox.

But my favourite film of the year was made in Japan in 1960 by Yasujiro Ozu. Late Autumn - a film about match-making - is now regarded as a masterpiece. A must see.Out on DVD from the 24^th April if you can’t get along to the BFI Southbank to see it in its full glory on the big screen By the way, few Kleenex just might come in handy.

The Magistrate who became President

Having just completed three years teaching in a Zambian rural school, and with my weight down to 9 stone after countless bouts of malaria and a minimalist diet, it was of some interest that the British Government was offering me a sponsored year at a University Dept of Education – a prospect that I viewed as a sort of rehabilitation programme for returning neo-colonialists. A course in West Wales sounded just the ticket.

Whilst there I had one of those road to Damascus moments. I’d heard that the Society of Law Students screened a certain film every year to packed houses. A Greek film, can you imagine, and it had one of the shortest titles in cinematic history, Z. Intrigued, I ambled along.

Set during the colonels’ regime, it depicts the murder investigation of a democratic politician (Yves Montand) by a seemingly pliable examining magistrate (Jean Louis Trintignant). Directed by darling of the left, Costa-Gavras, the film is constructed in such a way that you fully expect the magistrate to acquiesce to the powers that be, and do zilch. Instead, can you believe, he does his duty, and upholds the rule of law. In one of those great moments of cinema, he orders the arrest of the main suspects – a squalid group of senior police officers, who are clearly in cahoots with the leaders of the coup. The audience of pimply- nosed aspirant lawyers jumped for joy, and why not? Agenuine life affirming moment, and I left the auditorium pondering the meaning of life and wondering whether I needed a career change.

However the story doesn’t end with the credits. The magistrate was initially sent on state sponsored educational leave – bit like me really. But there the similarity ends. He was subsequently arrested and savagely tortured by the Greek military police. However, his fame had spread and it soon became apparent that there was no option for the colonels but to release him. Such was the esteem and the affection that he engendered in the Greek people, that he was eventually elected to the position of President of Greece.

And as for the colonels? Like all bullies they met their match and the home of democracy was democratic once more.

Few films have affected me as much as Z. It manages to raise fundamental quandaries such as, ‘How would I have acted?’ Not so long ago, our tv screens were showing us footage of demonstrating lawyers being viscously attacked by police in Pakistan and Zimbabwe, and yet when legal aid, so fundamental to the upholding of human rights, was heavily cut at around the same time, our response was muted to say the least.

We all have our own reasons for becoming lawyers, but I suspect deep down a lot of us could be persuaded to own up to motives that are on a slightly higher plane than merely the acquisition of common and garden lucre, and to that end, a film like Z is an uncomfortable but important reminder.

The significance of the film’s title? In Greek Z means he is alive. During the time of colonels, it was a crime punishable with imprisonment to display the letter in public. And the magistrate? Christos Sartzetakis is still alive and if you are sufficiently competent you can google into his web site, though it helps if you are fluent in Greek.

The Rules of the Beautiful Game

THE RULES OF THE GAME (La Regle du Jeu) directed in 1939 by French maestro Jean Renoir took a battering at the box office and also got the thumbs down from the critics. The complex farce about the upper class was then cut by the producers and eventually banned! Can you imagine? With war looming, Renoir felt he had no choice but to flee to Hollywood. Poor chap!

30 years later our own national treasure Ken Loach directed his first feature, the much loved KES, to national and international acclaim. The main narrative is about a young delinquent’s love for a bird – a kestrel that is! However within this film there is another film trying to get out - a film that could almost share the same title as Renoir’s

THE RULES OF THE BEAUTIFUL GAME aptly describes the football vignette that comes in the middle of our hero’s doomed attempts to escape the limiting opportunities on offer for a school leaver in the grimy North. Teacher turned actor Brian Glover, in a memorable performance demonstrates clearly why young people should never trust the word of an adult with a bit of authority to wield. Playing a PE teacher with a tad conflict of interest in that he not only appoints himself to be the referee but also elects to play captain, centre forward and Bobby Charlton to boot, Glover creates the definitive template on how to win at sport. He disallows opposition goals, blatantly fouls opponents, indulges in unwarranted sendings-off and to cap it all, awards himself a penalty. A hilarious metaphor for the unfairness of life as seen through the eyes of an adolescent.

As our heroes wile away their time between games, in their luxurious Southern Hemisphere surroundings, one would hope that Fabio has to the good sense to take my advice and screen the above sequence every night to our pampered 23 before they are tucked up into bed with their play stations. Apart from putting a smile on their darling little faces, the nation’s crème de la crème may just learn from Brian Glover the subtle and not so subtle art of cheating with style and, if I was of cynical disposition which I hasten to add I am not, then a little nudge here and a little push there might, just might, get us past the quarter finals. Better still of course if England’s referee representative to the Rainbow World Cup, Howard Webb, already of some notoriety, was invited to the screenings as well, then he could bone up on his infamous refereeing skills. All we would need then of course is for FIFA’s computer to slate in Howard for the England v Germany final, and the trophy would then be ours again.

And what of Renoir’s film after all these years? It is now considered to be a masterpiece of cinema, though when I show extracts to my film class, such an accolade is not usually greeted with unified agreement. Still, I convince them in the end. And KES? Sadly the bird gets killed in the film and outrageously no one is brought to book. David Bradley who plays our young hero pops up now and again in the press moaning (justifiably I’d say) that his career never really took off despite the rave reviews he got. Similarly Brian Glover’s career also didn’t full fill expectations and sadly he passed away last year. Ironically KES will always be remembered for their fabulous debut performances.

It is interesting to note that I have yet to see the legendary KES footy match screened on television during a World Cup series. Could it be that those who run our TV Sport would see it as irrelevance or they just don’t appreciate their own culture?

If on the other hand, YOU appreciate your own culture, and would like to know more - in particular film – then join FILM NITE at London’s celebrated media club, SOHOHOUSE. The first two sessions will be presentations while the rest of the 11 week term will be given over to seeing contemporary films from all over the world followed by presentations/discussions.

Come On England. Come On England.

Kindly note that FILM NITE is not an official England team sponsor

What is FilmNite?

FILM NITE is an independent film education class.

FilmNite is for people who love movies. It is for people who enjoy going out to the cinema and who want to talk about what they have seen with like-minded enthusiasts over a drink and/or a meal afterwards.

This is not an academic course. The aim is to explore what it is that we like or dislike about particular films and film-makers.

By exploring how film constructs and conveys meaning, we are able to understand the vocabulary and express our views in a more coherent fashion.

In order to achieve our aim, we see films on current release in the West End, and then attempt to locate them within a framework of film theory the following week.

The aim of the class is to inform and educate its members about film in a relaxed, non-academic environment.

Fees

New members £135.00, former/existing members £125.00 for an 11 week term.

FilmNite activities also include occasional theatre visits and trips abroad (not included in the fee).

Who we are?

Guest speakers are film directors, producers, screenwriters, actors, historians and critics.

Classroom sessions

7-9pm at

Soho House

21 Old Compton Street

W1D 5JJ

Soho House has a luxurious film theatre with video projection operated by experienced personnel.

How the Law gave us DRACULA

One of the few things I’ve learned after more years in the law than I care to remember is that the less you have to do with it, the better. However it’s right to say that without three infringements of the law involving the jurisdictions of England & Wales and Germany, we would probably have never had the phenomena of what we know today as DRACULA.

Conveniently overlooking the basic tenets of intellectual property law, the German film director F W Murnau made what he quaintly believed to be an undetectable plagiarised version of Bram Stoker’s failed novel. Changing the names of the characters and using the title NOSFERATU, he produced such a successful film that its reputation even reached the ears of the wronged author’s widow Florence eking out a living in 1920’s London.

She went to law and obtained an injunction which incredibly she managed to enforce in a German court ordering the destruction of the negatives and all prints of the film. However, as you would expect, pirated versions which were clearly in breach of the order, started to surface at film societies around Europe and North America with the result that NOSFERATU acquired cult status. The cat was out of the bag and poor Florence who would soon become rich Florence, quietly gave up the ghost, so to speak. Hence, the first rule of film-making was inadvertently invented by Murnau: A banned film is a good film.

In 1984, after 8 years of painstaking work involving prints from Switzerland, France and East Germany, the film as Murnau had originally conceived it was finally screened to universal acclaim. The film is definitely worth seeing on the big screen, particularly for the chilling performance of Max Schreck, as the very first DRACULA. It was put about - one suspects by Schreck himself – that he was in fact a real vampire, and this formed the basis of a recent film featuring Eddie Izzard.

Generally considered to be a genius of early cinema, Murnau inevitably was lured to Hollywood where he made the legendary SUNRISE, prior to his early demise at 42, not with a wooden stake in his heart but in a common and garden car crash. No conspiracy theories there, yet.

The irony of course is that if Murnau hadn’t decided to disregard the law and make the film, Florence hadn’t decided to litigate, and film buffs hadn’t decided to subvert the court order, then Bram’s manuscript would probably have lain undisturbed in a trunk in Florence’s loft at St Leonard’s Terrace, Chelsea, and we would never have had all those nightmares. Loft? Trunk? Manuscript? The ingredients of yet another DRACULA film, surely? And the law?

Two films that changed the law

Whilst Ken Loach has quite rightly become something of a national treasure, Basil Dearden (1911-1971) on the other hand is the forgotten man of British cinema.

Thanks in the main to Carol White’s searing performance in CATHY COME HOME, Ken Loach’s 1966 BBC Wednesday Play on the plight of homeless families, was transmuted promptly into SHELTER and later in 1977, THE HOMELESS PERSONS’ ACT.

In what must surely be one of the great moments of cinema, the young actress painfully tries to keep a grip on her kids, as they are wrenched from her by the powers that be on a darkened windswept platform at Victoria railway station. Her piercing screams haunted members of parliament to such a degree that questions were being asked in the house the following day.

Basil Dearden‘s films are often described as dull and worthy. Yet he was the man who in FRIEDA (1945) was taking on the anti-German feeling that was endemic in war-torn Britain. A young German nurse who saves the life of David Farrer polarizes a cosy English village when she arrives as his wife. In 1950, he more than touches upon racism in POOL OF LONDON, and this theme is later elaborated upon to a much greater degree in SAPHIRE (1959). But his piece de resistance is surely VICTIM (1961), where Dirk Bogarde whose dazzling elegance spawned a generation of dapper young barristers, plays a successful brief with an ambivalent sexuality. When blackmail raises its ugly face, he resolves to fight it, even though it will mark the end of his glittering career.

Like Carol White, Bogarde’s intense performance struck a chord with the British public and in many ways was instrumental in enabling the law on sex between consenting adult males pass more smoothly through Parliament.

Whilst lionized abroad, Loach tends to split opinion at home. People either admire his championing of the underclass, or mock his attempts to represent ordinary people with dignity. Yet he is the man who taught the younger generations of Spain (LAND AND FREEDOM 1995) and Ireland (THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY 2006) about their recent history. Dearden, on the other hand, who was addressing racism and homophobia over 40 years ago, is now mainly a footnote in cinematic History.

Audiences today would find Dearden’s style a little stilted and dated, whilst Loach’s films still retain a freshness. The use of Nigel Patrick as a leading man in SAPHIRE perhaps doesn’t help, but then Dearden was working within the studio system whilst Loach has always been a free spirited independent.

However you respond to Dearden’s films it has to be accepted that he always had his heart in the right place and his attempts to open audience’s eyes to injustices was prescient to say the least.

Ken Loach is still going strong I’m happy to say, and long may he continue to do so.

As a footnote Carol White, the Battersea Bardot, who moved a nation to tears as Cathy, died prematurely at the age of 48 having succumbed to the effects of drugs and booze, largely as a result of attempting to make it big in Hollywood. A sad ending for someone who’s touching performance was instrumental in housing countless homeless families.

The Lawyer Who Went to Bed a Conveyancer and woke up a Criminal Advocate (aka Nightmare on Arcadia Avenue)

In 1966, one of this country’s greatest if not its greatest director had to exit these shores under a cloud for the Land of Oz because the tabloid press was so ‘disgusted’ with his profoundly disturbing Peeping Tom (1960) - now an acclaimed masterpiece – and this sadly, signalled the premature end of Michael Powell’s glittering career.

Australia in those days was a retreat where creatives escaped to when things were out of kilter here. Witness Anthony Aloysius Hancock and more recently TV celeb Michael Barrymore. It was a bolt hole where anonymity and work were almost guaranteed. A place to lick wounds, safe in the knowledge, that a career may be salvaged by a grateful but supposedly less sophisticated audience.

Previously, all us non-Aussies knew about down-under movies was perhaps the film Hurry on Sundown and maybe the ubiquitous thespian Chips Rafferty. The establishment in the 1960’s of a series of Aussie film schools changed all that. Oz Film went from a dependent cottage industry to a thriving independent one with an international dimension.

Directors such as Peter Weir, Philip Noyce, Gillian Armstrong, to say nought of the kiwi Jane Campion now make movies that are both commercially successful, and critically acclaimed throughout the world.

In the vanguard of this explosion was the film BREAKER MORANT (1980), directed by Bruce Beresford and set during the second Boer War. A group of Aussie volunteers achieved a lot of success operating behind enemy lines and acting in a not so gentlemanly manner. HMG was looking for a way out of this costly South African venture, and in order to achieve a resolution, a sacrifice was needed to show good faith. Their senior officer conveniently dead, the three Aussies were ripe for offering up on the altar of appeasement. With their court martial set for the following day, an officer albeit a solicitor was ordered to defend the hapless trio, who faced the ultimate sanction should they be found guilty. Unfortunately for the three accused the newly elevated advocate’s only experience of Law was the buying and selling of real estate in the Australian outback and will drafting.

As you would expect he started off badly, and got steadily worse with his clients being less than impressed. But an Aussie is an Aussie and he got stuck in. If justice hadn’t had her scales decidedly weighted in the direction of the powers that be, in the shape of Lord Kitchener, he would have pulled off a famous victory. Had that been the case of course, we may never have known about the incident, there would not have been a film and I wouldn’t be writing this. Such is the perversity of human nature – failure engages us much more than success!

A miscarriage of justice there was, and on a grand scale to boot.

Two of the defendants were executed by firing squad the day after the inevitable verdict, with the third, because of his youth being allowed to go home, albeit on a commuted life sentence.

And as for the erstwhile advocate? He returned to conveyancing and probate work in the outback, thankful in the knowledge that his failed land transactions hadn’t ended up in a pool of blood on his waiting room floor.

The poor chap never spoke about the matter again.

But today, would metamorphosing from a conveyancer to an advocate be the stuff of nightmares? With the housing market in sharp decline, I suspect we will see a lot more conveyancers rising to their feet, if not from their dreams, presumably with the advantage of a Law Society approved course behind them – not like our indomitable colleague 100 years ago on the wind-swept veldt, who had just one restless night to hit the books and get up to speed!

‘Erh, if it pleases the erh….erhm…court…….’

Sex and the single lawyer

A Hollywood icon, almost as famous for his saucy products as his screen appearances, sadly died recently. His passing was rightly marked with extended obituaries that focused not just on his memorable performances but also his philanthropic activities, the latter marking him out as a thoroughly decent man.

Marvellous though he is as Butch Cassidy, to say nought of Cool Hand Luke and the Hustler, for me it is his performance as the one-case-a-year ambulance chaser Frank Galvin, that will forever linger in my filmic memory. We first meet him at the wrong kind of bar, playing pinball would you believe? If that’s not reprobate enough, he also smokes and has an alcohol dependency problem. A low life lawyer in a crumpled suit. Interest levels soar. Next we see him being ejected from a funeral parlour after he tries to slip his business card to the father of the deceased. It’s getting better.

David Mamet’s Oscar nominated script gives Paul Newman what in my opinion must be his greatest role, and in the hands of director Sidney Lumet, THE VERDICT (1982) is transformed into a highly satisfying cinematic experience, with bags of law thrown in for good measure.

Meanwhile, Frank gets a client - a young woman in a vegetative state, which allegedly is the result of medical negligence. It is assumed that he will settle with the hospital lawyers, headed up by the viperous James Mason. But our hero has other ideas. He takes a Polaroid photo of his client, and as the image slowly appears on the photographic paper resting on the unfortunate woman’s hospital bed, we have a visual motif of Frank’s mind as it slowly but surely comes into focus. This is the one he will fight. Redemption beckons.

He turns down an astronomical sum, and gets a punch on the nose for his efforts from the client’s not so caring brother-in-law, who wants to settle for guaranteed dosh. Lawyers getting duffed up! It’s got to end in tears.

Later, back in the bar and taking a break from pinball wizardry, Frank encounters Charlotte Rampling, who fails to mention when they later rumble in the bedroom, that she is in the pay of Machiavellian James Mason and his cadre of supercilious corporates.

Things go wrong. Witnesses mysteriously disappear. He’s not ready for trial. But the never say die advocate tracks down one of the nurses present at the operation and our heroic lawyer steals, yes steals, her phone bill which lists all her calls. She becomes the surprise witness and reveals the cover up. Wow!

His closing speech to the jury is masterful. Slow build-up with lots of dramatic pauses and appealing to their sense of decency - a speech I’ve reprised in my local mags court on many an occasion with excellent results. Not really.

The final scene has the distraught Charlotte constantly ringing the now teetotal victor and him not picking up. What strength of character? Now that’s what I call a lawyer role model. Not for me the squeaky clean father and son team of the 60’s TV series The Defenders or Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mocking Bird. Give me skid row Frank wrestling with his personal demons (not to mention dear Charlotte), and standing up for justice against the smug well-heeled defenders of a negligent hospital. It’s poverty row law versus magic circle law. A story almost as old as time itself. David v Goliath. And David wins again can you believe?

David, that’s David Mamet, of course, wrote the script. And much admired it is too. He started off writing plays such as his witty critique of capitalism Glengarry Glenross, and the even wittier satire on Hollywood, Speed the Plough, recently revived at the Old Vic with Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum. There was a woman in there somewhere as well, but she was hard to find. Her role was a bit like Charlotte’s in that her purpose was to act as a conduit between the two male leads. Things are no better in Glengarry Glenross where female characters are distinguished by their absence.

You see David doesn’t do women, unless they happen to be his latest girlfriend/partner/wife, and he’s directing a film of one of his own scripts. Then she gets the lead. One can’t help feeling that if David were to have a road to Damascus moment and change his career to, say, for example soliciting, he would be in difficulties with the Law Society’s equal opportunities policy. But he’s in show biz, and there he will stay. If for no other reason than he can write his own scripts and by definition his own rules. Apparently that’s creative freedom, and very nice it is too. But one wonders, who are the beneficiaries? Certainly not the legion of unemployed female actors gnashing their teeth at what some people may describe as thinly disguised misogynistic productions.

Meanwhile back at the film and its far from complex moral, which can be summarised as follows:-

If you are into civil litigation always check out the credentials of any prospective partner, particularly if she is a lawyer and bears a passing resemblance to Charlotte Rampling. Unless of course you go by the name of Frank Galvin and bear a more than passing resemblance to Paul Newman. In which case you will probably not only be able to have your cake but also you will doubtless be able to eat it as well, with a variety of autographed exotic sauces to boot!

Here’s to you, actor, sauce inventor, and general all round good guy.

Paul Newman 1925-2009 RIP

Women that Changed the World

Readers of this column will be aware that the film Victim (1961) led to a change in the law with regard to gay relationships and Cathy Come Home (1966) was instrumental in taking homeless families off the streets.

The recent release Made in Dagenham (2010), whilst not leading to a change in the law per se, does in fact document how the pivotal Equal Pay Act (1970) became law. The Act was not initiated by reasoned debate in Parliament, rather the driving force behind this radical change in our daily lives was a group of working women who were outraged when they discovered that men were getting paid more money for the same or equivalent work.

The Cinema of the Oppressed does not figure much on our flickering screen. Film after all, is entertainment. I  go to the cinema to be taken out of myself, people are want to say and Sam Goldwyn put it even more succinctly, If  I want to send a message, I go to Western Union. That being said, two virtually unknown British films stand out as excellent examples of the genre.

Winstanley (1975) tells the story of a group of disenfranchised rural folk who after the Civil War in 1648 gave a literal interpretation to the word commonwealth, and set up a community on St George’s Hill, Weybridge. They welcomed everyone. Each to his own needs, was the slogan. Amazingly this prescient counter culture movement lasted three years despite constant harassment from the local gentry. Its mentor Gerard Winstanley mysteriously disappeared into the mists of time only to be re-discovered in the 1970’s, when hippy communes suddenly became de rigeur.

There is a turn -off on the Dorchester-London road that leads to the Tolpuddle museum. Well worth a visit. The film Comrades (1986) re-tells the story of how 6 farm-workers from a tiny Dorset village in 1820 were deported to Australia for daring to set up a Trade Union, and having the audacity to ask for 9 shillings per week. Unlike Winstanley, there was a happy ending in that the Tolpuddle Martyrs as they became known, were eventually pardoned thanks to popular support and  all lived to a ripe old age in their newly adopted home of Canada.

Norma Rae (1979) and Bread & Roses (2000) bear a striking resemblance to Made in Dagenham in that they both involve women fighting for their rights in the workplace. Sally Field deservedly got an Oscar for her role as the feisty textile worker in a 1970’s North Carolina town, who fought the good fight for trade union representation, whilst our very own Ken Loach entered the lion’s den of LA to tell the story of how big time lawyers (yes lawyers can you believe?) still exploit Latino (mainly women) cleaners.

Indie director John Sayles in Matewan (1987) tells it how it was. A stranger comes into town. Goody or Baddy? In fact he turns out to be a goody – a union rep no less. But the mere mention of the word union, strikes fear in the hearts of the tough coal miners, who our hero has come to organise. The film, based on the true story of a 1920’s strike in Virginia, ends in a bloody shoot-out, but in terms of the miner’s lives it is just the beginning of the beginning in their struggle for a living wage.

Whilst there are no shoot-outs in Made in Dagenham the story is essentially the same. Working people fighting for their rights. Made with backing from the Film Council which sadly is about to disappear due to government cuts, it is a film that deserved to be made. Those strident women from Dagenham were not only responsible for this country’s Equal Pay Act but also after 1970 many other countries rightly followed suit. How refreshing to see a film that celebrates the power of ordinary people.

One suspects that lawyers of every ilk will find this film not only entertaining but also of interest in the way it traces the origin of this legal cornerstone.  A Source of the Nile moment, no less. In fact hark! Do I not hear the dulcet tones of the bells of

Saint Chancery Lane

ringing out, C…P…D?

No not really. That would surely be asking too much.

But if you are stuck for a stocking filler for your loved one who just may hack out a living at the coalface of Employment Law or any other kind of law for that matter, then I suspect Made in Dagenham will be a present that won’t find its way to the nearest charity shop come Eastertide.

A very important film that needs to be seen by lawyers of a curious disposition, and also lawyers of other dispositions as well. A must for all Law Schools.

Altogether now,

                         Women of the world unite.

                         You alone know what is right.

                         People ought to feel this way.

                         That’s the joy of Equal Pay.  

FILM NITE starts up again on 11^th January 2011 at the exclusive celebrity watering hole SOHOHOUSE. The opening two sessions will be given by Hollywood expert John Wischmeyer on the uncrowned king of tinsel town FRANK CAPRA – famous for films about the little man fighting for what is right and decent. Capra is probably best known for his festive regular, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), and his search for Shangri-La saga, Lost Horizon (1937). Whilst sometimes derided for his sentimental social comedies John Wischmeyer will demonstrate through the use of carefully selected extracts that there is a great deal more depth and complexity in Capra’s films than meets the eye. Other Capra films of note Are Mr Smith goes to Washington (1939) and of course It Happened one Night (1934) when Clark Gable takes off his shirt in the presence of Claudette Colbert. Shock! Horror! And the times, they are a changing………..…….

The rest of the term is given over to presentations/discussions on four recent releases, a free champagne reception at Sohohouse, and various meals and drinks. All in all a very pleasant way to learn about the second most interesting subject in the world.

                        Probably the best film class in town if not the world.