Motion Picture Lover

[ilovemotionpictures]

The world is darker today. One of its brightest lights have gone out.

The news of Rik Mayall's passing has left a gaping hole in many a heart, including mine. It just seems so terribly unfair, somehow.  There will never be another like him again.

Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Rik Mayall 7th March 1958 - 9th June 2014

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Hello! Hope you don't mind my following you. I've always adored Virginia Weidler in the films I've seen her in (albeit not that many yet). :D Have a great day! xx

I’m thrilled every time anyone who isn’t pushing porn here follows me!

The point of the Virginia Weidler Remembrance Society is to reintroduce her talent to the world and maybe get her some of the accolades she deserves but has been denied these many years.

Tell your friends!

[ilovemotionpictures]

Found this book in a used book shop the other day!

The novel of my favourite film!! :D

[ilovemotionpictures]

Dear lovely followers.

I'm so sorry I've been gone from this blog for so long. Life's been crazy here, and so this blog has had to take a back seat. I'm back now, though, and will do regular film reviews and posts.

Thank you. xxx

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These lovely things arrived in the post today!! :D

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The Plank (1967) (E. Sykes)

I’ve just watched the brilliant comedy “The Plank”, starring Tommy Cooper and Eric Sykes.

The film, also written and directed by Sykes, is the story of two builders and what happens when they have to go fetch one more plank to finish the floor in the house they’re building.

It’s a lovely and very funny film and another proof that you don’t need lots of dialogue to make a great comedy.

It’s rather reminiscent of the films of Jaques Tati, like “Mon Oncle”, but very English.

There are some lovely cameo appearances from a.o. Jim Dale, Hattie Jaques (both well known from the “Carry On…” films), Graham Stark (The Pink Panther films, Victor/Victoria, Casino Royale) and John Junkin (A Hard Day’s Night).

I urge you all to watch it, it’s great fun!

Here’s a link to watch it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyU6SonN6mc

Enjoy!

[ilovemotionpictures]

Found these in a small Chinese shop the other day.

They’re lovely, although it seems the people who made them thinks Ava Gardner and Greta Garbo are the same person…

:D

[ilovemotionpictures]

Pygmalion (1938) (Anthony Asquith/Leslie Howard)

The film I’m going to tell you about today is one of my all-time favourites. I’ve seen it many times, and I thought I’d share it with you. J

  The film opens on the Covent Garden Flower Market. Some flower girls are getting ready to go out and sell flower in Piccadilly Circus. The camera follows one of them, Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller), as she passes a man in a big overcoat, taking notes. The camera then fixes on the man and follows him as he walks through the flower market.

The next scene sees the man in the overcoat walking through Covent Garden at night, after the flower market has closed, as the camera catches his face we see it’s Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard in what I consider one of his all-time best performances).

He looks up at the sky, there’s lightning and thunder, and as he walks to the columns by the opera we hear that it’s started raining. Higgins passes two women waiting for someone called Freddie to try and find a taxi, something we see in the next scene that he has little luck with.

Freddie is Freddie Eynsford-Hill, a young man who later falls in love with Eliza. He’s played to rather Bertie Wooster-ish perfection by David Tree.

Freddie comes back to the two women to say he’s had no result in finding a taxi, but is promptly sent back out to try again. As he runs out he bumps into Eliza Doolittle and knocks over her basket of flowers.

Eliza seeks refuge from the rain by the columns at the opera house and tries to sell flowers to Colonel Pickering (Scott Sunderland), he gives her tuppence but leaves before she gives him his flowers. A man tells her she’d better make sure she gives Pickering his flowers, as “-There’s a bloke down there taking down every blessed word you’re saying”. Eliza panics at the thought of being arrested and thus lose her character and be driven on the street.

As it turns out, however, the man taking down what she’s saying is Henry Higgins, and all he’s interested in is the phonetic sounds of her dialect. He then goes to prove he’s a dialect expert by telling the people standing around where they hail from, based on their dialects.

   One of the bystanders (named in the credits as “Sarcastic Bystander” (Ivor Barnard)) tells Higgins: “I can tell where you come from.” “Oh, can you?” “ ’enwool Hinsane Asylum.” To which Higgins drily replies: “Henwool Insane.”

Higgins and Pickering start talking and discover that they’re both huge admirers of each other’s work. Pickering is a student of Indian dialects and has written “Spoken Sanskrit”, while Higgins has written “Higgins’ Universal Alphabet”.

Higgins tells Pickering that with the proper training he could pass Eliza off as a duchess at an ambassador’s ball, something neither Eliza nor Pickering takes very seriously.

The next day, at Higgins house, Eliza arrives to ask Higgins for lessons to “…talk more genteel…”.

He takes her on, despite protests from his housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce (brilliantly played by Jean Cadell).

The first step in Eliza’s transformation is to have a proper bath. The bath scene with Eliza and Mrs. Pearce is brilliantly scored. It’s scored like a nightmare scene in a horror film which perfectly reflects how Eliza feels about having a proper bath for the first time.    After Eliza’s been washed Mrs. Pearce gives Higgins some instructions in behaviour, among them not to swear in front of her, to which Higgins replies: “I never swear, what the devil do you mean?!”.

A few moments after this Eliza’s father arrives.

Doolittle is played to absolute perfection by the wonderful Wilfrid Lawson. He ostensibly shows up as the concerned father but when Higgins suggests he take her back with him: “Mrs. Pearce, this is Eliza’s father. Come to rescue her from worse than death. […] Give her to him.”, it becomes clear that he’s really come to get some money and has no interest in taking Eliza back. “What’s a five pound note to you? And what’s Eliza to me?”.

I also have to mention here the fantastic faces Higgins makes when Doolittle propels his breath at him, you can almost smell how horrible it is:

After some rigorous weeks of elocution lessons and etiquette lessons (a montage both edited and scored like a film noir/thriller) Higgins decides it’s time to try Eliza out on someone and decides on his mother (a very sweet Marie Lohr).

As he arrives at her house she's just welcoming guests for lucheon and it ends up being not only her but a whole little party, among whom we find Mrs. Eynsford-Hill and her children Clara and Freddie. Freddie instantly falls for Eliza, very likely because she’s such a breath of fresh air.

   This scene is such a great example of it not only being *how* you say things that matter it’s also *what* you’re saying.    As Eliza’s taking her leave Freddie asks her if she’s walking through the park, and she replies: “Walk? Not bloody likely. I’m going in a taxi”, with perfect pronunciation and in a most polite voice.

Now the really rigorous training sets in. Higgins has been invited to a ball at the Transylvanian embassy and is determined to pass Eliza off as a duchess at the ball. She’s now being drilled in etiquette, dancing, etc. etc.

As the big day arrives they enter the embassy and Higgins runs into one of his former students, Aristide Karpathy (Esme Percy in a role written specifically for this movie by G.B. Shaw. Karpathy is based on the producer of the film, Gabriel Pasqual), he claims no one can hide their true origins from him, and, after being introduced to Eliza, announces that she’s a fraud.

I won’t give away the rest of the film, it’s one of my all-time favourites and I really urge you to see it! All the characters in this film is perfectly cast, from Eliza and Higgins down to the smallest roles, like the “Sarcastic Bystander” played by Ivor Barnard.

To end with I’d like to say a few other things about the film:

It was co-directed by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard, and the screenplay was written by George Bernard Shaw himself.

Shaw hand-picked Wendy Hiller to play Eliza.

The scene in which Eliza swallows one of the marbles she’s got in her mouth as a training tool was actually taken from real life. During one of the rehersals Wendy Hiller suddenly looked horrified and said: “Leslie, I’ve swallowed one!” to which he replied: “Don’t worry, there’s plenty more.”. The reaction from the people on the set was so great, they decided to put it in the film.

  Hope you enjoy the film as much as I’ve done.

Here’s a link to the film on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsntTkKg7dc

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I was so thrilled to find these cards at a Salvation Army shop the other day! They were really cheap, as well, only about 25p each!

[ilovemotionpictures]

Start The Revolution Without Me (1970)

The second film I’ll tell you about on this blog is called “Start The Revolution Without Me”. It’s from 1970, directed by Bud Yorkin and stars Donald Sutherland, Gene Wilder, Victor Spinetti, and Hugh Griffith as King Louis XVI.

Two sets of identical twins are born on the same night at the same doctor’s surgery, one ‘set’ belonging to the Duke deSisi of Corsica and the other to a local pesant and his wife.

The nurse confuse the children at birth, and so one baby from each family end up with the respective families.

1879

When King Louis XVI sends for the now grown up Corsican deSisi brothers, the evil Duke d’Escargot (Spinetti) and Queen Marie Antoinette plot to use the deSisi’s in their plan to overthrow the King and rule France together, however, when the ‘Corsican Brothers’ arrive in Paris they’re mistaken for their identical pesant brothers and vice versa. As the story goes on there’s lots of wonderful confusion and farce.

Donald Sutherland and Gene Wilder are wonderful as the two sets of twins, Victor Spinetti is a delight as Escargot and we get narration from Orson Welles.

Along the way we also run into the Man in the Iron Mask, get to see King Louis XVI in a wonderfully silly bird costume and look for a birthmark that may or may not be there…

The film is shot entirely on location in France and there’s some absolutely gorgeous scenary.

I loved this film, and hope you’ll enjoy it, too!

Link to see the whole film on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGP9EBaOVGw

Enjoy! J

[ilovemotionpictures]

Charlie Muffin (1979)

The first film I’m going to tell you about on this blog is a film I saw for the first time yesterday. It’s called “Charlie Muffin”, it’s from 1979, directed by Jack Gold, based on the  novel by Brian Freemantle and stars David Hemmings in the title role. It has a great supporting cast including Ian Richardson and Jennie Linden with Sir Ralph Richardson in a smaller role.

Charlie Muffin (Hemmings), a top operative in the British Intelligence Service, having just broken a Soviet spy network in England is demoted and put on leave by the new Director of Operations, Sir Henry Cuthbertson (Ian Richardson). The new Director has a personal, prejudiced dislike for Muffin and has instead appointed two of his own favourites, Harrison and Snare, even though they’re underqualified and lack field experience.

When General Kalenin, Head of the KGB, hints at thoughts of defecting both the CIA and British Intelligence will do anything to get him. Charlie Muffin may be the only person who can successfully bring off the defection, but as the story unfolds we wonder if the whole thing might be an elaborate set-up…

Here's a link to the whole film on YouTube, enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_7wAyieyMg

[ilovemotionpictures]

I thought I'd start this blog by writing about my favourite films, but before I start I was wondering if you lovely people have any recomendations for films I ought to see. I like all kinds of films and am always open to new suggestions.

Thank you in advance. :D

[ilovemotionpictures]

Hello and welcome to my blog!

On this blog I will write about the films I watch, my favourite films and other films I've watched and loved.     I have a great passion for films and have a film and TV series collection of over 2000.

Hope you enjoy my blog. Feel free to drop me a line, recomend a film to me or tell me of an actor you feel I should know of.