The Ghost Camera

Sometimes, it’s a lot of fun to sit down and watch a movie for which one knows nothing – I mean absolutely nothing – about.

Such an opportunity afforded itself this weekend when I sat down to watch a VHS tape of “The Ghost Camera” (1933). I didn’t know a thing about it save that it starred Ida Lupino.

I picked up the VHS of “The Ghost Camera” from a local store which is liquidating its entire stock of VHS tapes for $1 each or three for $2. The store also carried tapes from those underground labels that catered to the movie buff with oddball titles the studios themselves would never think of releasing. It came in a generic cardboard box illustrated with old movie posters but no information on the film itself. The only information on the box was a typewritten label on spine, reading “The Ghost Camera” (1933) with Ida Lupino.  As the faux advertising in “Robocop” (1987) says, “I’d buy that for a dollar.” And I did.

To my very pleasant surprise, the English-made “The Ghost Camera” turned out to be an engaging 63-minute thriller, with the picture quality being well above average. The film is loaded with inventive camera movements and editing techniques that belie its period. In one of his first screen credits, David Lean is listed as the editor.

The film is an early credit for others too. It was the second film for Ida Lupino and the third for John Mills. Director is Bernard Vorhaus, who also gave us the neat film noir “The Amazing Mr. X” (1948) and the intriguing John Wayne Dust Bowl immigrant drama “Three Faces West” (1940).

Despite its title, “The Ghost Camera” is not a supernatural thriller, though it gives the air of one during the opening credits and scenes showing some ruins in the English countryside. John Gray (Henry Kendall) is driving past the ruins in his open-seated roadster when a camera drops mysteriously in the back seat.

Gray finds the camera in his car and has no idea how it got there. He sees there is film in the camera and when he gets home, develops the pictures to find a clue as to the camera’s owner. The first picture he develops shows a murder being committed at the site of the ruins. He leaves the dark room for an instant and while away, a thief sneaks through the window and grabs the incriminating photo.

When Gray returns to his dark room, he discovers the murder negative is missing. He develops the other pictures, some of which show a nearby address and another showing an attractive blonde waving at the camera.

Said blonde is Mary Elton (Ida Lupino) whose brother Ernest (John Mills) has been reported missing. Gray and Mary join together to track down Ernest and solve the murder.

 

 

The film’s low point is Henry Kendall, who I am unfamiliar with save for his starring role in Hitchcock’s “Rich and Strange” (1932). Kendall is an annoyingly irritating twit in the worst English fashion and it’s inconceivable he can find his way out of his own neighborhood, let alone solve a murder and win the affections of Ms. Lupino. It’s akin to making Charles Butterworth the romantic lead in a mystery movie and having him solve the crime and get the girl. Nothing against Charles Butterworth, but you know what I mean.

We often hear about how staid and conventional British movie making was at the time, with the exception of the budding talent of Alfred Hitchcock. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but a lot of film history has been re-written over the years thanks to the emergence of home video, and while there’s likely some truth to that sentiment, I’m sure there are many films, or sequences, which belie that.

In the marvelous David Lean biography by Kevin Brownlow, published by St. Martin’s Press in 1996, director Vorhaus fondly remembered the editorial contributions Lean made to his films.

“In our second film, Ghost Camera, for instance, there was one scene of a trial and reporters rush to the telephone. I wanted some fast cutting – you had a close-up of one journalist saying, ‘M for mother’ then a cut to the next – ‘U for Uncle – and the next – ‘R for Red’ and at the end a close-up of the telephone operators reaction, ‘MURDER!’ What I wanted done was bang, bang, bang and he wasn’t afraid to cut very fast. Usually cutters at that time thought it couldn’t be done. David did it superbly.”

Lean later said he learned a lot editing these potboilers and helped point the way to him becoming a director. “I worked on a lot of bad pictures, and bad pictures are very good for one’s ego, because the worse they are, the more chance you have of making them better. And I started to think, as numerous people who work with me think, that I could do better than they could – and that gave me a real urge to do something in the way of direction.”

He would not take that challenge for another 10 years.

With the exception of Kendall, the rest of the cast is fine. Ida was really attractive in her starlet days, and acts far beyond her age (as does John Mills).

During their hunt for clues at the ruins, it turns late in the day and Mary and Gray check into a local inn for the night. Separate rooms of course, but a loud noise causes Mary to race from her room in silky lingerie into the arms of Gray. While watching this, I was thinking about how cute she was, and boy, she has terrific legs. While researching for this piece, I learned she was  only 15 when she made this. 15!!!. John Mills was the same age when he made this. Did they grow them older over there in England? They’re playing young adults in this, and I didn’t doubt it for a minute.

Though Lean was only the editor, “The Ghost Camera” marks the first teaming of John Mills and David Lean. While making this quota quickie, they likely had no idea they would one day form one of the finest, if unheralded, teamings in cinema history.

Ida made a few more British films before leaving for America the next year.

The only other familiar face, and happily looking the appropriate age, is Felix Aylmer, playing the coroner. This was his fourth film.

“The Ghost Camera” is no worldbeater, but it’s pretty good. I thought it was  a rare film, but a quick Internet search shows me its available for viewing at the Internet Archive site (www.archive.org). The quality isn’t as good as the VHS tape I have, but I’m still happy I bought it. It was well worth the $1.

The Bridge on the River Kwai

The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957
Directed by David Lean
Nominated for 8 Oscars, Won 7
Up Against: Peyton Place, Sayonara, 12 Angry Men, Witness for the Prosecution

Sorry for the hiatus, friends! It's crunch time at school as I write my final exams and finish up my college education in 2 weeks! But I found a little free time to watch a long movie. So here we go!

The Bridge On the River Kwai is set in WWII. It's the story of British soldiers who surrended to the Japanese army and are now in a prisoner of war camp in Burma. When the Japanese Colonel Saito commands that all the British prisoners ("not soldiers!") participate in building a bridge over the River Kwai, which would be an addition to the Burma-Siam railway and help advance the war by feeding the Japanese soldiers. He commands that the Officers are also expected to participate in the manual labor. Captain Nicholson flat-out refuses. The Geneva Convention (which he pulls out a copy of) states that Officers should not be used for manual labor in POW camps. Saito uses the Geneva Convention against him and slaps him with it, and puts him in a tin hut ("the oven") where he sits for days and weeks until Saito, who knows he will have to commit hari-kari (ritual suicide) if he fails to build the bridge in time, realizes he needs Nicholson and his officers to help boost the working pace of the prisoners, who are not working quickly at all. After this, Nicholson takes on this project obsessively. He and other officers take over the bridge project, moving it down stream after they realize the original bridge is in a very bad location, as it's too muddy. Clipton, a military doctor, suggests that others may think they are committing treason, and aiding the enemy by building this bridge as best they can, but Nicholson insists they are setting an example. And he does it for his own pride, forgetting the larger picture that they are, in fact, helping the Japanese, and hurting their own side. Additionally, we get the story of an American soldier named Shears, who, by a miracle, escapes the camp and is enlisted by the British Army (after spending time in a medical center to recover) to return to the camp to blow the bridge up with several men, and we see their journey into the jungle, with Asian women aiding them, in their plans to attack.

This movie is an interesting one. It's so different from all the other WWII movies I've seen. It's not action packed nor is it bloody or violent. It had an interesting message. And it's quite a unique story. Colonel Nicholson is played by the brilliant Alec Guinness. It's a war epic of a different kind. While the story was drawn it, it never felt too long or boring. Interestingly I was kind of enraptured in the story, having no bloody clue how anything would end.

Colonel Nicholson, from my perspective, was a bit of a crazy guy. He was rigid and an old-school soldier. He believed in integrity, and for standing up for what is right. When approached about escape plans, he uttered that they shouldn't because they had surrendered so technically they would be breaking some sort of war/prisoner rules, even though they all knew they would die in this camp.

And then we have Colonel Saito. He is just as rigid and stubborn. He refuses to cave into Nicholson's requests, and the two are constantly going head-to-head, and both are quite mad. Saito insists all the officers work. He is to commit suicide if this bridge fails or isn't complete on time. And that scares him. We also see a scene of Saito weeping privately after Nicholson and his Officers take over the project, in which he was directly in charge of. He is ashamed.

This plot becomes ever complex as we realize what building this bridge means, and how much pride Nicholson takes in it. We feel so many mixed feelings as Shear and the 3 other soldiers arrive to blow up the bridge and the ammunition train.

Alec Guinness is fantastic in the role, and rightly won an Oscar for it. Japanese actor, Sessue Hayakawa, who played Saito, was also nominated, though did not win. The 2 had fantastic adversary chemistry, and were fantastic enemies who come to understand each other in a way. They were fantastic in their respective mad characters.

Additionally, this cinematography was fantastic. There were some great shots, and it showed off the jungle landscape so well, and really hit all the right spots. The costumes were great, and it overall had a great look. The music was used very sparsely, but what we did hear was very good too. Honestly, there's not much to complain about in this movie. I can't really think of much at all. WWII have been incredibly overdone in the past 75ish years since it concluded, with stories about German soldiers, British soldiers, Americans, Canadians, etc, etc. And while this story did include British and Americans, it took a look at the Japanese soldiers, and the name Hitler was not uttered once. Nor was Germany spoken about.

The movie was an interesting look at 2 different people, who were, at the same time, quite similar. Saito comes from a country where you cannot dishonor your family. You should kill yourself rather than bring shame. He strives for excellence so as to not bring shame, and to appear great. Conversely, Nicholson does not come from a country that upholds honor in the same way, though he comes from an Upper Class society (being a colonel), and wants to uphold the laws and regulations that his society holds up. Both want to maintain their reputations and neither will break. But eventually both do.

The ending is so interesting, and really made me think. I won't spoil  it for you, as it's so unique. But it made me think, what's more important: your personal pride and accomplishments, or the country you're fighting for and the pride and duties to your army? I'll leave it there.

Thinking I was going to find this movie boring, I was surprised when I actually loved it. My 3 choices of movies were Braveheart and The Best Years of our Lives (both war movies, the latter also about WWII soldiers), I was glad I chose this one. It was a thought-provoking and truly epic masterpiece. It was never too long, too boring, or cliche. It struck things in all the right places, and made for an interesting and insightful watch into a different aspect of WWII. Something other than Hitler.

8/10

Top Ranked Films of David Lean

David Lean
28th w 20784 pts, 5 titles

British director David Lean excelled in the modern historical epic film. Few directors would go to the isolated locations to film his biggest stories, films that defied the scale of the screen itself, as landscapes dwarfed both humans and the art of the cinema itself. The desert in Lawrence and the frozen Russian wilderness in Zhivago have few rivals in

1962: Hollywood's Second Greatest Year? Part 1

A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma

This year marks the 70th anniversary of that landmark year in American movies, 1939, and the year has been observed in a number of ways, including a new documentary on Turner Classic Movies and a slew of the notable films of that year shown on the channel. Much has been written about the year 1939 and how it was Hollywood's greatest year in terms of the sheer number of great American films released that year. Entire books have been written on this subject. When you read a list of the memorable movies from that year, it is difficult to disagree with the premise. Gone With the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Ninotchka, The Women, Love Affair, Destry Rides Again, Midnight, Only Angels Have Wings, Dark Victory, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Roaring Twenties, Goodbye Mr. Chips— it really was a year filled with wonderful movies of all genres and also with remarkable performances by some of the greatest stars of the studio era.

Although no other year quite equals 1939 in the history of the American cinema, several others come close. The years 1937, 1940, 1941, 1949, and 1950 also strike me as remarkably strong years in American film. But at the very end of the studio era—in fact, after the studios had reached their peak and were already in decline, doomed by television, independent productions, and the newfound interest in foreign-language films—Hollywood had as a last gasp a year that to me arguably ranks second only to 1939 for the number of memorable films released. That year is 1962.

Of all the great movies of that year, Lawrence of Arabia (technically an Anglo-American production, produced by Horizon Pictures for Columbia) is universally considered the greatest. David Lean, the director of Lawrence of Arabia, had been directing for nearly twenty years when this movie was released. Sharing directing credit for his first film, In Which We Serve (1942), with Noel Coward, who also wrote and starred in it, Lean continued to work for several more years with Coward. His next three movies were all adapted from plays by Coward and included the classic romance Brief Encounter (1945). In the late 1940s Lean aimed higher than the relative simplicity of his earlier work, escalating the scale of production values in two excellent adaptations of novels by Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1947) and Oliver Twist (1948, although not released in the US until 1951), the former in my view the best screen adaptation ever made of a work by Dickens and one of the greatest movies of any kind ever made.

For the next several years, although he occasionally revisited period projects such as Madeleine (1950) and Hobson's Choice (1954), Lean returned to movies of more modest scale. In 1955 he made Summertime, the delightful story of an unmarried, middle-aged American librarian traveling to Venice and having a brief but ultimately unhappy love affair there, starring Katharine Hepburn. Summertime marked a return to the pronounced emphasis on pictorial values of Lean's earlier Dickens films. In Summertime the setting was restricted to Venice, and the city, ravishingly photographed in Technicolor by Jack Hildyard, became almost the second lead character in the story, sharing equal importance with Hepburn. Yet the spatially confined settings never threatened to overwhelm the rather simple story.

It was two years before Lean's next movie, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), was released. With this film Lean returned to the outsized production values of his works based on Dickens and clearly attempted to match an epic-scale story with epic-scale production values. The movie was a huge success, winning both the Oscar and the New York Film Critics Circle award for best picture, and Lean won the best director award from both groups as well. Many film critics, though, especially those of an auteurist bent including Andrew Sarris and David Thomson, view this movie as the beginning of Lean's artistic downfall, a slide marked by Lean's preoccupation with visual grandiosity over personal expression, what Thomson calls "the Selznick syndrome." (I have to admit that I find some justification in this view, although at this point in Lean's career it was still more of a possibility than a certainty. For me the rot didn't really set in until 1965's Dr. Zhivago.)

Lawrence was Lean's next project after Kwai, and this time a full five years passed before the film's release. Lawrence also won the Oscar for best Picture and Lean the Oscar for best director. (The New York newspapers were on strike that year, and the New York Film Critics Circle, who were all newspaper critics, chose not to give any awards. If they had, Lawrence almost certainly would have won, and Lean would have received his third best director award, having also won previously for Summertime. In 1984 he did receive his third best director honor from the group for his last movie, A Passage to India.)

The film critic Andrew Sarris was one of the few who was not bowled over by Lawrence or by Lean. (Nor, apparently, was New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther, possibly the most influential critic of the time. Lawrence did not even appear on his list of the top ten films of the year, and he later wrote that if the New York Film Critics Circle had given awards that year, he would have voted for the British film A Taste of Honey.) In The American Cinema Sarris rather sarcastically opined that Lean's "modest virtues . . . have been inflated with the hot air of Lawrence of Arabia." With his rigidly dogmatic bias in favor of the auteur view of films and film directors, Sarris observed that the "sheer logistics of Lawrence . . . cannot support the luxury of a directorial point of view."

Of course he was correct in this assessment. With its intricate structure that begins with Lawrence's death ride on his motorcycle, its large cast of consummately professional actors, and its purposefully chosen stylistic grandeur, the movie would have caused any director to engage in an ongoing struggle with his simultaneous roles of project manager, cinematic construction engineer, and film artist. But does it really matter with a movie as magnificent as Lawrence of Arabia? I think not. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and Lawrence is one mighty impressive pudding filled with unquestionable movie artistry and a profusion of unforgettable images.

This is the movie that defines the term epic and was indeed named by the American Film Institute as the best epic movie ever made. Running in excess of three and a half hours and filmed, according to the Internet Movie Database, in 34 separate locations including, among other places, Morocco, Jordan, Spain, England, and even the Imperial Desert of southern California, Lawrence of Arabia is monumental in every respect. No movie had ever looked quite like this one. Photographed by the great Freddie Young (Goodbye Mr. Chips, Lust for Life, Doctor Zhivago, Ryan's Daughter), the film would have been inconceivable without Technicolor and the widescreen format. Wrapped in Maurice Jarre's rapturous, exotic theme music, it created in the cinematic collective consciousness the archetypal images of the deserts of the Middle East—sun-drenched light; radiantly blue, cloudless skies; vast, empty, horizontal landscapes where "lone and level sands stretch far away"—as vividly and indelibly as the Westerns of John Ford did for the American Southwest.

Lawrence of Arabia is dominated not only by its imagery, but equally by the stunning and star-making performance by Peter O'Toole as the title character. Here is one of those instances of an actor being the embodiment of the role. I find it impossible to imagine Lawrence of Arabia without O'Toole as T. E. Lawrence. Yet that was very nearly the case, for O'Toole was not Lean's first choice to play Lawrence and was offered the role only after Albert Finney, a sublime actor in his own right, turned it down. Some have criticized the movie and its star for not offering a more specific point of view about who and what Lawrence really was. But isn't that really the point of the movie and the person himself—that Lawrence, with his self-created mythological persona, was ultimately an enigma who defied any precise explanation or definition?

My only regret about O'Toole is that he did not receive the Oscar for best actor that to me he so plainly deserved. The winner that year was Gregory Peck—to my mind one of the most wooden of all major American movie actors—for To Kill a Mockingbird. I have always believed he won more for the noble character he played than for superior acting ability. The Academy voters evidently preferred a modest, prejudice-defying American civil rights crusader/martyr to a mysterious Brit of ambiguous sexuality and an oversized ego. Peck also had an advantage over O'Toole in that he was American, a big Hollywood star popular with his fellow professionals, and although nominated four times before had never won.

In the coming months I'll be writing about other great movies of 1962. But by any standard, Lawrence of Arabia must be viewed as the greatest American film of that memorable year.