Actorly Through Air Power

CONQUEST OF THE AIR is one of Alexander Korda’s experiments, an hour-long dramatized documentary history of manned flight. Typically of Korda, it’s “directed” by whoever happened to be around, especially if they were Hungarian (brother Zoltan is one of the troupe of what I’ll call “nauteurs”), leaving it to editor and narrator Charles Frend to tie the whole shambles together. Frend was later a dependable maker of staunch war dramas, staunch police dramas, staunch Antarctic expeditionary dramas…

What caught my eye was the fact that the film is based on a book by John Monk Saunders, aviator and screenwriter (WINGS, THE LAST FLIGHT), and I’m a bit of a Saunders completist. He’s one of the few Hollywood specialists — his best scripts always hinge on aviation, just as Maurine Dallas Watkins’ always trot out women in prison. As long as the key element is in place, the entertainment is assured.

An experiment such as this could only be put over to a British public skeptical of home-grown product by the deployment of star power, so it’s odd that the jaunt through history throws up so few familiar faces. My favourite grouchy Dundonian of the period, Hay Petrie, pops up as Tiberius Cavallo, and I glimpsed an uncredited and dubbed Francis L Sullivan as Nero, witnessing a spectacular failed levitation. Asides from those, it’s left to Laurence Olivier to impersonate Vincent Lunardi in amusingly showy fashion.

Olivier is a beast of quicksilver, sometimes sluggish, sometimes fleet and sparkling. David Mamet cites his performance as a French Canadian trapper with what sounds like a Pakistani accent in 49TH PARALLEL as the one bad performance in an Archers’ film (he needs to pay closer attention to Bob Arden in AMOLAD). Here, he manages to sound convincingly like an Englishman pretending to be French, which I assume was his intention. Quashing a heckler, he declares his intention to “soar over the heads of groundlings like you,” and flashes a cheeky smile. He’s a star, even if Lunardi’s ballooning lacks some of the dash and derring-do of early flight by virtue of its being conducted safely indoors.

The early part of the film is one long succession of deluded hopefuls crashing earthwards from high places (so few of them seem to have considered launching from a runway, rather than a tower/bridge/wall). Frend seems unaware of how comical this all is — the only unfunny entry is the Scottish one, which fails both as aeronautics and comedy, because the guy lived (although he gets points for landing in a dunghill). This sequence seems like a clear influence on Terry Gilliam’s early toon THE MIRACLE OF FLIGHT ~

And a later mention of Baron Von Richthofen’s Flying Circus suggests Korda’s influence on British comedy may be greater than previously assumed.

And then there’s this image of Italian peasants fleeing a stray bag of hydrogen, which seems to anticipate Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner. “Aaargh! It’s the Devil!”

By curious coincidence, Marvelous Mary just dropped in for a cup of herbal infusion and told me about the nineteenth century zookeeper, George Wombwell, whose animals seemed to have spent a lot of their time loose and rampaging. “It’s the devil!” was the cry uttered by a poor housewife, fleeing her home, which had become occupied by a stray kangaroo…

The Cut-Ups

Weird how Terry Gilliam’s animations for Monty Python’s Flying Circus always seemed a bit scary, but his titles for CRY OF THE BANSHEE, a Vincent Price horror flick, are mainly just funny.

Weird also how the movie, which is part of AIP/Tigon’s series of period horrors including also WITCHFINDER GENERAL and BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW, is so unlikable. The earlier WITCHFINDER benefited from a realistic approach with no supernatural elements and an admirable seriousness of purpose by its director. The later CLAW has a thoroughly goofy narrative but again tackles it with sincerity and verve — the writer had been influenced by accounts of the Mary Bell case, in which a little girl murdered a little boy: the idea of evil infecting children was taken seriously, even if the filmmakers don’t bring much in the way of sensible ideas to the situation.

BANSHEE is really just a parade of nastiness, most of it directed at young women. The only really interesting thing after the opening credits is the ending, which to my mind was swiped by THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY, which could be seen as an unofficial remake in gangster form of BANSHEE. Bob Hoskins may seem an unlikely replacement for Vincent Price, but really he’s not.

Wishing he was back with the Ken Campbell Roadshow.

The Sunday Intertitle: Goony Toons

ALF, BILL AND FRED is probably my favourite Bob Godfrey cartoon — I encountered it on Channel 4 sometime as a kid, back when Channel 4 would run unexpected surprises like this. It’s a simple, even twee, rags-to-riches type story, enlivened by a disrespectful approach to “style” and “production values” — Godfrey creates a style by ignoring or celebrating the clashes of mixed media, and doesn’t bother about things looking cheap.

There’s a strong resemblance to Terry Gilliam’s cut-out approach, which is also anticipated by Walerian Borowczyk’s collaboration with Chris Marker, LES ASTRONAUTS. WB supplies the persistent air of surreal nightmare that haunts Gilliam’s Monty Python work, while BG gives us the jokey blokeyness.

Godfrey also created KAMA SUTRA RIDES AGAIN, which I believe was the short screened with CLOCKWORK ORANGE on its release. I presume Kubrick approved it. Sex, violence and broad comedy: it could serve as a clue as to how Kubrick wanted his audience to react to his movie. I’ve really hate KSRA though — essentially a slapstick tour of various preposterous sexual positions, reimagined as Evel Knievel-style stunts. The cartoon lead’s wife becomes progressively more encased in plaster casts as the film goes on.  I’ve always disliked plaster-cast comedy: I howl with laughter at Laurel and Hardy’s COUNTY HOSPITAL, but that’s precisely because it doesn’t force one to think of pratfalls causing broken bones. Olie’ leg is in plaster from the very start, and we never get told how it happened. The movie is true to a scared principle of slapstick, which is that serious injury never results. I think even giving somebody a black eye is pushing it.

On the other hand, Godfrey also gave us THE DO IT YOURSELF CARTOON KIT, narrated by Goon Show alumnus Michael Bentine, which is pretty good. The Victoriana theme certainly seems like it must have influenced Gilliam’s work ~

Of course, what makes Gilliam more than a mere imitator is the wildness of his invention and the excellence of his timing, which owes little to anyone. Cut-out animation was merely a means to an end for Gilliam, in the same way that CGI FX and troubled mega-productions are now.

This one gave rise to a catchphrase in our house — whenever we have to lift Tash, our Siamese cat, out of trouble (a routine occurrence), grabbing her under the front legs and hoisting her until she is extruded into a long, vertical shape like Gilliam’s marauding mutant, we remark, in shrill, stentorian tones, “But at what cost?”