Andrew reviews three Ronald Neame films: The Horse's Mouth, Tunes of Glory, and Hopscotch.
British director Ronald Neame was one of the most
esteemed and multi talented individuals to emerge from the United Kingdom. Considered by some to be the British Robert
Wise, Neame began as a cinematographer by providing assistant work on
Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail and
garnering an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects on the British
war drama One of Our Aircraft is Missing. Neame eventually started his own production
company, Cineguild, and formed a creative partnership with the distinguished director
David Lean. During his collaboration
with the eventual director of Lawrence of
Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, Neame
wrote and produced such Lean classics as Brief
Encounter and the earliest film adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, earning two screenwriting
Academy Award nominations for both. Soon
Neame’s wide range of experience in the film industry lent itself to film
direction, including the production of such classics as Judy Garland’s final
film I Could Go on Singing, the
Academy Award winning Maggie Smith film The
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Albert Finney’s musical version of Scrooge, and Irwin Allen’s disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure. Many modern film goers are not aware that Alec Guinness and Walter Matthau
provided some of their best and most entertaining work with the skillful
director for hire. Having met Guinness
on David Lean’s Charles Dickens films, Neame and Guinness formed a great
actor-director team on both The Horse’s
Mouth and Tunes of Glory. Among Neame’s final films was the caper
comedy Hopscotch, which sported a
cool and hilarious Matthau in top form. Before Neame’s untimely death at the age of 95 due to complications from
a fall, the gifted director supervised three Criterion releases of arguably his
finest films, The Horse’s Mouth, Tunes of
Glory, and Hopscotch. With this week’s latest Criterion Corner, The
Movie Sleuth takes an in-depth look at these three underrated gems.
The Horse’s Mouth (1958 –
directed by Ronald Neame)
Gulley
Jimson (Alec Guinness) is at once a gifted, respectable British artist as well
a cantankerous trouble making alcoholic. Crusty,
self-aggrandizing and self-loathing in equal measure, Jimson wanders the dank
city streets of London before occasionally returning to his squalid yacht
serving as a makeshift studio, struggling to pay off old debts and achieve
unfettered creative expression. Everyone
wants a piece of Jimson’s genius, until they actually have to deal with his
obnoxious and destructive behavior firsthand.
Accompanied by his elder lady friend Coker (Kay Walsh) and an idealistic
young pupil named Nosey (Mike Morgan), Jimson seeks his ultimate canvas at any
cost irrespective of who he has to step on.
A
screwball comedy of impish behavior and a serious minded portrait of an artist in
existential crisis, The Horse’s Mouth is
best remembered as Alec Guinness’ funniest and most energized performance of
his illustrious career. Scruffy in
appearance with a gruff, raspy voice that would make Burgess Meredith’s Rocky trainer blush, Guinness’ agitator
is the epitome of starving artists who neither make ends meet nor satisfy their
aesthetic ambitions. Adapted from Joyce
Cary’s novel through an Academy Award nominated screenplay by Guinness himself,
The Horse’s Mouth is a bittersweet
character study of what it means to be an artist and how all involved in his
creative life are affected. Coker, for
instance, more than goes out on a limb for Jimson’s favor with little gratitude
or recompense in return. So focused is
Jimson’s creative impulse that he’s not particularly bothered by a cinder block
crashing through a client’s floor. Visually
the film posits London’s old gray skies and pavement in direct contrast with
later scenes of a painting coming together with lush, vibrant colors and
brushstrokes.
A
whimsical ode to the creative process and all the folderol brewed in its wake, The Horse’s Mouth is as hilarious and
oddly moving as its misfit visionary. People
love the work but can’t stand the man any more than he can stand himself. It goes without saying the film is
essentially Alec Guinness’ finest hour as an actor with the freedom of screenwriting
to make the self- centered trickster a lovable and instantly relatable
chum. The search for perfection will
always eat away at Jimson but through all the difficulty and frustration, at
the end of the day a glimpse into all a canvas has to offer is enough. One of the genuinely life affirming British
comedies of all time with top notch Guinness!
8/10 - Andrew Kotwicki
Tunes of Glory (1960 –
directed by Ronald Neame)
Considered by Alec Guinness to be his very best
performance as an actor, Tunes of Glory tells
the story of Major Jock Sinclair (Alec Guinness) who is stationed in a Scottish
Highland regimental during the winter post WWII. Sinclair, a boisterous drunkard, has been
with his battalion from the very beginning, having shared many battles
together. Nearing the end of his term as
Commanding Officer, he is superseded by the prim and proper Lieutenant Colonel
Basil Barrow (John Mills), who runs a tighter shift and begins to enforce
fastidious disciplinary actions much to the chagrin of the battalion. Soon Sinclair and Barrow lock horns
concerning authority over the men, one that threatens to spill over into
violence and psychological breakdown.
A powerful postwar drama and touching human story
about honor and respect, Ronald Neame’s Tunes
of Glory takes a profound look at military conduct, post-traumatic stress
disorder, leadership and whether or not glory is necessarily dictated by our
actions. Working from an Academy Award
nominated screenplay adapted by James Kennaway from his own novel, Tunes of Glory seems to suggest the
Second World War hasn’t ended for those who participated in it and is still
being fought behind closed doors through dialogue and reprimand. Largely
set within the Stirling Castle in Scotland amid the snowy terrain, the film is an ensemble piece featuring the silver screen debut of Susannah York, yet
is primarily driven by the affecting performances of its two leads, Guinness
and Mills. Made only two years after The Horse’s Mouth, Guinness’ chameleonic
transformation from the raspy throated and scruffy painter Gulley Jimson to the
refined and stately Major Sinclair is a startling revelation of the man’s
uncharted acting abilities. Anchoring
Guinness’ prowess is the clean and fastidious anxiety of John Mills as Barrow,
a man who believes strongly in the military but doesn’t know how to exercise
his new position of authority.
Unlike other PTSD postwar dramas depicting men
struggling to cope with the horrors they experienced, Tunes of Glory presents a scenario where respect and a lack thereof
for one’s contributions to the war effort can be more damaging to one’s psyche
than any wartime traumas combined. It
also begs the question whether or not honor or glory is remembered by our
actions or the effect of our personalities. Soldiers don’t like or take Barrow seriously for his pettiness but also
fail to recognize the man as a victim with wartime experiences not unlike their
own. Much like post-WWII soldiers who
came back from the war only to face public scoffing and scorn, it’s only a
matter of time before those who see no light at the end of the tunnel for their
unrewarded endurance begin to crack at the seams.
8/10 - Andrew Kotwicki
Hopscotch (1980 –
directed by Ronald Neame)
Late
into Ronald Neame’s spy caper comedy Hopscotch,
the film’s comic hero and CIA agent Kendig (Walter Matthau in top form) phones
his colleagues who are scrambling to arrest him for unveiling embarrassing sensitive
information after being relegated to a desk job by his egotistical,
inexperienced and trigger happy superior, Myerson (Ned Beatty). Attempting with futility to cap the massive
confidentiality leak, an agent asks Kendig what he thinks he’s trying to prove,
to which he replies, “I’m not trying to prove anything, I’m just trying to have
some fun.” Truer words weren’t spoken by
less than the film’s director in what ultimately proves to be a playful little
lark where we get to watch a master gleefully toy away with arrogant wannabes
now desperately trying to catch one of their own. Few CIA thrillers happen to be whimsical comedies
where the joy comes from seeing how Kendig outsmarts those who have wronged him
and then some.
Originally
passing on the project until each gifted talent got wind of one another’s
interest, Neame’s splendid direction of Brian Garfield’s novel, coupled with
Walter Matthau’s comic persona, is a match made in heaven. Almost completely an actor’s movie, those
only used to seeing Matthau from The Odd
Couple or Grumpy Old Men are in
for a surprise with the confident, cool Kendig who doesn’t know when to stop
turning the very foundation he worked all his life for upside down. Accompanying Kendig on his spree of humiliating
his superiors is fellow agent Isobel (Glenda Jackson), serving as both ally and
equal. The dynamic duo wouldn’t have
reason to create such chaos and upheaval for the agency they gave their lives
for without Ned Beatty as the pompous jerk Myerson whose only outlet for one
clever defeat after another is to kick and scream. When we’re not caught up in the plot, Hopscotch provides a scenic world
travelogue ranging from Bermuda to Germany, England to America, Russia to
France and so on. It’s worth mentioning that the
Oktoberfest glimpsed in the film’s opening isn’t staged and by luck fell into
the filmmaker’s hands.
Pure
escapist fun, and among the few cat and mouse thriller comedies where clever wit
instead of violence is used as a weapon, Hopscotch
is a good old fashioned time at the movies and supremely underrated
entertainment. While a genre film not
necessarily on par with Neame’s earlier features, it doesn’t aspire to be on
those movies’ caliber either. Much like
its impishly mischievous hero, giddy on hacking the carefully guarded
institutions quicker to the gun than genius, Hopscotch delights in Kendig’s almost slapstick trouble making he
causes for those who have slighted him. It doesn’t so much matter that Kendig is here to outsmart and reveal his
enemies as buffoons as how he sets them up to fall. Just before we think we know what Kendig is
really up to, Hopscotch manages to
surprise us as its titular trickster puts another one over his adversaries in
increasingly hilarious ways. In other
words, this is getting better by the minute!
7/10 - Andrew Kotwicki