Sea Shells
WEEKEND AT DUNKIRK — at The Notebook. Thanks to William Bostock for suggesting it.
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WEEKEND AT DUNKIRK — at The Notebook. Thanks to William Bostock for suggesting it.
shadowplay 
August 3, 2017 at 10:15 pm
The very title “Weekend at Dunkirk” evokes “a s*** holiday”, or a cheesy little travelogue.
Interesting take on WWII is “Foyle’s War”, a mystery series focused on the home front. On the one hand, it’s like the flip side of M*A*S*H: Instead of patching up boys so they can be shot at again, Foyle investigates deaths that are unacceptable because they aren’t clearly war casualties — a stabbing victim in the rubble of an air raid, for example — and various incidents highlighting basic human venality. Yes, some Nazi spies and black marketers get caught. But mostly domestic crooks, opportunists and traitors of various scales. Comparatively few Minivers on Foyle’s beat. There are moments of lecturing (from the workings of early radar to mass slaughter of housepets), but it was all news to me so I appreciated it.
August 3, 2017 at 11:08 pm
That sounds good — part of the decades of British TV I’ve avoided while pursuing older cinema.
Verneuil’s other films seem worth exploring. Fear over the City is mindless thick-ear but Belmondo’s stunts are amazing. Ditto Le Casse. I’m interested to see his earlier ones, particularly Un Singe en Hiver (A Monkey in Winter — a good title, and a good Belmondo evocation).
August 12, 2022 at 11:35 am
I’m also exploring Verneuil at the moment (FotC is indeed stupid, but fun as hell). Two really great early works are the noir anthology Brelan d’As (which has Maigret AND Lemmy Caution!) and the unclassifiable Amants du Tage, a sort of three person romantic noir set in Lisbon that is pretty haunting, and has Trevor Howard as a sort of Columbo/Satan crossbreed a la Louis Jouvet in Quai de Brumes. Heck, I even liked Guns for San Sebastian a lot!
August 12, 2022 at 11:49 am
Thanks for the tips! Where did you find Brelan d’As?
August 12, 2022 at 9:21 pm
Do you mean Quai des Orfevres, Andre Ferreira?
August 12, 2022 at 9:55 pm
Whoops, yes I did! As for Brelan d’As, it can be found on uloz
August 13, 2022 at 12:30 pm
So it can! Without subtitles, seemingly, alas.
August 13, 2022 at 1:02 pm
My friend had to auto-generated subtitles and then try to rearrange them to make sense, so yeah it was a bit of a mission. Is there a way I can send the subs?
August 13, 2022 at 1:19 pm
Yes! DM me on Twitter or else I’ll see if I can contact you…