Sink the Bismarck! (1960)

Directed by Lewis Gilbert.

Sink the Bismarck! was quite a successful film in its time, and since it is so lazy and tedious it seems worthwhile to ask why.  It is a war film made in the period of British decline as a world power, evoking an earlier time when Britain fought courageously and effectively against a mortal threat.  Of course it’s understood that war movies in wartime are flag-wavers – Powell and Pressburger got into strife for not waving the flag hard enough in Colonel Blimp – but peacetime flag-wavers have no obvious propaganda-morale function.  Films like The Dam Busters and Reach for the Sky come to mind, or the earlier and better The Cruel Sea.  These were films meant to reassure that things hadn’t changed, and that the right people were still in charge.

The story of the Bismarck’s first and last voyage is a strong one, and has been the subject of books by C. S. Forester and William Shirer, among others.  The British navy’s tracking of the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen around the North Atlantic is like a chess game punctuated by the sinking of the Hood and, eventually, the Bismarck.  The decision to turn Forester’s book into a commercial feature film rather than a documentary required the unfortunate injection of human interest.  I say unfortunate because the characters are unimaginatively written and the acting is stiff and stereotyped.

Most of the film takes place in the Admiralty War Room, with intercut scenes on various British ships and the Bismarck itself.  A complex narration is facilitated by the use of cutout characters – mostly stiff upper lip types with the exception of  a few semi-comic lower class tradies accidentally on board the Prince of Wales. On the Bismarck, the fleet commander is a self-seeking fanatical Nazi (the actual commander was nothing of the sort) and the captain is a little more decent – not exactly a “good” Nazi, but good enough to underline the horribleness of his boss.  Meanwhile, Kenneth More is the martinet in charge of the War Room, albeit with a secret sorrow, and he is permitted to “break down” when he hears that his son is missing at sea, presumed lost – that is, his shoulders heave a little in medium long shot, with his back turned.  The entirely superfluous, dewily pretty Dana Wynter is allowed to witness this, and a little romantic spark is permitted in the closing scene, after Jerry has been sent to the bottom.

This movie hasn’t become dated – it was dated when it was made.

The Wicker Man (1973)

Directed by Robin Hardy.

On the cult classic spectrum, The Wicker Man is situated towards the Robot Monster end.  The plot is quickly summarised;  a Scottish policemen, Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) receives an anonymous letter claiming that a young girl has been murdered on the Hebridean island of Summerisle.  Howie, a devout Christian and a rigidly righteous man, flies to Summerisle to investigate.  The islanders are friendly but unhelpful, and deny that the girl ever existed.  Howie is outraged to learn that the islanders practise a form of paganism.  This seems to be connected with the island’s evident fruitfulness – it’s Spring, and every tree is in blossom. with banks of flowers growing everywhere.  Not your normal Hebridean island.

The Laird of Summerisle (Christopher Lee, in a wildly bouffant Barry Gibb wig) provides a back story that explains the island’s fruitfulness, involving the establishment a century earlier of a neopagan religion cobbled together from several European traditions.  Howie learns that the crops had failed the previous year  and fears that the missing girl is to be sacrificed to ensure the success of the coming crop.  As it turns out, the islanders have actually conspired to lure Howie to the island to be a sacrifice, and in a bizarre final scene he is incinerated inside a large wicker effigy while the islanders all stand around in fancy dress holding hands and singing “Sumer is icemen in.”

No doubt the final scene is meant to provide an horrific surprise, but the overtones of rural quaintness can’t be ignored.  Indeed, the whole movie has a tonal problem – it’s like an Ealing comedy about dotty villagers, except that they’re all planning a murder.  There is a scene in the village pub in which all the male villagers join in a wildly obscene “folk” song; it plays like a Monty Python parody of Benny Hill.  Another scene in which schoolteacher Diane Cilento quizzes her class about the significance of the Maypole is deadpan funny, the more so because of the presence of a fuming Howie.  The otherwise distinguished screenwriter Anthony Shaffer is guilty of writing the screenplay.

Most of the cast seem  to be enthusiastic amateurs, with a few exceptions – Woodward, Lee, the dancer/mime Lindsay Kemp as the pub landlord, and three attractive long-haired blondes to add sex-appeal.  They are Australia’s own Diane Cilento, Hammer Films’ own Ingrid Pitt and Rod Stewart’s own Britt Eklund.  Miss Cilento keeps her clothes on throughout the movie.

In the end, it’s impossible to accept that this band of cheery rural stereotypes have actually been participating in a complex conspiracy to commit a gruesome murder.  Nor is it easy to identify with the stiff, officious Howie; one observes rather than empathises with his death.

I haven’t commented on the cinematography or the editing, nor will I.  Enough to say that a fundamentally viable concept that might have been made into a good movie by Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur has turned out risible.

Gym rats

Lee Marvin and Keenan Wynn in an awe-inspiring scene from the 1955 B-movie spy thriller, Shack Out on 101.

Mystery Road (2013)

Directed by Ivan Sen.

If Aaron Pedersen didn’t exist, I doubt that Mystery Road could have been made.  He is onscreen for nearly every scene, carrying the film with his austere, intense presence.  He plays Jay Swan, an Aboriginal police detective who has returned to his outback hometown just in time to investigate the murder of a young Aboriginal girl, found under a culvert with her throat cut.  The whites distrust him because he’s Aboriginal; the Aboriginals distrust him because he’s a copper.  Not even his colleagues seem much interested in helping him solve the murder.

Ivan Sen could fairly claim to be the author of this film.  Not only did he direct it, he wrote, produced, edited and photographed it – as he did for his previous film, Toomelah (2011).  Mystery Road is a noirish thriller with Western overtones, but it is also a vehicle for further exploration of his primary interest, the lives and struggles of the Aboriginal population of rural towns.

The cast is a blend of old hands (Hugo Weaving, Jack Thompson, Bruce Spence, Tony Barry, David Field, Zoe Carides, Jack Charles) and relative newcomers to movies (Tasma Walton, Damian Walshe-Howling, Ryan Kwanten).

Jay is patronised by his sergeant (Tony Barry), an avuncular, “don’t rock the boat” man coasting through to retirement, and Jonno (Hugo Weaving), another detective with a “matey”, slightly threatening demeanour.  Jay investigates by travelling about the town, looking for people who can tell him something.  He visits his estranged wife, Mary (Tasma Walton) and seeks to question his daughter Crystal, whom he has learned is acquainted with the dead girl.  Gradually he begins to see a drug connection to his investigation, which leads him into Jonno’s territory.  Another girl is missing, and when he goes to the town dump to investigate a dumped and torched car, he finds her body, her throat cut.  There is a powerful understatement in this scene – not only that a young Aboriginal girl is dumped with the rubbish, but that the dump itself is also a cemetery, with many small and very small white crosses.  This is where the Aboriginal dead are buried – Sen allows the shot to speak for itself.

Jay meets a nasty grazier (David Field) and his hostile roo-shooter son (Ryan Kwanten in an eye-catching performance).  He is unfazed by their race-baiting, but it is obvious that they are hiding something.  As Jay’s questioning leads him further into a search for the local drug dealers, the murders become secondary and on one viewing I came away uncertain who had done the killings, and why.  It’s also unclear exactly what drugs are being trafficked, although one long shot gives a glimpse of a character dressed like a meth cook out of Breaking Bad.

Jay’s own life is that of an outsider, living alone,  confiding in no-one; he’s a non-drinker, and one wonders if this is related to the breakdown of his marriage.  Without saying much, Pedersen allows us to see events through his eyes and sense his response – it’s a powerful, restrained performance.

The climax is a wild shootout in which Jay takes on a whole gang, though he receives some unexpected help.  Nevertheless, he survives because his opponents turn out to be the Australian cousins of the Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight.

Overall a pretty good film, but rather than doing everything himself Sen might have benefited from a co-writer.  A couple of characters might easily have been deleted, and although the race relations aspect of the film is well-handled, the thriller plot is too complex in the set-up and too rushed in the resolution.