Chariots of Fire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Early in the film Chariots of Fire (1981), a working class chap comments apropos of two Cambridge students that British young men fought a hellish war (World War I) so that “shits like [the two students] could get a decent education.”  But the wealthy need not be ashamed—here, they’re clearly not a bad lot—and the fought-for Great Britain is loved by its citizens, young men and the rest.

Of course Great Britain is imperfect, as is the twentieth century.  If it is not banal to say so, where perfection exists is in commitment to something worthwhile, and so Cambridge student Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), a Jew, is committed to a Jewish victory in competitive running.  This in the midst of British anti-Semitism.  There is also commitment in Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), a Scottish Christian and another runner, and this is good.  A modern Britain, after all, seems to pose a desultory threat to religion:  it balks at Liddell’s refusal to run a heat on Sunday.  It is a favor done by a particular Cambridge student which enables the young man to participate (in the 1924 Olympics).  In Chariots of Fire, many moments of light, in England, follow the terrible war years.  Granted, there is nothing redemptive in all the Olympic running, but what about the religious lives of people—religious dedication?

I simply do not like the films of Nicolas Roeg.

Don’t Look Now (1973) is a fancy, fatuous occult-heavy—and thus supernatural—thriller.  Hitchcock’s scary Frenzy, which came out close to the same time as Roeg’s movie, is offensively misogynistic, but at least it relates a sensible story.  Don’t Look Now is an infernally messy puzzler.

Hilary Mason, as a psychic named Heather, is wonderful in the film, and so is Clelia Matania as her sister.  They deserve a better movie—but then, so does almost everyone else in the film’s cast.

Roxanne (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

John Simon asserted that Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac is not a great play, merely a perfect one (which amounts, of course, to a great deal).  The 1987 movie that Fred Schepisi and Steve Martin derived from Cyrano—entitled Roxanne—is neither great nor perfect, but it is mightily amusing and slightly literate.  It has a pleasant cast too:  a not-bad Daryl Hannah, a comfortable Shelley Duvall and Rick Rossovich.

Steve Martin, the film’s modern Cyrano, can go overboard as both actor and writer.  Approvingly, Pauline Kael wrote that Martin “seems to crossbreed the skills of W.C. Fields and Buster Keaton . . . ”  Well, he has some of Keaton in him, but certainly none of what Fields had.  He isn’t down to earth.  But he too is pleasant:  in Roxanne, he is an actor of personality, of zany savoir-faire.

Cover of All the King’s Men

The 1949 All the King’s Men is crisp and fluid as it tells of a flatly indecent governor (Broderick Crawford‘s Willie Stark).  It has a better, if blemished, script than Citizen Kane, another film about a powerful man, because it’s adapted from Robert Penn Warren’s novel.  There is recklessness and perfidiousness that remind us of Jack Kennedy and Ted Kennedy (Chappaquiddick), and demagoguery that reminds us of many of the most offputting politicians.

I would declaim to my dying day that the remake of King’s Men starring Sean Penn is a stupid movie, but that is not my opinion of the ’49 original.  Moreover, most of the chief cast members in the ’49 film actually outact the later chief cast members, with a Crawford who is not mannered at all, purveying a Willie Stark who is not a caricature.  For all this, why the former newspaper reporter (John Ireland) stays with the naughty Stark to the end is anybody’s guess.

The Drowning Pool (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With the car washing scene in Cool Hand Luke, director Stuart Rosenberg was a bit of a sexist, but not in The Drowning Pool (1975), which hardly means it is a good film.  The fault is not Rosenberg’s, though, but that of the writers, including, I assume, Ross MacDonald, whose novel is the source for this.

A detective movie starring Paul Newman as Lew Harper, The Drowning Pool serves up two villains, one of whom is an inadequate actress and hard to swallow as a villain, the other of whom is an appalling oil man.  (Ho hum.)  The oil man is so stupid he makes it possible for someone to rip off an incriminating account book of his (he’ll kill to get it back).  It’s pretty underwhelming material, made in such a way as to make it seem more than that.  But underwhelming is all it is.  From car wash to drowning pool—not a step up.