films

Movie Review: “The Great Escaper” with Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson

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The two British icons bring a huge amount of joy to the heartwarming true story of Bernard Jordan, the 89-year-old veteran who snuck off to attend the 70th anniversary of D-day

By Peter Bradshaw

Michael Caine and the late Glenda Jackson bring their A games to this true-life heartwarmer about the 89-year-old second world war Royal Navy veteran Bernard Jordan, who in 2014 jauntily sneaked out of his seaside care home (where he lived with his wife Irene) on a secret mission to get aboard a cross-channel ferry and attend the 70th anniversary celebrations of the D-day landings in Normandy — having failed to get included on an official group excursion. He was dubbed “the great escaper” in the press although then, as now, the care home insisted that there was no question of forbidding Bernard from going, so there was no escape as such. Facetiously representing them as busybody elf ’n’ safety camp commandants – tempting though this might have been – could have landed the film in legal hot water.

Caine is Jordan, of course, bringing plenty of droll and lugubrious spark to the role, shuffling up and down the seafront, grumpily denouncing the trendy cyclists almost running him over on the pavement as “tossers” and letting the air out of their tyres. But he is arguably upstaged by Jackson as Irene, or Rene, who is sarky and sardonic to everyone, including her care worker Adele (an excellent performance from Danielle Vitalis).

She gets laughs in a way Caine’s character doesn’t, or not as much. Rene has to cover up for Bernard; she is, after all, in on his plan, and tells the nurses and managers that her absent husband is just out on a long early walk, giving Bernard enough time to get on the ferry before the alarm is raised.

There’s a huge amount to enjoy from these legendary performers: Caine and Jackson are a great double-act, despite being apart for much of the film, and the film imagines an interesting and poignant rapport between Bernard and an elderly ex-RAF officer on the ferry, sympathetically played by John Standing, who is heading for Normandy while crucified by a secret guilt. Caine has a bold flash of rage by the official graves at all the criminal waste of lives created by war.

Set against this, the flashback scenes of the young Rene and Bernard are less strong and a flaw in the film is that it somehow can’t help drifting towards an officially sanctioned sentimentality and even stateliness, rather like the BBC news coverage of the D-day celebrations of which we see a glimpse. It’s a kind of piety which the (excellent) lead performances are always working against. I’m inclined to wonder how many movie versions of Captain Sir Tom Moore and his legendary lockdown charity walk were once in development in the same vein, with the same present day/wartime flashback structure, but which now have had to be abandoned or radically reimagined.

Well, Caine and Jackson and their ineffable class give this film some real grit: it’s a wonderful last hurrah for Jackson and there is something moving and even awe-inspiring in seeing these two British icons together.

 The Great Escaper is released on 6 October in UK cinemas, and in May 2024 in Australia.

Source: The Great Escaper review – Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson exude ineffable class

Kes inspired me to smash Oxbridge ivory towers

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Kes

Christopher Eccleston says Ken Loach’s film changed his view on “art for working class people”.

Christopher Eccleston has said Ken Loach’s Kes changed his view of “art and culture for working class people” and inspired him to take up acting to smash Oxbridge’s “ivory towers”.

The 59-year-old star recently read A Kestrel for a Knave, the book that inspired the 1969 film, for BBC Four.

He said Loach’s film of a boy who bonds with a kestrel had been the “most important cultural event” of his life.

The Salford-born actor added that it was the “greatest British film ever”.

The film, which was released a year after Barry Hines’s novel, won several awards when it was first released and was later ranked seventh in the British Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest British films of the 20th Century.

The former Doctor Who star, whose career has taken in films, television and the stage, told BBC North West Tonight that seeing it as a child inspired him to “smash down the ivory towers built by Oxbridge and public school and get into the arts world”.

“It changed my entire view of myself, of art and culture for working class people,” he said.

“It was an absolutely transformative experience.”

The film tells the story of Billy Casper, a working class boy who finds hope and fulfilment when he adopts a young kestrel and begins training it.

Eccleston said he was “completely and utterly beguiled by the idea that a working class individual like myself and my brothers and my mother and father could have a wonderful skill and could have a dream to be lifted from the pit, as in Billy’s case, or the factories in my mum and dad’s and my case”.

“I saw the film before I read the book and it changed my life entirely,” he said.

[ . . . ]

Source: Christopher Eccleston: Kes inspired me to smash Oxbridge ivory towers

Why I Hate … Richard Curtis

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By Ali

If Arnold Schwarzenegger personifies American cinema – powerful, symbolic and domineering – then British cinema would have to be Hugh Grant – bumbling, unsure and frankly, a pain in the arse to watch. There’s one person more than any other to blame for this, and funnily enough, it’s not Hugh Grant himself. No, the person mainly responsible for the current image of British cinema is Richard Curtis, the softly spoken, bespectacled ginge behind some of our country’s most financially successful movies. However, that doesn’t mean they’re not the most deathly boring, stereotypical, chuckle-free movies you’ll see produced this side of the Atlantic. Frankly, I’d rather watch old people fucking.

Fair enough, he’s got a fairly good pedigree, and you can’t ignore the fantastic TV series like Blackadder and Spitting Image on his resume. There’s no resting on your laurels in this business however, and despite the sterling work he’s done on the telly, his recent movies are absolutely atrocious portrayals of Great Britain, painting the British as incompetent but lovable oafs; well-meaning fools that are constantly misunderstood and always fall frightfully in love with the wrong people. After watching a Richard Curtis movie, you may feel a sudden desire to introduce a shotgun to the roof of your mouth to try and shoot the memories out.

Four Weddings and a Funeral. Absolutely one of the most overrated British movies in history, which is also responsible for bringing Hugh Grant to the attention of bean-flicking housewives the world over. Hugh’s bungling character falls in love with a girl he shouldn’t, runs around like the posh, overpaid twat he is and swears a lot. There’s a character in it called Fuckface! Ahahahaha! See, look how edgy British cinema is now we’re in the nineties! Awful.

Notting Hill. Only a Richard Curtis film could have a movie set in Notting Hill – that’s the most diverse, multi-cultural area in the whole of London – and not have it feature a single black person. Instead, we’re introduced to Hugh Grant’s bungling bookstore owner, who – gasp – falls in love with someone he shouldn’t and pratfalls his way through 2+ hours of tedium in the desperate attempt to get a whiff of Julia Roberts. It’s an uncanny representation of British life today (if you’re white, rich and annoying).

Bridget Jones’s Diary. A mind-numbing movie that should have stayed a book, aimed solely at fat old spinsters that sit at home on a Friday night in their pyjamas, gorging on chocolate and sobbing tears of woe down their porky cheeks. It also features Hugh Grant, but – get this – this time, he’s the cad! What genius playing against type! If you like this movie, you are a woman or a homosexual, it’s been proved in labs. Scores high on the shit-o-meter for featuring Colin Firth, another black hole of talent.

Love Actually. Stars Hugh Grant, as a bungling… oh for fuck’s sake, aren’t you sick of this yet? All you need to know is that he falls for someone he shouldn’t (lower class this time – daring) and rather than have one irritating storyline to follow, there’s ten, with each character ten times more plummy and a hundred types more bland than the last. Another back-slapping luvvie-fest that’s about as accurate about British life as a Blackpool postcard.

It’s not enough that his films are dire, but the man himself is an absolute excitement vacuum who has about as much charisma as glass of water. Enjoy some of his trivia from IMDB: “When he was in college, his girlfriend left him for a man named Bernard. In each of his screenplays, there is a fairly unpopular character named Bernard.” Whoah, steady on Richard! He might even figure out you’re talking about him! “I didn’t decide to be a writer. I wanted to be an actor and I turned out to be very bland, so I would always get cast as a character from Twelfth Night called Fabian, who hides behind the hedge and doesn’t have any funny lines.” You know why they put you behind that hedge? Because just to look at you makes peoples’ teeth fall out of their mouths from sheer boredom. It’s a scientific fact that time goes twice as slow when Richard Curtis is in the room.

You can’t blame Americans for ridiculing us Brits when they see the kind of films that Curtis writes. Between him and Guy Ritchie, we’ve become known throughout the world as either floppy-haired halfwits or gun-toting cockney wideboys who’d slam your head in a car door if you so much as looked at us. Jesus, we’ve got enough problem shaking off our ancient snooty image as it is without Richard casting Hugh fucking Grant as prime minister in his movie. Compare Curtis’ movies with the work of someone like Shane Meadows and see just how big the gulf is between the two – one is making low budget, genuinely funny and true-to-life British movies, the other is living in a dream world, hiring his posh friends to appear in his multi-million pound endeavours before driving home in his Rolls, listening to Ronan Keating and thinking to himself how wonderful life is. “You won’t find many people who’ve had an easier ride in movies than I,” he says. No fucking disagreement here, pal.

And don’t even get me started on The Vicar of cunting Dibley.

Source: Why I Hate… Richard Curtis | Movie Feature

Watch the 1968 horror story “Whistle and I’ll Come To You”

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Whistle and I’ll Come to You. is a classic 1904 M.R James ghost story adapted for TV by Jonathan Miller. It tells of an eccentric and distracted professor who happens upon a strange whistle while exploring a Knights Templar cemetery on the East Anglian coast. When blown, the whistle unleashes a frightening supernatural force.

This version is highly regarded amongst television ghost story adaptations and described by Mark Duguid of the British Film Institute as “A masterpiece of economical horror that remains every bit as chilling as the day it was first broadcast”.

A BBC Press Release for its repeat showing in 1969 stated that it was an “unconventional adaptation…remarkable, both for its uncanny sense of period and atmosphere, and for the quality of the actors’ performances”.

The performance of Michael Hordern is especially acclaimed, with his hushed mutterings and repetition of other characters’ words, coupled with a discernible lack of social skills, turning the professor from an academic caricature into a more rounded character, described by horror aficionado David Kerekes as “especially daring for its day”.

The stage journal Plays and Players suggests that Hordern’s performance hints that the professor suffers from a neurological condition called the “idea of a presence”. The production starred Michael Hordern and was directed by Jonathan Miller.

It was broadcast as part of the BBC arts programme Omnibus and inspired a new yearly strand of M.R. James television adaptations known as A Ghost Story for Christmas. First broadcast 7 May 1968