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Have you seen The League of Gentlemen (1960)?

Yes

Haven’t even heard of this movie

Voting ended onMay 10

#polls #movies #The League of Gentlemen #The League of Gentlemen 1960 #The League of Gentlemen movie #60s movies #basil dearden #jack hawkins #nigel patrick #roger livesey #richard attenborough #bryan forbes #requested #have you seen this movie poll

"I had not thought that her kind of love, the kind of love which she requires and which I seemed unable to give her, was so important that its absence would drive out the other kind of love… the kind of love I require, and which I had thought, in my folly, was by far the greater part of love."

The Browning Version (1951) dir. Anthony Asquith

#the browning version #michael redgrave #jean kent #nigel patrick #film #filmgifs #filmedit

Silver Bears (1977)

"Well, it was nothing important, I just happened to remember something you said, something about a venture you had, worth millions. It was nothing important."

"Ah, but it is important, very important. I'm glad you mentioned it. It is a fabulous, unique opportunity. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

"Well. I mean, uh, if you feel like talking about it..."

#silver bears #1977 #british cinema #ivan passer #paul erdman #peter stone #michael caine #cybill shepherd #louis jourdan #stéphane audran #david warner #tom smothers #martin balsam #jay leno #tony mascia #charles gray #joss ackland #jeremy clyde #nigel patrick #claude bolling #i have to preface this by saying that‚ crucially‚ this is not a very good film #clearly attempting to capture something of the Blake Edwards school of sexy screwball caper films‚ but this is just too relaxed and too #lethargic to ever grab the viewer. it's a lowkey and leisurely treatment of a needlessly complicated plot of financial skullduggery and #also jay leno is there for some reason. but! all is not lost. this has two saving graces. one is the casually homoerotic tone that Caine #and Louis Jourdan seem to have struck up for their characters‚ linking arms and looking longingly into one another's eyes whenever they can #the other is of course my main squeeze‚ my little gangly guy‚ David Warner; criminally underused in a role which deserved a lot more #development‚ but to his credit putting in the work with some subtle (and not so subtle) physical work in the background‚ reacting to #dialogue and tripping up steps etc. a failure on release‚ which star Shepherd put down to a lack of promotion and opening #opposite Close Encounters‚ but i think the more likely reason is that this just isn't a very good film tbh

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman

“No work of art is complete until the element of chance has entered into it,” says James Mason as Dutch sea captain Hendrik van der Zee. By that reckoning, Albert Lewin’s PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (1951, DVD, but make sure it’s the 2020 restoration) is a very incomplete work of art. Although it’s intellectually intriguing and beautifully shot, at times the picture’s meticulous planning overshadows anything else on screen. It often seems less filmed than embalmed.

Pandora (Ava Gardner) is a free-living, often destructive playgirl and cabaret singer vacationing along the Spanish Riviera. She’s in charge of her life and those around her until she meets Mason, whose gloominess fascinates her. That spells trouble for the two men in love with her, her fiancé (Harold Warrender), a British racecar designer, and a temperamental matador (Mario Cabré). There’s one more complication. Mason is the Flying Dutchman of legend, doomed to sail the seas until he can find a woman willing to sacrifice her life for him.

The film is beautiful to behold, even in the muddy print sold by Kino International. Jack Cardiff did the Technicolor cinematography and captures the beauty of the Mediterranean. Man Ray, who was a friend of Lewin’s, contributed some design elements, and you can feel his influence in the constant presence of classical statuary along the shore, particularly during a party that drifts outside. Visually it’s quite fascinating watching people dance among the carved figures, At one point, a jazz musician plays while lying back against a half-buried statue. And Beatrice Dawson did some eye-popping gowns for Gardner, who’s at her most ravishing here.

But the whole thing looks as it were planned out down to the last gesture. There’s something ponderous about it that’s not helped by the 122-minute running time. A flashback to the story of the Flying Dutchman seems to go on forever as Mason narrates the events in copious detail. Lewin was a very literate director who specialized in adaptations of elegant writers like Oscar Wilde and W. Somerset Maugham. This was the first original script he directed, but he’s still in love with words, at times using voiceovers to tell us things we can see already. It doesn’t feel as if he trusts his actors, and you may be tempted to shout “shut up” at the screen as they go on. Mason and Nigel Patrick (as an archaeologist who seems coded as a gay man) can work within that. Marius Goring has a great cameo early on as a suitor killing himself for love of Gardner. But Cabré, who’s really not an actor, can’t bring Lewin’s conception of his character to life. His constant scowling is almost comic. And Gardner also suffers, partly because her character isn’t really a woman. She’s a man’s concept of the ideal woman. She has agency at the start as she juggles her various suitors, but it’s depicted as something destructive. She lets Goring commit suicide and demands Warrender prove his love for her by destroying the racecar he’s spent two years building. She can only achieve purity by giving up agency and sacrificing herself for Mason. That’s a supremely romantic idea, at least for some straight men. But it’s so sparely written, Gardner doesn’t have a lot to play with. I missed the feisty woman who brought life to everything from film noirs to Hollywood musicals to Tennessee Williams. Perhaps the greatest sin Lewin commits in this film is making her seem a little dull.