MovieChat Forums > The Battle of the River Plate Discussion > I got the R2 DVD; now about an R1...

I got the R2 DVD; now about an R1...

posted 14 years ago by hobnob53
30 replies | jump to latest

I bought the R2 DVD of The Battle of the River Plate when I was in England last month and watched it at my fiancee's house there. It's a pristine, widescreen version, an excellent print, and it was great to see it in its proper aspect ratio at long last. Cost just 5 pounds, too. When I get around to buying an R0 DVD player in the US it'll be a nice addition to the old collection.

But still awaiting an R1 disc...which looks less and less likely these days.

Incidentally, I do think the American name for this film, Pursuit of the Graf Spee, was a much better, more exciting and accurate title. The "battle" really wasn't that much of one, compared to most WWII naval engagements, and the ending was certainly not a battle.

Added 10/28/10: Nine months later.... As newer threads indicate, The Battle of the River Plate will finally be released on R1 DVD on Nov. 9, 2010. But the rest of the exchanges below are still very interesting!

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

The "battle" really wasn't that much of one

Try telling that to any of the survivors, especially those on the Exeter

The total casualties of the battle were 108 dead, 88 wounded. One heavy cruiser badly damaged. Two light cruisers with medium damage. One "pocket battleship" so damaged that it ran for shelter.

A battle isn't just shooting. Tactics come into it as well and they did come into it in a big way in this battle.

It was also the first major naval engagement of the war.

As for the title, the usual reason given for the title change is that most Americans don't know where the river Plate is and that they might mistake it for the Platte River and think it was a western

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

Hi Steve -- Long time! What, do you trawl the P&P film boards looking for errant posts? Glad to talk with you again.

I certainly wasn't belittling the battle, but as I said, in the context of most naval engagments that would follow later in the war, this one was not all that huge or decisive. Of course, when you're in the middle of it, any battle is dangerous, big and terrible.

Anyway, there was still no "battle" at the conclusion, only a suicide. (Speaking of which, I always thought the absence of any mention of Langsdorf's fate in this film was appalling. Apart from giving a fuller picture of the man, and a more sympathetic one, it was a vital coda to this first big naval engagement of the war.)

Yep, pardner, I've heard that canard about the title change, of how most Americans wouldn't know where the River Plate is -- which is certainly correct, especially as this was not an American battle. However, the part about confusing it with the Platte River is apocryphal and just plain silly. Most Americans wouldn't know where that was, either, and anyway, the Platte isn't big enough to accommodate two rowboats having a paddle fight.

And besides, wasn't it you Brits who misnamed -- mistranslated -- the "River Plate" anyway? In Spanish, it's Rio de la Plata -- River of Silver. What the hell is a river plate? (Plato is plate in Spanish. Wrong gender.)

Of course, had the river's name been rendered correctly in English, "The Battle of Silver River" really would have sounded like a western! (There was in fact a 1948 western called Silver River, with Errol Flynn. Not very good. No Germans.)

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

Just keeping an eye on everything related to P&P

Just because it didn't turn out to be a shooting battle for the second part of it, it was still a battle. A battle of wits and of courageous bluff. Who would blink first?

The British wanted to seem to want to drive Langsdorf out onto the fleet they were pretending was waiting for him. If he had gone out then he could well have slipped past the 2 light cruisers and got away. Even after the Cumberland joined them they still couldn't have covered the whole of the estuary.

Although really the biggest bluff was the way that three cruisers went into the attack in the first place. They should have been blown out of the water before they got a shot in. Langsdorf should have stood and fought from the start. But the German navy didn't have the tradition, the seamanship or the sheer cheek that the Royal Navy has always had.

It is strange that they didn't mention Langsdorf's suicide, after he had seen his men to safety. Maybe Peter Finch's agent would let him be seen to kill himself. But there was so much that they couldn't fit into the film. That's why Powell wrote a book about it with all the information that they'd researched that they couldn't fit into the film.

Graf Spee by Michael Powell
London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1956
New York, Rinehart, 1957.
(as Death in the South Atlantic; the last voyage of the Graf Spee)
London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1958. (pbk)
London: New English Library, 1973
London: White Lion Publishers, 1976. ISBN: 0-727-40256-0
(as The Last Voyage of the Graf Spee)

The Battle of the Little Big Horn didn't take place in the river, or not much. It was just close to it. There's a tradition of naming battles at sea after the nearest piece of land (or river). Like Nelson at the Battle of the Nile which happened off the Mediterranean coast of Egypt or the Battle of Trafalgar which happened at sea some distance from Cape Trafalgar. And the canard about the River Platte is such a good one we'll probably keep it going for a while yet

There's also a long tradition of adapting names of places (or rivers) from other languages to make them more pronounceable in English, even if it does mess up the meaning. Think back to that scene in A Canterbury Tale where the "Seven Sisters Soldier" meets the American and tells him that he's got a cousin who lives in "Butt City"

We even do it with place names in the UK. Telling people that those Scottish islands are called "the He-brides" instead of "the Heb-rid-eez"

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

Well, your points about the battle are all well taken, of course. I guess naming the film The Battle of Wits of the River Plate wouldn't have sounded so commercially promising.

Anyway, there's no one I'd rather have at my side in a fight than a British serviceman -- Army, Navy, Marine, RAF, you name it. Truly. I admire that country of yours tremendously -- hell, I went there to find my bride-to-be.

My issue isn't about which geographical entity after which the battle was named -- River Plate, Estuary, Montevideo, whatever, any one could fit -- but rather the basic misrepresentation of the actual name of the river, which long predates the war. Now, come on -- is saying "Silver River" or "River of Silver" really so hard, so unpronounceable? Is "River Plate" so much easier? And as I said before, what in God's name does "river plate" mean, anyway? As the Spanish would say, "Nada." Accompanied by a few choice Hispanic epithets. Although, fluent in Spanish, I don't know what if any national insult the Spanish might hurl against a Brit, as "gringo" is deployed against us Yanks. (I rather like it myself!)

No, it was just some lazy, dismissive British naval officer or cartographer or someone who ignorantly assumed that "plata" meant "plate". But there's a long tradition of dumb cartographers getting their information wrong and passing an error on for the ages. Nome, Alaska, got that moniker from a map maker who saw a chart depicting a settlement whose identity was unknown and wrote "Name?" beside it; the next fellow mistook the guy's "a" for an "o", and voila!, Nome was named. And let us not forget how "America" got its name. Otherwise, the whole world would be calling us Columbians, and God only knows what they'd be calling Colombians. West Venezuelans or something.

But I like your tale about the "He-brides". Never heard that one. Sounds like a gay community. I once had a vanity license plate on my car that read NAVARONE, after my favorite movie. (Guns of, not Force Ten From.) Soon after getting it from the state of New York, a friend of mine (a fellow film buff and WWII veteran of the British Army, though he was an American), saw it and immediately said, "Of course, they screwed it up." "How?" He pointed to the plate: "You really wanted it to read NAVAR 1." That had actually occurred to me when I first got the plate, but his mind and mine were always on the same warped track. I finally got rid of that plate, and now have just a standard issue one, which unfortunately begins with the letters "DMF". The moment I saw it I had to explain to the car dealer what that particular acronym meant. Rather insulting. I think I need another vanity plate. With the state's 8-character limitation, how about RVRPLATE?

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

It's been called the River Plate on British maps for a long time, and for a significant part of that long time Britain was at war with Spain. They still have a few interesting epithets for people like that old pirate Sir Francis Drake

The name Rio de la Plata is actually just as meaningless. It's not really a silver river. It's not even really a river. It's just an estuary area where two large rivers (the Uruguay and the Paraná) join as they reach the sea. The Spanish pirates who were there looting the interior for its silver and gold called it Rio de la Plata because that's where they moored their ships that took the silver and other valuables back to Spain. Why should a name like that be any more meaningful than calling it the River Plate? What did the locals call it before the Spanish turned up?

You might be fluent in Spanish, but not many British people are even though a lot of British people holiday there. And when those maps were made way back in the dim and distant, even fewer would be fluent in Spanish.

Couldn't your vanity plate read AMOLAD or IKWIG? Or has Scorsese already bought those in New York?

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

Many geographic names reflect little about reality. Remember the world's #1 example: Greenland. Talk about an early real estate scam. Of course, emigration from the more aptly-named Iceland would not likely have been encouraged had Erik been more self-regardant and labeled his discovery Redland.

So place names should seldom be taken too literally, as representing anything intrinsic to their nature. But still, calling something the "Silver" or "Gold" River, for example, at least conveys the notion that there's silver or gold in them thar streams. What does "River Plate" convey? A trove of sunken dinnerware? Rivers may have silver nuggets in them, but not plates, unless they were thrown overboard from a Carnival Cruise ship.

Here in NY we have the so-called "East River" on the east (!) side of the island of Manhattan, but it isn't a proper river -- more like an estuary or channel or passage or something. Still, when gang members toss their victims into it, it wouldn't be as catchy a phrase for a present-day Mike Fowler to report, "A body was found floating in the East Passage today. Wow! Keep the drinks comin', Miguel."

Speaking of gangs, you threw me for a few moments with your l.p. suggestions...I was trying to think of which Scorsese films the acronyms referred to! But I soon grew less dense. Maybe Thelma Schoonmaker has those already. Me, I'd probably pick 49THPRL or FNP or 49PARLEL or something, for my favorite. Or perhaps TLADOCB? OOOAIM? That looks cool. When you mentioned Scorsese, the only quote (not title) of his I could think of would acronym-out as YTTM. (No question marks permitted.) I actually have seen a plate reading something like GDFELLAS, though. Not a car I'd want to mess with. Talk about a matter of life or death. Or, if not exactly a river plate, then a plate found in the river. With the car still attached. And occupied.

Oh, as to what the locals called the River Plate before the Spanish turned up? My guess, they called it Ours.

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

My guess, they called it Ours.

Applause

"Plate" doesn't only refer to crockery. You can have silver or gold plating (electroplating) or you can have Sheffield Plate which is a layered combination of silver and copper that was used for many years to produce a wide range of household articles. That was a cheaper version of solid silver (Sterling Silver) that was used for a lot of household utensils.

I don't know if Thelma or Marty do drive. Whenever I've met them they were being driven by someone else or riding on public transport. If they do drive they are both such big P&P fans that I'm sure they'd love to have vanity plates saying AMOLAD or IKWIG. I'm not sure that one saying BLIMP would be as popular

Thelma is such a sweet looking, white haired, lovely lady. Whenever she gives talks about her film work or about P&P, one common question is of the form "How come such a nice lady as yourself edits all those violent gangster films? Aren't you shocked by them?"

She then points out that they're not at all violent until she's done editing them

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

Oh, I'd demur a little and say that M.S.'s films are violent before Thelma's editing begins. But it's she who gives that violence purpose by getting it organized!

Nice ladies seem often to edit such things. Verna Fields was a nice person and she won an Oscar for assembling Jaws. Editing was one of the few major jobs in film readily available to women back in the studio days, so I guess there's some tradition there. Darryl Zanuck placed so much trust in the judgment and ability of Barbara McLean at Fox that he relied on her for story, script and even directing advice!

You know, I don't know whether Scorsese drives, and for some reason I think I've heard that Miss Schoonmaker does not -- though why I should ever have heard such a thing, I can't imagine. I'm probably hallucinating again. Driving Miss Thelma?

I was thinking earlier that I like the way the acronym IKWIG reads when pronounced as an actual word. Like a town in a John Wyndham novel. I agree, though, BLIMP wouldn't be a very flattering plate to have. Still, it would draw less attention from the authorities than one reading, say, CNTRABND.

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

And it was another sweet little old lady (or she is now) who edited Powell's Peeping Tom. Noreen Ackland had been working her way up the editorial ladder working as assistant editor on various P&P films from Black Narcissus onwards.

Yes, IKWIG is usually pronounced as a word rather than spelt out. It's written on the blackboard where we see the film title. The cognoscenti also use AMOLAD pronounced as a single word, like "ammo lad". They're not meant to be a code, they're just a shorthand when we're talking about the films amongst ourselves.

Talking of Contraband, the harbour we see at the start of that was at Ramsgate in Kent. When they wanted to film there they sent all their luggage and equipment in cases boldly marked CONTRABAND. Luckily the local wartime Contraband Controllers saw the funny side and when the crew arrived at the hotel they found their cases had stamps and stencils all over them saying things like EXPLOSIVES, EXAMINED, CONDEMNED.

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

I like that Contraband tale!

Yes, I think a lot of us pronounce acronyms as words, even when the letters don't precisely add up to the pronunciation given them. But have you considered the Orwellian implications when certain "select" individuals use condensed language as verbal shorthand when speaking? Goodthinkers bellyfeel Ingsoc, and all that.

Now that (1984) would have been an interesting adaptation for P&P to have tackled. The visuals would have been stunning, and Pressburger could have done wonders with the srcipt.

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

Ah, but there were so many that they should have made but never managed to for one reason or another.

Bear in mind that most of their greatest films were from original stories by Emeric. So what else might he have imagined? One of the films that are "Missing, believed lost" was Squadron Leader X (1943). Written by Emeric, directed by Lance Comfort and starring Eric Portman & Ann Dvorak. For the story, see http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/43_SqnLdrX/PictureShow.html. It sounds like a good one but it's never been seen since it was first released.

As for Micky Powell, there were a lot of projects he wanted to do but could never get the funding for. Top of the list is the Powell version of The Tempest. It's about a magician on an island, perfect for Powell

There's a list of the ones I know about at http://www.powell-pressburger.org/NotMade.html although that's probably not complete.

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

I know of Squadron Leader X. It's missing?! Really missing -- not just like one of our aircraft? That's happened to hundreds of silent films, but it's comparatively rare for a sound film, particularly one made as recently [sic] as 1943. I'm truly shocked. Sure it's not just tied up in some legal limbo?

Of course, all filmmakers (directors, producers, actors, all of 'em) have disappointments, unrealized projects. Goes with the territory.

Anyway, The Tempest got its due with Forbidden Planet. I ignore John Cassavetes.

Our revels now are ended. These, our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Bon nuit. Or, as they say on the Rio de la Plata, "This is Mike Fowler, signing off."

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

There are many lost and missing films. As you say, lots of silent films, but also lots of sound films. In 1992 the BFI ran a campaign called "Missing, Believed Lost" to highlight this. They gave quite a few examples and interviewed some of the people who had helped make them. They published a book to go with it.

Quite a few films have been found due to this campaign. There's a list of those that were mentioned in the original campaign and which of those have been found. http://britishpictures.com/articles/missing.htm

That details missing films which were made up to the 1960s. All of them have something about them that would make them interesting to film fans and students

Many of Michael Powell's early directorial efforts are "Missing, Believed Lost"!
The films he made during the 1930s were often made quickly and cheaply, they certainly aren't lost masterpieces, but many of the ones that do survive are well worth watching. You can see the young director honing his skill and trying out ideas that he would later use again, to better effect, in his major films with Pressburger.

Of the 23 films he directed (credited as director) before his breakthrough film The Edge of the World (1937), 9 of them are still "Missing, Believed Lost".

They definitely aren't just tied up in legal limbo or held by a collector who doesn't want to share them.

As for The Tempest, Forbidden Planet was very good, as was Peter Greenaway's film Prospero's Books (1991). But I think that they are both far from definitive and that Powell's version would have been most interesting

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

I have a couple of early Powell films -- one that comes to mind is The Red Ensign -- is that right? At least he, unlike some directors and filmmakers generally, was always interesting, even when flawed or unsuccessful.

It is shocking at some of the films that are lost, or even partially lost (like the 1937 Lost Horizon or the 1954 A Star is Born). When you read the ways in which so many films -- the literal film itself -- were treated so cavalierly, even contemptuously, into the 60s at least, it's really quite astounding. You'd think that, if for no other reason, the studios would want to protect their property for commercial purposes at least.

Still, once in a while things turn up, often in unexpected places. I recall that a man named Forrest J. Ackerman, who just died last year, was rummaging around the Italian Film Archives in Rome 20 years ago and ran across a print of the 1933 RKO "disaster" film, The Deluge, long thought to be lost. Of course, this print was in Italian (even scenes with signs had to be re-shot in Italian, owing to an edict from Mussolini), but at least it was the entire film and it's been saved, if not quite in its original form. (The film has remarkable special effects sequences by Ned Mann, later of Things to Come fame, of the destruction of New York City by earthquakes and tidal waves.)

So -- one never knows -- a film or two may surface when you least expect it. Only the passage of time alarms me, since even if they find a print of something, it may be too late to salvage it. I've heard of films (also taped TV programs and music tracks) in such bad shape that they can be run just once, perhaps twice, to make a copy before the original disintegrates completely. Life and its artifacts are fragile.

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

Yes, Red Ensign (aka Strike! in the US) is one of the bigger of Powell's early films. Many of them were made just to fulfil a quota laid down by an act of Parliament which was trying to stop the flood of Hollywood films in the 1930s. They decreed that every cinema must show a certain amount of British films in any programme. These films were made very quickly and cheaply and the film makers were just paid by the footage they produced. Sadly there was no element of quality mentioned in the act and a lot of them really were rubbish. They quickly got a bad reputation with the public and there are stories of some cinemas screening them before they let the public in, while the cinemas were being cleaned. Then they could say that they'd screened a British film and the public didn't have to suffer it.

But Powell used the facilities offered by that act to really hone his craft as a director and to try out a lot of different styles.

One that was rediscovered by the BFI search was His Lordship (1932). A plumber discovers that he's inherited a title and is now a Lord. The trouble is that he's quite a socialist and doesn't want anything to do with the aristocracy. His girlfriend is called Lenina and there are a couple of comedy Bolsheviks

It's actually a musical and one of the numbers is done complete with a chorus line of housemaids!

Like the others, it's not exactly a masterpiece, but they're well worth watching. They're nearly all very competently made and a lot of them have good stories. As well as Powell's own experiments we can also see him beginning to gather together the team of people, actors and technicians, who would go on to work with him under the banner of The Archers.

We haven't given up hope of finding these missing films. That's why it was good that the BFI campaign was called "Missing, Believed Lost" with the emphasis on it only being believed that they were lost.

A few have already been released on DVD and I keep trying to persuade people to release more. Some of the others were released on video some time ago and some people have done home-made DVDs from those and they then sell copies of those DVDs. Those turn up on eBay or iOffer every so often.

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

Quota Quickies! Another attempt to regulate the arts. It's generally held that this act harmed more than helped the British film industry against the titan that was (and still is) Hollywood, but as you pointed out it did have its upside, at least providing training and education for later filmmakers, some of whom, like MP, were quite talented.

Many other nations have similarly tried to build up their own film industries, not so much by aiding the industry itself as by blocking or regulating the showing of American films in favor of the nation's own, or by blocking or freezing dollars earned by American studios, as was done in Western Europe after the war. This is understandable, and, if you'll pardon a nationalist sentiment, typical of the old European mindset of bringing about equality by lowering everybody's standards instead of encouraging competition to raise them. But making Hollywood studios the scapegoat is irrational. After all, people all over the world generally prefer American films (for whatever reasons), and these are what they choose to go see. If the French or Germans or Italians or even Japanese or Chinese preferred their own cinema, they'd be more successful on ther own merits. Personally I find it surprising and a little appalling that the American remakes of some European films make vastly more money in the original's native country than that original ever did. But this just can't be laid down to better advertising or cultural imperialism. Obviously, Hollywood must be doing something right -- at least from a narrow commercial perspective.

I mentioned Things to Come on the other thread and recall hearing that a more complete version of this film is supposedly in the works, with additional "lost" footage being reincorporated into the prints currently in common use. I saw a copy of a supposed restored edition in HMV for around 20 pounds last month, but the running time given (92 mins.) is the same as the best version we have over here. Supposedly the American distributor Criterion will be releasing a restored version of this film sometime, though how much truth, and how much rumor, there is to this remains to be seen.

By the way, it occurred to me that, since Criterion has released most, though not all, of the P&P films here in America, they might consider a box set of some of the boys' yet-unreleased (in the US) films, all with the common war theme: One of Our Aircraft is Missing, Ill Met by Moonlight and, of course, The Battle of the River Plate. (OOOAIM is actually available here, but only in crummy public domain prints.) It seems to me they could knock off three birds with one stone by packaging them together, and would make some money on such a good set. There is precedent for their doing so. At worst, they could release it under their cheaper Eclipse label, even though a regular Criterion release would be better.

Not that they ever listen to my good ideas.

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

There are a few others that we'd like to see Criterion do. One is the collection of Powell's early film, another is the remaining "music and dance" films like Oh... Rosalinda!! (1955) and that could include Luna de miel (1959) (aka Honeymoon) and Bluebeard's Castle (1963). None of those reach the heights obtained by The Red Shoes but they're all very interesting and stand comparison to most other "music and dance" films. There's a short clip from Luna de miel (from a poor print) on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDeYigl_XlI. Better prints of the whole film do exist, that's just to give you a flavour of it. I reckon that's probably the sexiest bit of dancing I've ever seen in a feature film.

Another good set would be the remaining "war films" as you say.

I'll have a word with the good people at Criterion next time I have cause to email them. I've helped them out with a few of the P&P DVDs they've already done. I even get a "Thanks" in the booklets on a few of them. I think I've already suggested the set of Powell's early films, I'll check my email archives. And Thelma did say at one time that they were hoping to release Oh... Rosalinda!! and Bluebeard's Castle

BTW I put "war films" in quotes like that because another peculiarity in P&P films is that all the films that they made during the war and the ones they made after the war that deal with the war, all have one thing in common. There's not much fighting in any of them. In fact The Battle of the River Plate has a lot more fighting than all of the others put together, and in that it only takes up about 1/3 of the film, if that.

They were generally more interested in the effect of the war on people (individuals and en masse).

Thelma & Marty are already working on a full restoration of Colonel Blimp. Like with The Red Shoes they've gone right back to the Technicolor negatives - which were in a sorry state, scratched, distorted and even a bit mouldy. But with what they learnt in restoring The Red Shoes they reckon that restoring Blimp will be a lot faster, and cheaper

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

I suppose Criterion, had they the rights to the films and a mind to do so, could do a "Later Films of Michael Powell" set along the lines of their Postwar Kurosawa Eclipse box. Under that rubric they could include the films you mentioned without concern as to thematic similarities and the like, or even regardless of Pressburger's participation. What about The Queen's Guards also?

Last year as you know Columbia (Sony) released a two-disc set of A Matter of Life and Death and Age of Consent, and odd duo if ever there were one. I had good copies of AMOLAD, though I still wish this had come from Criterion, and was glad to get AOC, which I first saw about a dozen years ago. Very late MP, and not entirely successful or satisfying, but interesting, with two great leads and beautiful scenery.

I use the term "war films" somewhat generically too, as you're quite right about what was unique in their films in which the war played some role or other (and there were a number of such films). It isn't fighting they concentrate on, it's people and ideas...which is why their films are so compelling in this regard. They're also perhaps the only filmmakers who could get away with an oft-used and usually not very convincing ruse, employing the same actor in two different roles in a film...except in their case, they managed to pull this off having someone play three roles in the same film! (DK in Blimp, of course.)

Say, can you tell me some of the P&P editions in which Criterion thanked you personally? I'd like to be able to point to the description and tell people, Hey, Steve and I trade funny faces on IMDb!

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

Criterion would have loved to have been able to do a DVD of AMOLAD, but Sony had the rights and wouldn't relinquish them. Not even when they dawdled so much. Their first announced their AMOLAD DVD in April 2003. It finally happened in January 2009.

What about The Queen's Guards you ask? Have you seen it?
When some of his early films started to be rediscovered just before he died, Powell said "I'm not sure my reputation can stand many more discoveries like these". Well I think that his reputation might take some serious knocks if The Queen's Guards was more widely known. It really is very poor

I finally saw it at the San Sebastian Film Festival in northern Spain (40 Powell films in 10 days) in 2002 and wrote a review of it at http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/61_Queens/Review.html. Since then I've seen it a few more times, and I don't think that I should water down that quite scathing review at all. There are a few brief hints at something of interest. But that's about all.

Deborah was superb in Blimp. She's such a different character in each of the three roles. Micky reckoned it was all due to the different period foundation garments they made her wear, but it was also due to her great acting talent. Pretty good for a relative newcomer to films. It's no wonder that Hollywood snapped her up.

As for the "Thanks", just a few like The Small Back Room and A Canterbury Tale. I'm even in one of the extra features on the DVD of ACT

We do a location walk in and around Canterbury on the last Sunday in August every year [http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Trips/Canterbury/]. As you know, most of the film is in the villages around Canterbury, they only get into Canterbury itself for the last part of the film. So we walk around the locations, showing people where each scene was filmed and getting people from the crowd (usually 50 - 80 people, it varies with the weather) to recite a few lines from the scene that was shot there. As well as meeting some interesting people, everyone's got a different reason for their interest in the film, some are regulars but we usually get some new people every year. As well as all that it's a good excuse to go for a nice walk in the countryside.

Well in 2005 we were doing a bit of a special walk to commemorate Micky's centenary where we looked at the places where he grew up, and a nice man from the BBC came along and filmed us and interviewed some of us. As it happens he couldn't get the BBC to take it, so he offered it to Criterion and they took it. Of course we had to call it "A Canterbury Trail"

It was even enough for someone to give me a credit on the IMDb

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

Uh-oh. No, I never saw TQG, so now I'm worried. But if you, my friend, have cause to take such vast exception to a Michael Powell film, then it must be something...um...unique?

Sony's refusal to relinquish the rights to AMOLAD may also go a way to explaining why -- if indeed it was ever even considered -- Criterion didn't include a copy of the US cut of 49th Parallel (The Invaders), which we discussed on that board the other year. Columbia released it in the States in 1942, and I've detailed the differences between the two cuts for you. It would have been an interesting comparison. I suppose there's nothing to prevent Columbia from releasing it anyway, under its own label. But I doubt they will, even though they're going deep into their library these days, almost the only Hollywood studio currently doing so.

Now that I'm about to marry an English girl, and will be spending bits of time in the UK, might it be possible for us one year to join your Canterbury trail? (That's a question, not a self-invitation!) It'd be fun to do, and to meet you, too, Steve. But if I can come, I'll have to bone up on the dialogue.

Right now I'm trying to recall a long-ago joke about a medieval UFO over Canterbury, something that ended with "Flying Chaucer". No...come to think of it, it's probably in the same league of humor as The Queen's Guards is in the Powell lexicon, so...never mind.

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

"Flying Chaucer"

All are welcome on the Canterbury walks any time. Last Sunday in August every year. Check the web site to see just where we'll be in any year.

The US version of A Canterbury Tale has been shown at a few special screenings. The US version of Gone to Earth has been seen a few times. But the original US versions of most of the others that were changed for the States haven't been seen very often.

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

I've never seen the US version of Canterbury and have never seen Gone to Earth (US: The Wild Heart) at all. What is The Elusive Pimpernel like? (Known here as The Fighting Pimpernel, which if you think about it gives the character's nature rather a different meaning.)

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

Until I saw The Queen's Guards I often thought, and said, that The Elusive Pimpernel was the worst of the films by Powell and/or Pressburger. But that wasn't because it's bad in any way, just because I knew that they could have done so much better with it if they hadn't been shackled by Alex Korda & Sam Goldwyn. They were really quite badly restricted in what they could do and who they had to use (especially Margaret Leighton). They weren't used to that.

But The Elusive Pimpernel does still have quite a few flashes of the old P&P magic and is well worth watching. If it had been made by anyone else then you'd say it was a good film. It's only when you compare it to the P&P masterpieces that it doesn't look so good.

The only change for the American market (AFAIK) was the change in title. The changes to A Canterbury Tale and Gone to Earth were much more significant.

In ACT they added in a new opening starting with an animation that says how there were a lot of people involved in WWII, a certain number of those were American, some of those served overseas, some served in Europe and so on, whittling it down until we get to a "typical G.I.". Yes, it's Bob Johnson and his new wife (Kim Hunter) on the top of the Rockefeller Center in NYC. They are talking about their adventures. Bob's (unnamed) wife wants him to go with her to Australia where she was posted. Bob wants her to go to Canterbury where he had such a strange adventure. Bob's obviously the better talker because we next see them in the tea rooms by the Cathedral Gate in Canterbury. Bob then tells his wife all about his strange adventure and we go into the film as we know it and love it.

But there are some parts taken out! Specifically the boys' river battle but also a few other things which don't advance the plot as rapidly as the American distributors seem to have wanted it to be advanced. That's a shame because that's one of the joys of ACT, if you can slow down to its pace then it's a real delight.

Bob does some additional narration to cover these gaps in the story. That American opening is available on the Criterion DVD but they couldn't show the bits that were cut out

Confusingly, the British version of Gone to Earth was shown on UK TV with the title Wild at Heart But it was still the British version. The American version opens with the Selznick Mansion in the title credits. That's the best way to tell them apart.

Selznick decided that he didn't like the film that P&P made, so he sued them. He lost of course but it turned out that he had the rights to re-shoot parts of it for the American market. In his autobiographies, Powell claimed that Selznick only left about 35 minutes of the original film, but, in fact, about two-thirds remains intact. Overall, Selznick cut the film's length by 28 minutes, from the original 110 minutes to 82 minutes.

Selznick's changes were mostly additions to the film: a prologue; scenes explaining things, often literally, by putting labels or inscriptions on them; and more close-ups of Jennifer Jones. The most infamous of the alterations are the scenes at the end when Jones is supposedly carrying a tame fox - in the additional scenes, she is carrying what is obviously a stuffed toy fox

Selznick also deleted a few scenes that he felt weren't dramatic enough, some of which were major plot points, so the story doesn't make as much sense as it does in the original film. One of the worst cuts is that he cut the scene where Hazel does the spell to see if she should go off with Reddin. She hears her father's harp faintly on the wind and thinks that it's the "fairy music" saying that she should go. But if that scene is cut completely then she has no reason for going - apart from pure lust.

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

I had heard some not-great things about Pimpernel, but from your take it doesn't sound so bad -- maybe disappointing for P&P, but not really a bad film, and I would like to see it sometime.

I'd also of course want to see GTE, but whether I'd like it sounds highly questionable, certainly if I'm sadddled with the Selznick version. He was a great producer in the early years but just lost his bearings, sense of restraint and objectivity (primarily over the late Miss Jones) as the 40s wore on.

Now that you recount it I do recall reading about the story-framing interference in the Americanized ACT, though I haven't seen the Criterion extra, for some reason -- will have to do so. In one sense, I can understand helping us poor Americans out with some exposition on the strange ways of Brits, but the manner in which this was done was often pretty bad.

Gosh, filmmaking has advanced so much, don't you think? Seriously, at least today we can usually see the original versions of films previously bowdlerized on the other side of the Atlantic, the real thing left unseen by those stranded millions, all those decades.

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

Aww, you poor people. Stuck over there, so far from civilisation
It reminds me of the anglo-centric headline in a newspaper some time ago "Fog in channel, continent isolated"

As for Mr Selznick, Powell's autobiography describes him as being constantly on Benzedrine whenever they met. Apparently the marriage wasn't exactly a love-match. Jennifer wanted to advance her career and Selznick wanted to collect another trophy.

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

Indeed, so far from it that we spell civilization with a z, which we pronounce zee, the way God intended it.

I'm sure you know the stories, certainly true though half-heartedly denied by Hitchcock, that he included swipes at his ex-boss Selznick in at least two films: North by Northwest, in which Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), seeing Roger Thornhill's (Cary Grant) monogrammed matchbook -- ROT -- asks him what the O stand for. "Nothing!" replies Thornhill...the same as Selznick's phony middle "O". The other holds that, in Rear Window, Hitchcock very deliberately had Raymond Burr, playing the murderer, made up to look like DOS!

However, quite right about JJ and DOS each using the other for their own purposes. Guess they both got what they wanted, up to a point. I understand he offered to co-produce TBOTRP but withdrew after Miss Jones refused to be fired out of a cannon.

Speaking of which, I just watched my favorite, The Guns of Navarone. Anthony Quayle had certainly loosened up from his days as Commodore aboard the Ajax. It was a real leg up for him.

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

Be careful about invoking the almighty. The Jews always claimed to be God's chosen people. The trouble is though, they say, they're not sure exactly what they were chosen for

I hadn't heard those stories about Hitch invoking D.O'S. But it does sound like him. He was always quite mischievous.

But we lost another member of The Archers on Friday. Jean Simmons, the delicious Kanchi in Black Narcissus

She had a good run and had a good life by all accounts. Here's to you Jean, and thank you

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

Yes, I noted Miss Simmons's death on another board. I only found out today, in her obituary in The New York Times, that she died of lung cancer. That presumes, though does not guarantee, that she was a smoker, which I never saw any evidence of. In any case, nine days shy of 81, a good life, with no more than the normal quota of personal ups and downs, I guess.

The shame is that Hollywood so wasted her immense talents on routine films, with a few exceptions. The headline on the NYT article actually read, "Actress Whose Talent Exceeded the Parts She Played", which I thought an extraordinary statement, however accurate. Many interesting aspects to her life. Professionally, the article specifically cited three films that lifted her to the top rank in Britain before her 19th birthday: Great Expectations, Hamlet and...Black Narcissus. A pity, and perhaps something of a surprise (despite her relocation to America in 1950), that P&P never used her again in something...though I'm a bit pressed to think which of their later films she might have been suited for (not that the Hollywood studios worried about that aspect!).

As for her British films, I also liked her in the original The Blue Lagoon, and in So Long at the Fair. In the US, she was best in The Big Country, Spartacus and Elmer Gantry, though why she failed to receive even an Oscar nomination for the latter is astounding (while the highly over-praised and mannered performance of Shirley Jones in the same picture won her the supporting Oscar). She did get nominations for Hamlet and The Happy Ending, the latter a so-so film from 1969.

A story repeated in this obituary goes that she repeatedly refused to have an affair with her RKO boss Howard Hughes. One time he phoned her at home, asking her, "When are you going to get away from that goddamned husband of yours? I want to talk to you alone, honey." Well, her goddamned husband Stewart Granger was listening in and when he heard that, he grabbed the phone and yelled, "Mr. Howard Bloody Hughes, you'll be sorry if you don't leave my wife alone!" Hughes retaliated by "put[ting] her in three lousy productions that would ruin her career." One of his "punishments" was the film noir Angel Face, with Bob Mitchum, which surprisingly turned out to be quite good, to Hughes's chagrin. However, he did refuse to loan her out for Roman Holiday, which of course made a star (and Oscar-winner) of Audrey Hepburn. But it was always said she was a very kind, generous person, and after seeing the film she called Audrey up and told her, "I wanted to hate you, but I have to tell you I wouldn't have been half as good." I'm sure Audrey found that gracious and nice, but the truth is, Audrey was better for that particular role than the more established Jean would have been, though I'm sure she would have been much more than "half" as good.

Two of her films, Caesar and Cleopatra (also co-starring her future husband Granger) and Androcles and the Lion (I believe another of Hughes's threatened "lousy productions"), are being released by Criterion's Eclipse line in a couple of weeks, a box set featuring a trio of Gabriel Pascal's G.B. Shaw adaptations, also including Major Barbara. That will make a nice, if sadly timely, coda for her admirers. RIP, Jan. 31, 1929 - Jan. 22, 2010.

Thanks for permitting us this break in the thread topic, Messers Powell and Pressburger.

I thought the Koreans were God's Chosen people?

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

The Hollywood studio heads did wield a ridiculous amount of power back then and if they fancied one of the young actresses and she dared to refuse them they could make life very difficult for her.

As for why Jean never worked for P&P again, I suspect that was to do with the way the Hollywood studio contracts tied people up. They had to jump through a lot of hoops to get Deborah to work for them again in Black Narcissus.

Caesar and Cleopatra has a great cast and they spent a huge amount of money on it (It just about bankrupted Rank). But it's not (IMO) a great film

Androcles and the Lion is a much more interesting film and I'm glad to hear that that's being released. I haven't seen it for ages.

Major Barbara is a great film. And it has those two fine ladies Wendy Hiller & Deborah Kerr in it.

Steve

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

Actually, Jean Simmons always refused to sign a contract with any studio after she was out from under RKO. So that shouldn't have been a bar to working with P&P. Probably they just never had anything for her.

I thought Deborah Kerr made BN before going to Hollywood and Metro. Her first film for MGM was The Hucksters in '47, the same year as Narcissus, but which did she make first? Or had she signed with MGM before leaving the UK and being asked to star in BN? I'll have to check filming and release dates.

I agree with you about Caesar and Cleopatra. I find it interesting but not the great epic Pascal thought it would be. But I'll be glad to own the set. Both this and Androcles have never been released on DVD in the US, and Major Barbara I believe only in crummy, p.d. prints, and perhaps only in VHS. In fact, I've never even seen AATL, except for a clip showing Androcles dancing with the titular kitty in the arena.

What is it with films about Cleopatra? Fox nearly went under with the Liz Taylor thing, a classic example of just throwing more and more money at something and digging your own grave. For a film like C&C to be made in Britain under the economic conditions of 1945 was in itself preposterous. I love the fact that Pascal actually imported sand from Egypt for the film -- talk about expansive expenses, or expensive expanses. Less costly but more intriguing was his decision to hire people from the Royal Observatory to chart the skies as they had looked from Egypt in 48 B.C. so that the set designers could paint the stars in their accurate positions for the film's place and period.

The failure to do this very thing is what completely ruined One Million B.C. for me.