200th Post

So it's time once again for me to celebrate a new milestone on my blog and what better way to do that than with a movie that made a significant impact on my life. Now I imagine you're all left wondering what the secret movie is this time. It seems I've been going back a decade with each passing milestone. For my 50th post I did a a film from 1964, for my 100th post I wrote about a film from 1954, so naturally why not go back another decade with a movie from 1945? This time I settled for an exciting swashbuckling tale of piracy. It's the classic adventure film Captain Kidd.

As far back as I can remember, this was the first fully-black and white movie I ever saw from start to finish. I'll confess that I've always had a soft spot for pirates. In fact back in July I wrote an entire article about the subject of pirates on film comparing the myth to history. I first encountered Captain Kidd years ago, back when I was somewhere in Grade 4 or 5. I was big on the subject of pirates at the time and I had been exposed to a handful of older movies. If I recall correctly it was in a Wal-Mart my mom managed to find the "Hollywood DVD Classics" edition of the film.

We watched it about a week later, and it was a bit jarring at first because I had never seen a full black and white film before. Sometime later, maybe a week or two (I don't remember precisely) I talked myself into giving it another chance and found I appreciated it a lot more. Before long it quickly became one of my favourite movies (though granted it has been outranked by several other films since then) and I found myself watching this exciting adventure again and again. I wanted to go out and find other films in the "Hollywood DVD Classics" series, though I never did until a few months ago when I found one of their discs compiling two episodes of Bonanza.

I was literally obsessed with Captain Kidd, that's how much I loved the film. The impact it had on me was unbelievable. In between classes at school, I used to make arts and crafts projects imitating the case (which unlike your standard DVD case is much smaller and more flexible). Of course, none of my classmates ever understood quite how much this film intrigued me and instead would make fun of these projects jokingly showing them off as my "fake I.D." (something I did not understand the meaning of at the time, which didn't help much).

While this wasn't the first old movie I ever saw, it was one that certainly opened a door down a winding corridor that would allow me greater exposure to other things. If 2001: A Space Odyssey was sealed my fate to be a film student, it was Captain Kidd that first set me on that path. In addition to opening my mind to Classical Hollywood, it introduced me to a name that I would come to know very well in the following years: the great actor Charles Laughton. Since this occasion calls for me to discuss something special I decided to dig out that old DVD and see if it was as good as I remembered. So after all these years and now looking at it again with a broader understanding of film history, how does it hold up?

Well, I'll confess, it isn't the greatest thing I've ever seen. It did feel a bit like a b-movie, and its story certainly had flaws I would not have noticed when I was younger, though I can certainly see how I would have enjoyed it. Laughton himself has done some far better projects such as Mutiny on the Bounty (which curiously enough, was also a nautical adventure in which he plays a nasty sea captain) That does not, however, mean that this was in any way a bad movie. While it may not be any grand cinematic achievement it is still an enjoyable little adventure story.

I should explain that this isn't exactly a historical film. Captain William Kidd was a real pirate who buried a small stash of treasure before he was hanged... and that's about the extent of the history you'll get here. The actual Captain Kidd was something of a real-life tragic hero, a man who got mixed up in piracy because of circumstances beyond his control and executed for it when he tried to get out. The movie's Kidd is instead treated as a despicable and scheming villain, so aside from sharing his name with a real person he's pretty much a fictional character.

Captain William Kidd (Charles Laughton) is a respected sailor in England with the popular image of being an honest shipmaster. In actuality, he is a ruthless double-crossing, backstabbing, and greedy pirate. He is recruited by King William III (Henry Danielle) to lead an expedition into African waters to rendezvous with an English vessel loaded in treasure and escort it safely back to London. What the King doesn't know is that Kidd has no intention of seeing the ship return safely and in fact wants to keep the riches for himself.

To accomplish this end, he recruits a crew of convicted pirates who are offered a pardon for their services. As the voyage gets under way, Kidd begins to put his dastardly schemes into action, which result in various members of the crew dying in "accidents". Unfortunately for him one officer by the name of Adam Mercy (Randolph Scott), starts to figure Kidd's intentions and with help from the few trustworthy people aboard, becomes determined to expose his captain's treachery and see justice prevail.

So as you can imagine, this is a pretty straight forward swashbuckling adventure, something not too unusual for the 40's. In that sense it may at first feel like a typical b-movie, but even so it is still nonetheless an enjoyable story. Laughton makes an intimidating villain as you can normally expect from his roles, possibly channelling a bit of his more famous role of William Bligh. Scott's character of Adam Mercy is a fairly likable character, one who you can find yourself rooting for and hope to see triumph in the end.

There isn't a whole lot to be said about much of the supporting cast, and if I had to point out any flaws in the movie I could argue that they are underdeveloped. Only a few people really stand out from the crowd, though out of the ones that are present the most interesting has got to be Orange Povey. This is a character who steals the show in his scenes, and the tension between him and Kidd is very strong, with the former trying to find a way to get rid of him by way of an "accident" and the latter finding clever ways to talk him out of it.

So after all these years does Captain Kidd still hold up as a great film? Well, it does have its narrative flaws and underdeveloped characters. I don't know I would consider it a masterpiece and I will confess that Charles Laughton has done a lot of far better work. However, it is still a fun and enjoyable little movie with a straight forward plot and some exciting sword fights. It is worth giving a watch if you get the chance, though perhaps not one you will need to put as a top priority.

100th Post

Let's talk Disney. We all remember the animated films: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and plenty of others. The funny part of my childhood is that I was alienated in large part from the Disney animated canon barring a few exceptions such as Peter Pan and The Aristocats. Why? Well, largely thanks to the infamous "Disney Princess" marketing phenomenon and its unnecessary gender segregation making me afraid to watch a lot of movies that turned out not to be so bad once I actually gave them a chance years later.

On the other hand, one could argue that my alienation from the Disney Animated Canon helped me to see the company's work in a broader sense. For most people when you bring up the name of "Disney" they immediately think of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Sleeping Beauty, The Lion King, or any of the other big animated features they've done. It's easy to forget the vast number of live action productions ranging from 1951's Treasure Island (their first feature to have no animation at all) to David Lynch's The Straight Story, but I tend to think of a lot of their other movies as well. When the subject of favorite Disney films pops up in conversation, most people immediately select one of the animated features, and yet for me there is one live action film I always find myself bringing up.

Being the science fiction fan that I am, it should come as no surprise that the writings of many of the great authors have influenced my life. Arthur C. Clarke alone has helped shape the way I write science fiction, but going even further back to my childhood we have the really old icons, two of the earliest pioneers of the genre: Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. I remember reading an abridged version of Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea somewhere between Grade 2 and 3, and during that time I also first saw the 1954 adaptation. When the opportunity rose to order it off Amazon years later I didn't hesitate.

Since then I've made a few attempts to read the full book (though for whatever reason I've never finished it) but the movie still stands as a grand masterpiece. Disney's finest achievement is not in fact Snow White or Pinocchio or even The Lion King, but the live action production of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

It is the late 19th century, at a time when scientific understandings of the ocean were extremely limited (at least, moreso than today in that this was back in the days when research could only be conducted from the surface). Pierre Arronax (Paul Lukas) is a French marine biologist who, along with his assistant Conseil (Peter Lorre), has been trying to reach Saigon only to end up stranded in San Francisco due to rumors of an unknown monster attacking and destroying ships all over the world.

Arronax makes a deal with the U.S. government to join an expedition in search of the monster, but the ship is attacked and he falls overboard. Conseil jumps in soon after, and the two are joined soon after by harpooner Ned Land (Kirk Douglas). Since the ship is too badly damaged to help, the three castaways end up drifting through open water until they encounter the monster... which is actually a highly advanced submarine belonging to the mysterious Captain Nemo (James Mason), a bitter and emotionally scarred recluse seeking justice against the "Hated Nation" that has wronged him. Together these four men embark on an incredible journey across the world's oceans.

Now Disney has actually worked with an all-male cast more often than you might initially think (Pinnochio, Treasure Island, and Up just to name a few), but it is interesting how they have preserved that detail from the book. Many other adaptations try to force in a love interest of some sort but Disney of all people sticks to Verne's own writing and keeps the cast as he intended.

What makes this movie so great is the fact that it manages to be fairly adult. It is a family film in every sense of the word, but it manages to find stuff for both young and old audiences and never swerves too far one way or the other. There is plenty of great action and exciting visuals for the younger viewers, but also enough character interaction to give them the sufficient depth for us to make a connection. It does have plenty of light-hearted and comedic moments but it's also not afraid to get darker when necessary, and when it does it never feels forced.

I also love the fact that unlike most family films (especially those usually produced by Disney) the conflict isn't black and white. Typically with any Disney production, at least in my experience, you usually have a very clear antagonist and a very clear protagonist. You know to root for the hero and to cheer when you see the villain defeated.

Here, it's not so simple. All four of the main characters have their positive and negative qualities. Nemo in particular tends to constantly blur the line between being an anti-hero and a villain, but even when it comes to the way the other characters play off of each other it's the same deal. Much of the plot is also driven by the conflict between Arronax and Ned Land, both of whom hold understandable perspectives on how to deal with their predicament, and the film never specifically sides with either one.

Kirk Douglas is a lot of fun as Ned Land. For one thing this may be the only time you'll get to hear him sing in a movie; he performs the one musical number in the film and it is simplistic but really enjoyable. He does get a few other little sub-plots, particularly in his relationship to Nemo's pet seal lion Esmeralda, with whom he becomes especially close (though the stuff he feeds her is... somewhat questionable) which allows for some comic relief.

James Mason is of course the perfect foil as Nemo, who contrasts Ned Land's jolly fun-loving attitude with his very serious performance. We only find out bits and pieces of Nemo's full story, but from what is explained it certainly leaves you questioning morality. It is never easy to tell if he is a hero or a villain, and you could argue both ways; even Arronax isn't fully sure. He is very much one of those characters you can both sympathize with and fear at the same time.

Peter Lorre is an interesting addition to the cast given that this was a rare instance where he got to play against his usual villainous roles. In fact, the Special Edition DVD has an excerpt from a promotional TV special where Walt Disney himself claims that Lorre said "The squid got the role that's usually reserved for him". Here he actually plays the rather likable fellow Conseil, who serves as sort of a surrogate for the audience, being the one character who is never completely sure where he stands; torn between his loyalty to Arronax and his responsibilities as a scientist and Ned Land's shared distrust toward Nemo.

There are a few performances of course that don't get as much attention. Many overlook Paul Lukas' exceptional performance as Arronax in favor of the better known Mason, Douglas, or Lorre, but he is a crucial part of the story just as much as any of them.

Even less recognized is Robert J. Wilke playing the role of Nemo's stern first mate. He's mostly a minor character who has few interactions with the leads aside from Mason, but on some level that actually makes him quite intimidating during his scenes. All we know about the mate is that he'll do anything for his captain, and he subsequently becomes a very intimidating character when on screen but also never steals the show from the leads.

Naturally, the splendid acting isn't all there is to make the film a worthwhile experience. In addition the film has some amazing visuals, many of which still hold up rather effectively today. Considering the subject matter it should hardly come as a surprise that we see a lot of incredible underwater shots, including an extended diving sequence with no dialogue beyond Arronax's narration complete with many images of sea creatures. In other shots we see models of ships and the Nautilus itself being used to great effect.

Then of course there's one of the most famous sequences in the film when the cast comes face to face with the giant squid. There were actually two versions of this scene shot (one available on the DVD shot against a sunset, and the one actually used in the movie where the fight happens in the middle of a storm), but this is one of the tensest moments in the film. The animatronics used to produce the squid are extremely convincing and when we see our protagonists threatened we get a sense that they're in legitimate danger.

The story is filled to the brim with other memorable scenes. The diving scenes are quite good, as is Ned Land's musical number, but there are plenty of great scenes like Kirk Douglas being chased off a beach by a group of cannibal natives. In fact Johnny Depp would pay homage to that scene 52 years later at the beginning of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

It's really quite a shame that this film isn't as well recognized nowadays as Disney's animated films or their more recent live action work such as the Pirates of the Caribbean films. They even took down the hugely popular Disneyland ride based on this film. I can tell you I have gotten annoyed in the past when I've talked to people who claim to be hardcore Disney fans who never heard of this 1954 masterpiece, as it really is one of the company's finest achievements even today.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is probably one of the best examples you can get of Disney movies at their finest. It's an enjoyable and thoroughly well-executed science fiction classic that deserves greater recognition than it is getting now. If you haven't seen this masterpiece I would strongly advise you to do so. You won't regret it.

50th Article

Alright, so I've hyped this up a lot. Hopefully, you've all got your bets in on the subject matter of my fiftieth article. I promised you a movie that meant a lot to me and I'm going to deliver. You're probably excited to hear what movie I've decided to talk about. It is a story of courage, determination, and survival in the face of impossible odds. This is Cy Endfield's 1964 movie war film Zulu.

I was first introduced to this film near the end of middle school. I never was quite like the other kids in my class. They lived in the present, keeping up with the latest sporting events and quoting lines from Family Guy, Robot Chicken, and South Park. Meanwhile here I was living in the past, studying military history in my spare time and even reading my textbook for fun, watching old movies, and getting huge laughs out of the Marx Brothers and Monty Python, who I was excited to find out touched on the same time period as Zulu in one of their sketches featured in The Meaning of Life.

It was more specifically near the end of Grade 8, shortly before I was to make the transition into high school that my parents acquired a copy of this film. Having an interest in military history as I did it quickly caught my imagination, and I must have watched it a thousand times throughout the following summer. It sparked an interest in a period of history I never even knew existed beforehand (even if it's depiction of that time isn't perfectly accurate). It also got me exposed to a few older actors, particularly Jack Hawkins, who I would later see a lot more of in movies like The Bridge On the River Kwai, Ben-Hur, and Lawrence of Arabia.

The film's story is inspired by the real-life battle of Rorke's Drift during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, in which a handful of British soldiers managed to successfully defend a small mission station from an army of Zulu warriors despite being hopelessly outnumbered... after a much larger and seemingly more formidable group of soldiers was massacred by the Zulus earlier that same day.

Michael Caine (who you may know better now as that guy who keeps popping up in Christopher Nolan movies) appears in his first starring role as Lt. Bromhead, the professional veteran from a long line of soldiers, who is initially in charge but finds himself subordinated to the inexperienced engineer Lt. Chard. Together these two men must put aside their differences to figure out the tactics necessary to succeed against all odds. 

There's a number of other characters, and that is one area where this film works surprisingly well. There are a lot of characters, but none ever takes too much focus and they're even fairly easy to tell apart despite most wearing similar uniforms. In fact, there's so many characters it takes about 45 minutes to introduce all of them, but even with the later introductions, when we suddenly meet another soldier they don't seem to come out of nowhere and their presence never appears forced.

Nigel Green co-stars as Color Sergeant Bourne, the stern officer who likes to remind his soldiers that nobody told them to stop working. Gert Van Den Bergh plays the Boer Adendorff, an expert in Zulu tactics who serves as a consultant for the officers and may have a strange admiration for the Zulus' skills in combat. Jack Hawkins plays the role of Otto Witt, a Swedish missionary who wants to help the sick and wounded, convinced that the soldiers have no chance if they stay and fight. Ulla Jacobson plays Otto's daughter Margareta, who is every bit as determined to help the sick as her father.

Meanwhile, in the hospital we have a whole other group of characters. James Booth plays the role of Private Hook, a scoundrel "malingering under arrest" who tries to get out of work and wants some brandy, but ultimately manages to prove a capable soldier and a hero. Peter Gill appears as his partner Private 612 John Williams (it's explained that numbers are used as a way of distinguishing soldiers who share a name), a Welsh soldier who also plays a major role in the climax. There are plenty of other soldiers with names and personalities, perhaps too many for me to go any further in detailing all of them.

The story itself is presented in a fairly straight forward manner. Essentially, the first half of the film is the preparation for the battle, and the second half is the battle itself. The first half takes its time but it never really seems to drag on the same way I felt a movie like Solaris did. In fact it is very compelling on some level because it sets up everything for the second half, giving us time to get to know as many characters as possible (even if it takes a full 45 minutes to introduce all of them) as well as to learn about the tactics of the Zulus and how the soldiers plan to counter those methods. As I mentioned before, I also like how you can actually tell the soldiers apart, averting a common problem with even some of the best war movies.

Once we do get to the battle scenes, they get appropriately tense and chaotic. The violence is a bit tame by modern standards, as there isn't a lot of gore (barring one medium close-up of a soldier taking a spear to the chest), probably because this was being made when the film industry was just coming out of the strict regulations enforced during the "Golden Age" between the 1930's and 1950's (though movies like this may have helped pave the way for more daring films like Bonnie and Clyde and A Clockwork Orange a few years later). Still, the action is solid and does keep the viewer going.

This is also an interesting film to examine from a sociological perspective. It was shot on location in South Africa (we do get several impressive landscape shots) with actual Zulus being cast. In fact, the historical figure of King Cetawayo was portrayed by his own descendant. There are stories of the relationships between the filmmakers and the Zulus they worked with that are quite inspiring. One account is that the filmmakers weren't able to pay the Zulu extras equally to the actors due to the apartheid laws prevalent in South Africa at the time, so the former party got around the law by letting the Zulus keep the cattle used for filming in order to ensure they got some sort of reward for their work.

This is reflected a bit in the movie itself. As the film is told from the perspective of the British, the Zulus are naturally cast as the antagonists. Some of the characters utter some... period appropriate remarks, but in the end, there seems to be a mutual admiration between both sides. Chard and Bromhead manage to emerge victorious, but aren't necessarily proud of their victory. and the Zulus are seen to salute them as "fellow braves".

Compare the way they are treated here to say... the depictions of Native Americans in westerns of the 1930's. While Zulus are antagonists, it is made clear that they are human beings. Whereas the Native Americans were often seen as bloodthirsty savages who needed to be eradicated, the Zulus here are treated more as a worthy opponent to the protagonists. They are a complicated and intelligent people capable of posing a great challenge even for the might of the British army. Not bad for a film shot in a country with a racist government at a time when civil rights were just starting to be recognized.

Overall, Zulu is a great addition to the war genre and an example of British cinema at its finest. It might not be the most accurate rendition of the Battle of Rorke's Drift (though as I have argued previously, to depict any historical event precisely as it happened is impossible), but it is still a compelling story of bravery, ingenuity, and determination in the face of impossible odds, with solid acting and great action.