The Animator

It occurred to me, watching THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD at the Glasgow Film Theatre yesterday, that the sorcerer Koura (Tom Baker) is a self-portrait by filmmaker/animator/VFX wizard Ray Harryhausen. All Koura’s proper magic tricks, the stuff that isn’t just pyrotechnics, involves breathing life into inanimate matter — a couple of mandrake roots, a ship’s figurehead, and a big-ass statue of Kali. But every time he does it, he gets older. Such is the life of the stop-motion animator.

(In SEVENTH VOYAGE the sorcerer is called Sakura, in GOLDEN VOYAGE he’s shrunk to Koura, and by this logic in EYE OF THE TIGER ought to be called KOO or RA, instead of Zenobia, but logic is not the predetermining factor here.)

Enjoyed the film more than before, partly a function of the big screen experience. When I was a kid it was something of a Holy Grail, because it never seemed to show up on TV, unlike 7TH, which scared the crap out of me at an early age — switching the channel to escape the Cyclops’ gaze was perilous, because in those pre-remote-control days at our house, you had to approach the TV to turn it off. And the TV had a giant Cyclops on it. The last thing I wanted to do was approach it. Talos in JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS had a similar effect.

Harryhausen had obviously been pleased by the result of Talos, a statue who comes to life, mimicking the creative process of the filmmaker, and so he repeats it three times in this movie — late Harryhausen tends to repeat and sometimes refine earlier hits. This procedure allows Ray to reverse the death scenes that he’s so good at — the slow pangs by which the Homunculus comes alive are extremely striking and had me transfixed (great chirruping sound effects too, “squawking like a pink monkey bird”). The ship’s figurehead waking up and tearing itself free of the prow is a great, uncanny moment, and I love the thing’s doltish, uncomprehending stare as it scans the strange new world it finds itself in.

The only really big death in this one is reserved for the cyclopean Centaur (Ray always decorates his creatures with stray horns and features from rival myths), and that’s bloody and agonising — WAY too much for a kids’ film, and I bet kids love it, the vicious little bastards. Or are terrified and daren’t approach the TV, falling back on the modern Hey, Presto! of the remote.

The actors are mostly second-choice material but do well. John Philip Law is adept at the same WTF expression sported by the Figurehead. Caroline Munro, who was in attendance and ruefully admitted to being second choice after Raquel Welch, is sultry and manages to look like she’s thinking even when the script suggests few thoughts. There’s practically no love story — Brian Clemens’ script invents a single moment where Munro expresses gratitude that Law pursued her and not the treasure — but in fact, he never had any choice, so it’s not the emotional clue she thinks it is.

The warmest relationship is between Achmed the flunky (Takis Emmanuel) and his master, Koura (Tom Baker). Achmed’s like a stereotypical Jewish mother to his boss. As a kid, the fact that Baker was in this was a great enticement, and then when I saw it I was disappointed. But on the big screen, Baker is pretty great. I think Gordon Hessler’s so-so shooting and cutting is to some extent mitigated by the larger screen. And then the greater intimacy of the TV allowed Baker to triumph as the Doctor in Doctor Who — the only time the part’s been played by an actual alien.

Best performance is by Martin Shaw, in a meaningless sidekick role, just with his eyes. Bad hair as always, but good eyes.

Orson Welles turned down the role of the Oracle, so they hired Robert Shaw, the guy who burned down Orson’s house. Gordon Hessler was maybe the weakest director Ray ever hired, though Sam Wanamaker could give him a run for his lack of money. Miklos Rosza is trying to do his usual epic thing with a decimated orchestra. Despite all this, at its high points the film bestowed at least one of the gifts of the mythic Fountain of Destiny, restoring its greying Glasgow audience to youth.

THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD stars Pygar; Victoria Regina Phibes; Rasputin; Nayland Smith; Banquo; King Brob; Rafi; Goof, Zachary Shot; and Quint.

Dickie Amuck

The same night (Saturday, at our online film club — join us?) we ran WITNESS IN THE DARK, we also looked at THE MAN UPSTAIRS, and it was an excellent night. TMU himself is the late Sir Dickie Lord Attenborough, gone berserk in a cheap flat, and beseiged by cops while his fellow lodgers try to decide amongst themselves whether to band together and help him.

It’s a knock-off of LE JOUR SE LEVE or THE LONG NIGHT, but instead of Marcel Carne or Anatole Litvak in charge it has Don Chaffey, distinctly of the B-list but he does all right here. He’s known for his Harryhausens, SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS and ONE MILLIONS YEARS BC, two of my favourites, and he was headhunted by Disney which maybe kept him away from more thematically ambitious works, but here he’s on top form, apparently relishing the limitations of shooting in and around a single building. Some great angles skilfully used.

TMU is evidently a much more lavish production than WITNESS IN THE DARK, even if it keeps things small. It has proper production design, giving it a sense both of solidity and social authenticity. Admittedly, the crowd gathered outside is rather tiny, and has to be swelled by the rather noticeable presence of Dickie’s chum Bryan Forbes (at least, I think it’s him. Could be Syd Chaplin). So nobody gets clobbered with a bicycle in the crush, it wouldn’t be credible. Asides from Attenborough, there’s Bernard Lee as the mulish copper who wants to barge in with tear gas, surely precipitating tragedy, and Donald Houston as the sympathetic shrink trying to de-escalate the situation. And there’s Virginia Maskell, Kenneth Griffith, Edward Judd (way down the cast as a secondary constable) and other persons of interest.

The conflict about how to tackle mental health crises when they impact public order is still timely — the police have very little training in this important part of their job (I think they get about a day) and they’re not always inclined to thoughtful or sensitive approaches (you don’t need ANY academic qualifications to join the fuzz in this country). If you were going to design a service purely to deal with mental health crises, it wouldn’t greatly resemble the police.

This all plays out neatly through interpersonal conflict between Lee and Houston. A British film in 1954 wasn’t about to diss the police for corruption or brutality, but suggesting they can be stupid or misguided was still pretty bold. And this kind of conflict is great to make Houston look good, in his duffel coat, and to get the audience agitated, which we were.

The film is less successful in piecing together Attenborough’s character’s backstory — we get very interested by the pills he’s on, by the fact that he’s a government research scientist involved with nuclear physics — but we don’t find out anything that could serve as a commentary on the bomb, militarism, or society. The neighbours organizing to help him seem motivated by the fact that he’s an educated, middle-class chap, not some yob. In the era of the angry young man, Attenborough is a perturbed middle-aged man.

But the tension is raised nicely — there’s almost no music, just the opening titles and some very faint rhythmic sounds during the final countdown to surrender or death. It’s all done with story, performance, lighting and framing (by Gerald Gibbs who shot WHISKY GALORE!), and editing (John Trumper, who cut GET CARTER). A slight overuse of the cucalorus, but those abstract, unmotivated shadows are lovely so I can’t begrudge them.

Big Day

Yesterday —

9am THE ROAD BACK — major James Whale, a rediscovered director’s cut. Huge production values and a brilliant script by R.C. Sherrif which mingles humour with the tragedy. “It was nice to see Andy Devine being given big things to do.” If it has a flaw, it’s an over-literal approach to emotion, an on-the-nose quality, so that if a character is written as wistful, Whale casts the most wistful guy he can get and has him play it wistful. This cuts down on the humanity you get in something like THE MORTAL STORM or (showing here later) LITTLE MAN, WHAT NOW?

10.45am SHERLOCK HOLMES. Kept my seat and let them project another movie at me. This was William K. Howard’s 1931 tongue-in-cheek travesty, with Clive Brook dragging up and Ernest Torrence hamming it up. I’d seen a very fuzzy copy in which it was clear Howard was trying interesting things, mainly montages in between the scripted pages — on the big screen, in splendid quality, his direction seemed even more dazzling. Second John George sighting this fest.

12 DESTINATION UNKNOWN. Early thirties Tay Garnett is a mixed bag, but after HER MAN wowed everyone last year, we had high hopes for this. Visually, it doesn’t deliver anything like the same panache, but it fascinates by its oddness. A semi-wrecked rum-runner drifts aimlessly, becalmed. The gangsters, led by Pat O’Brien’s mild wheedle, have control of the water supply. The sailors, led by Alan Hale’s ridiculous Swedish accent, want to get it. Nobody is sympathetic. Then Ralph Bellamy turns up, effulgent. Everyone seems to think they recognise him — from long ago when they were innocent. A religious parable is clearly being palmed off on us, but we’re also tempted to anticipate the line, “He looks like that guy in the movies, what’s his name, Ralph Bellamy.”

The creepy Jesus pulls off one startling miracle, changing wine into water.

Very spirited work from Chas. Middleton (Ming the Merciless), who actually throws in a dog bark at the end of a line, out of sheer joie de vivre.

Fish and chips for lunch, with Charlie Cockey.

14.15 KINEMACOLOR — running late I missed the explanation of how this miracle process worked, but the results are striking, and became even more so when I remembered to take off my sunglasses.

16.00 I remained in my seat to see MILDRED PIERCE, stunningly restored — better than new? “I’m so smart it’s a disease.”

18.15 THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD. In a way, I was remaining in my seat to see the thing that terrified me on a small black and white screen as a kid. Here it was on a huge colour screen and I was front row centre, looking right up that cyclops’ nose. I guess they’ll never be able to get the grain remotely consistent — that would be remaking, not restoration — the cave entrance, which I assumed was a matte painting, looks very granular indeed, as do the titles. During monster bits, the monsters are much finer-grained than their backgrounds, but oddly the matte shots with tiny Kathryn Grant seem very sharp. All this will be less problematic on a smaller screen and if you’re not front row centre, of course. The efforts to get the film looking as good as it can (faded Eastmancolor negative — the image is now vibrant again) are appreciated.

Dinner with friends Nicky, Sheldon, et al.

22.15 CARBON ARC PROJECTION. More early colour processes, two vintage projectors. Beautiful. I was very tired and snuck away before the end.