This one’s for MGM, who are going through some serious financial issues at the moment that threaten to wipe out one of the most successful and best known studios of all time.

So where did MGM start? Well, when the Metro and Goldwyn companies were bought up (and Louis B Mayer suggested that since he was fronting quite a bit money it might be nice if his name was in there too) both studios had a few projects in the works. These the nascent MGM inherited and would become it’s first releases, they included the ill-concieved epic Ben Hur (the most expensive film of the era) and Erich Von Stroheim’s monumental Greed, which was edited down from it’s 8 hour run time, much to the horror of it’s autocratic director.

But none of these are really MGM films per se. Sure they have some of the hallmarks of that studio but they were hand-me- downs. The first true MGM film was the first to be concieved and made at the studio, and this was the fascinatingly titled ‘He Who Gets Slapped’ starring Lon Chaney and drected by Victor Seastrom.

I’ve talked about Chaney before in this blog as he is a favourite actor of mine, but the truth is that, while his acting is always of the highest quality, many of his films are not. Chaney would become the biggest star MGM had in terms of box office receipts, largely because MGM knew how to use him; they spent little on the films and let Chaney’s name sell them. But He Who Gets Slapped is a different matter, Seastrom was a renowned artistic director who makes the film look amazing. The story, though bizarre, is well acted and compelling. It’s a testament to what happens when someone says ‘screw the focus group, let’s make something good.’

MGM rarely took risks but on this occasion they did, they opened their doors with an artistic film that would wow the critics and then hoped that the public would come along too. Chaney had only just joined the top rank of stars following his  career making performance in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, his name was not yet enough to open a film. Seastrom was highly respected in his native Sweden (where he is known as Victor Sjostrom) but was a virtual unknown in Hollywood.  The film was sold on it’s own merits, a gamble which paid off and got MGM off to a flying start.

And that title? Well, Chaney’s character is a disgraced scientist who hides out in a circus as a clown, his act is to be slapped by all the other clowns. Seastrom films this sequence brilliantly and it becomes more thana  circus act, it is a representation of the self loathing that HE feels.

As I said, Chaney went onto great things. Few of the films he made were as good as He Who Gets Slapped, but that’s a harsh measure and he certainly made some other great ones. Tragically his career was cut short by his early death in 1931 after making only one talkie.

While MGM was a great environment for actors and writers, it was not so kind to directors. MGM directors were not permitted to follow their own ideas, they shot a standard coverage and gave the footage to editors who would cut the film without help from the director. Artistic directors like Seastrom had it tough, and needed the help of a strong star to make filsm the way they wanted. Seastrom got lucky when Lillian Gish requested him, and the two films they made together, The Scarlett Letter and The Wind, are classic of the silent era (although studio interference blunted the end of the latter picture). With the arrival of the talkies Seastrom headed home and became a mentor to many up and coming Swedish directors, including Ingmar Bergman.

As for MGM, they went from strength to strength, one of the few studios who stayed in the black during the Depression. But by the fifities the old management was starting to show it’s age while the new management had nowhere near the love of film that the company’s founders had. The studio has had some ups and downs since then so lets hope it comes out of it’s current slump. And it could do worse than looking to it’s past and remembering that great films don’t need big name stars, they sell themselves.

No, not that one. There is more than one film called The Ring and the one I’m talking about was made by one of the greatest (some might say the greatest) directors of all time; Alfred Hitchcock.

So why haven’t you heard of it? Assuming that you haven’t. Well it’s a relatively early Hitch film (1928) and, shockingly, not a suspenseful thriller, no one even dies. I think most people know that Hicthcock made a number of silent films early in his career but if people have heard of one then it tends to be The Lodger. And why not? The Lodger is quintessential Hitch, featuring blondes in danger, men on the run, dumb policeman, black comedy, sexual innuendo and a few good murders. It’s a really good film, but it’s not Hitchcock’s best, nor is it even his best silent, that would be The Ring (or possibly The Manxman).

The ring of the title refers to the boxing ring (he was a great boxing fan) and the film is based around a love triangle involving two boxers. Plotwise it may not be the most revolutionary thing in the world but the execution is just stunning. Another well documented fact concerning Hitch’s silent career is his time spent in Germany, watching the likes of Murnau and Lang at work, and the influence these masters had on him. The Lodger in particular has a highly expressionist flavour. The Ring however draws more on the techniques than the look of the movement, the influence of Murnau’s german masterpiece ‘The Last Laugh’ is there in every frame (particularly the drunk scenes both feature); the use of camera is stunning, telling the story rather than merely recording it. Both films take simple dramtic stories and then make them brilliant and beautiful in the telling.

Credit for this must also go to Jack Cox, a second cameraman promoted at the last minute who would go on to make another ten films with Hitch.  Hitchcock liked a camerman he could trust, someone he could tell what he wanted and then never have to look through the lens. In Cox he found a man as willing to take risks as he was, to try things that had never been done and push the boundaries. In another silent (the inferior Champagne) they would use a shot that appeared to be through the bottom of a champagne glass.

Special mantion must be made to the boxing match at the start, we observe it through a flap in a fairground tent along with the heroine of the piece, Mabel, and, at the climax of the action, our view is obstructed by a man in the audience standing. We and Mabel are held on tenter hooks to see who won. If that were not enough the scene is beautifully lit, capturing the dusty heated atmosphere of the fairground fighting world of Jack ‘One Round’ Sanders. The fight scenes have a visceral reality, helped by the fact that star Carl Brisson had been a middleweight champion.

This is just one of the films Hitchcock made before he became the master of suspense and it’s certainly not the only one worth checking out. Back then his career could have gone in any direction and he had no interest in picking any one genre. The Farmer’s Wife is a romantic comedy, The Manxman is a heartbreaking melodrama, the nonsensical Champagne is a comic cautionary tale. I am a tremndous fan of Alfred Hitchcock and he certainly found the niche in film he was born to fill, but there are times when I watch these early films that I can’t help wondering what else he might have done had he followed another path.

Many apologies for the lack of blogs recently but I have been madly writing to a deadline by night and hanging women’s clothes by day.

And my return to the Adventures in 20th Century cinema has one major flaw; the film Ten Canoes was made in 2006, so not technically 20th century. On the other hand my pledge to introduce people to films that they might not have seen which are truly ‘something different’ is more than fulfilled; Ten Canoes is like nothing I’ve ever seen.

One slight problem, I saw this film in the cinema when it came out, I have not seen it since. On the other hand it made a huge impression and so, with a little help from IMDB (if only to assist in the spelling of names), I think I can do this.

Fist up, this is an aboriginee film, a rare beast to start with, though it is narrated in English by prominent arboriginal actor, David Gulpilil. The  ten canoes refer to stories and there are many interwoven stories in this film (10 I suppose, although I didn’t count). Technically it is not a portmanteau film because each story leads into the next, it is in a way a story about telling stories. Gulpilil’s storyteller begins telling a story in which the characters themselves tell others. That in itself is enough to make this a pretty unique film.

The next thing that contributes to the film’s uniqueness is it’s aboriginal setting. this film is set centuries ago and doesn’t come close to what we call ‘civilisation’, it is a completely isolated world, and frankly is more alien to us in the West than most fantasy and sci-fi. I said something similar I think about Kwaidan and it was true but this is a whole other step up from that. But, despite all the strangeness, the customs and beliefs that I know nothing about, I never found the film hard to follow, characters motivations remained obvious despite their curiosity.

These are old stories and the great thing about old stories is that there is a reason they have survived; they’re good. They are funny, sad, dramatic and bloody. It is impossible not to get caught up in the lives of Yeeralparil and Ridjimiraril, even though those lives are as strange to us as their names. AS befits a story that is about storytelling, the film’s own storytelling is exemplary; clear, dramatic, intriguing.

The film is shot with a documentary realism, by which I do not mean the camera is forever bobbing up and down and zooming in and out for reasons passing understanding, but that one never catches these actors acting. Even now I find it almost impossible to beleive that these people do not live out in the outback building canoes from bark and hunting goose eggs in the swamp. they are completely convincing.

For anyone who likes their films a little off the wall then I would highly recomend Ten Canoes. For those who would rather die than read a subtitle and think that Batman Begins is a as good as cinema gets, I’d recomend it even more highly, not because I think they should expand their horizons (though I do) but becuase this is every bit as thrilling a film. Ten Canoes is the sort of film because of which I started writing this blog, to prove that , although you might think you’ve seen it all before, you absolutely haven’t.

After last week’s foray into the weird and wonderful world of Kwaidan we’re back into more familiar territory this week with classic Hollywood drama The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) . Like a few of the films I’ve written about this one has a very familar name but it may still be a film you haven’t seen, and perhaps one you should.

In some ways this is simply Citizen Kane-lite, ten years after the original with less of the artistic or technical flair and more of the MGM gloss, courtesy of director Vincente Minelli and MGM’s resident designer Cedric Gibbons. It is told almost exclusively in flashback by 3 people (a writer a director and an actress), talking with some venom about producer Jonathan Shields (a blinding performance by Kirk Douglas). But unlike Kane, these flashbacks do not intertwine, they are purely linear and each tell a different story about the same man. Although they each contribute to our image of the man, they do not really go together to tell a single story. So in some ways (like Kwaidan) The bad and the Beautiful is a portmanteau film.

It’s starting to sound like I don’t like the film (which I saw for the first time this week) but if you compare most films to Citizen Kane they are likely to come up short, and it’s only because the influence is so striking that I have done so. The film’s top billed star is Lana Turner, who tells the middle story, and is the ‘wronged woman’. Turner was always more of a star than an actress, but her climactic break down in a speeding car is far and away the best performance of hers I have ever seen, and more than makes up for any lack of nuance in the rest of her acting. The fact that she is one of the most beautiful actresses ever doesn’t hurt.

The third story is told by the writer, played by Dick Powell, who is very good but almost wholly overshadowed by Gloria Grahame playing his southern belle wife. Grahame won a well deserved best supporting actress oscar and is wonderful in the role, equalling and perhaps even surpassing Douglas’s career-best turn as the ubiquitous and magnetic producer.

But it’s the first story that really steals the show. Barry Sullivan is fine as the director, Fred Amiel, whom Shields’s cheats, but it’s the story that engages you. Perhaps it’s because I have such an interest in Hollywood history but this section had me on the edge of my seat  and with them all the way.

And that is where this film really scores; it is a ‘Hollywood’ film, that means so much more to any with a knowledge of the old town. Shields is clearly based on David O Selznick, both had producer father’s treated badly by the rest of the industry (Lewis Selznick was a hugely successful silent producer who was left on the outisde when his compnay went bust). The studio head (played by Walter Pidgeon) is surely based on Columbia’s ill-tempered Harry Cohn. While the studio itself seems like RKO.   Gilbert Roland’s Gaucho is an actor based on a number of womanising lead actors.

A more knowledgeable cinephile than me could pick out many more such connections and references. It is a film about film that deserves to be mentionned, if not in the same breath as Sunset Boulevard or The Player, then at least within a few breaths. It bottles out on Kane’s bleak ending, but it is a Hollywood film, the least you can expect is a Hollywood ending.

I have been pretty remiss in my blogging recently but hopefully I will be able to post more regularly from here on in.

Some of my recent posts have been about interesting films but perhaps not really ‘adventures’ which is, after all, the stated purpose of the blog. So here is one which is a genuine curiosity, as well as being rarely seen. Kwaidan is a Japanese film directed by Masaki Kobayashi, made in 1965 which won the special Jury prize at Cannes, it is a horror film made decades before the Japanese cornered the market in horror film with variations on the theme of death and women with long hair. It is also a portmanteau film, a collection of 4 short films based on ghost stories written by Lafcadio Hearn (an American living in Japan) and based on Japanese originals.

What makes the film special? Well for a three hour film it’s pretty compelling (having four stories helps there, you don’t get bored). It is also one of the best looking films you will ever see; beautiful but in no conventional way. Much of the film disregards realiam in place of atmosphere, creating subtly brilliant backdrops that big budget fantasies like The Lord of the Rings can only dream of (it’s about time more film-makers realised that realism does not equal ‘better’).

Let’s look at it one section at the time. The opening segment; The Black Hair, is the most conventional storywise, recognisable to any horror afficionado, but still well executed and full of shocks in it’s latter half (which I guess is why it comes first). For me it’s the least of the quartet but still very good.

The Woman of the Snow is, at it’s heart, a tragedy (as any good ghost story surely ought to be). It is slow paced, edge of the seat stuff and it looks incredible, the snow scenes are clearly stage-based but by embracing this rather than trying to hide it, Masaki creates a thing of terrifying beauty. You’ve got to like a story than can make you scared and make you cry. It features Tatsuya Nakadai, familiar to film fans as star of Kurosawa’s Ran, Kagemusha and Yojimbo (in which he played the villain).

Hoichi the Earless is the film’s centre piece and deservedly. It is the longest segment and features an epic re-telling of a samurai battle, but again this makes no concession to realism (partly as it is being re-enacted by the ghosts of the warriors who lost their lives in the battle). It is stark, stylised and colourful, and, I’m now finding, quite difficult to describe. This section has the most memorable image of the film too; the title character painted with buddhist prayers to keep him safe from the ghosts. Unfotunately they forget his ears, giving the film it’s most visceral moment. (this section features Takashi Shimura, another Kurosawa alumnus who featured in more of the great director’s films than I can name, but most notably was the leader of the Seven Samurai and the lead character in Ikiru).

The final segment is called In a Cup of Tea. It is the shortest, so brief in fact that when I watched the film on DVD I began to wonder if there even was a fouth film after Hoichi the Earless. It is based around a single reveal; a completely unexpected, startling and thoroughly creepy image on which to end.

I can’t speak highly enough of Kwaidan. It is one of the most beautiful films ever, a work of art, but filled with great stories. In three hours it doesn’t put a foot wrong.

Had I written earlier I could have chosen so many films from the bank holiday weekend as my tip of the week, we have Lawrence of Arabia, the Birds, About a Boy, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and, tucked away on ITV3, Stanley Donen’s wonderful Charade, a film which out-Hitchcock’s Hitchcock. Fortunately it’s a good week anyway and I’ll pick Lost in Translation 11.10pm on filmfour this friday. Were there justice in the world Sofia Coppola would have become the first woman to win best director for this 21st centruy Brief Encounter (Peter Jackson won that year, I went to bed angry). If you prefer something completely different then try Slither, same time, same channel, but on Tues.

My plan was to watch L’Aventura this week, which got a rare terrestrial TV showing, but I forgot to tape it, which was very annoying as I haven’t seen it and I was hoping to write about it. But it’s too late now and so I’m falling back on a largely unknown silent film called The Penalty.

The team of director Wallace Worsley and star Lon Chaney (my favourite actor by the way) is best known for 1924′s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Chaney’s protrayal of the Quasimodo is still definitive (even better than Charles Laughton’s later talkie version) and one of the greatest characterisation’s in film history. There are some other strong performances in the film (notably that of Patsy Ruth Miller) and some clever effects and spectacular moments. That said it is still a deeply flawed film; the adaptation from Hugo’s great but miserablist novel is unbalanced and Worsely’s direction is leaden and occasionally laughable.

The fact is that Worsely was absolutely the wrong choice for director, he had no experience with the epic and was an ‘economic’ choice by Universal studio. But he was not a bad director, as evidenced by The Penalty.

In some ways The Hunchback of Notre Dame re-inforces almost every bad stereotype about silent films; slowly paced, occasionally overacted, boringly shot. On the flipside, The Penalty defies all silent film stereotypes, it is violent and sexual, fast-paced and vital. It is also complete nonsense, the story of a man whose legs are amputated accidentally by a drunk surgeon who embarks on a quest for revenge and a leg transplant. In his spare time, the legless man (Blizzard, played by Chaney) becomes an underworld kingpin, running a sweatshop with ruthless efficiency. As I said; nonsense. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not well-written, let’s be honest, Indiana Jones isn’t exactly realistic, and Hitchcock’s fabulous North by Northwest has a famously nonsensical plot; they’re still vastly entertaining films.

Much of the entertainment in The Penalty undoubtedly comes from Chaney, his Blizzard is a brilliant villain, particularly when abusing his female workers; when he loses his crutches he pulls himself along the table, still bellowing his anger and lashing out at people. It’s a tour de force performance and, as always, Chaney put himself through hell to get it, strapping his legs back so they appeared to be amputated at the knee. He ran like this and even jumped, landing (agonisingly one would imagine) on his knees. Between takes his legs had to be massaged to get the feeling back into them. There’s little doubt that Chaney channeled his physical pain into this stunning performance.

There’s a lesson to be learnt here; don’t be afraid of a really bad, bad guy. So often writers give their bad guys a sympathetic back story that detracts from the threat that villain poses. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Blizzard is arguably extremely justified in his vendetta against the surgeon who maimed him, he has as sad a backstory as any, but he’s still clearly psychotic!

The film is directed with economy by Worsley (who would direct Chaney another four times), it’s short and to the point, never pasuing to consider the madness of the situation and so preventing the audience from doing the same. Instead it sweeps you along with it. And let’s not discount the plot too quickly; leg transplants might be science fiction but this film was made in 1920, directly after the first world war, when the streets were full of amputees coming back from Europe. There may be a little wish fulfilment here, and it is at least a timely film.

The Penalty may not be as well known as a lot of other silent films but that is because we remember ‘great’ films, ones with meaning. The Penalty is one of the best pure thrillers of the era and is well worth checking out. Having said all that, it’s a bastard to get hold of so good luck.

My pick of the week’s TV is The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which is on Wednesday at 2.45 on Film4. It’s one of the last of the John Wayne/John Ford collaborations but one of the best, starting the dissection of the mythology of the old west two years before Sergio Leone got in on the act and decades before Eastwood’s Unforgiven. Besides, it’s John Wayne, James Stewart and Lee Marvin in one film; that’s value for money.

Given that my interest in football starts and stops with finding out what time big matches are on so I can avoid pubs with screens, this is an unusual film to pick. So Why am i picking it? Well, I watched it last week and there’s been a bit in the news recently about it’s director Thorold Dickinson (you just don’t see many Thorolds these days) folowing a restoration of his masterpiece The Queen of Spades.

Arguably The Queen of Spades would have been the film to write about but I haven’t seen that. Besides, The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, while not in the same league (I’m told), is still great fun. It’s a fairly basic whodunnit based around the Arsenal Stadium. At least i say it’s a whodunnit but to be honest, I don’t think you have a cat in hell’s chance of guessing who did it. I certainly didn’t come close. What the film feels most of all like is a very well made (and pretty high budget) episode of Midsummer Murders or some similar show.

It’s starting to sound like a pretty dreary, middle Englandish sort of a film so I should hastily say that it’s not. What really elevates the film is what elevates any whodunnit worth it’s salt, the key element that every TV detective show needs, that makes reason you watch Columbo and avoid Murder She Wrote; a great detective.

Leslie Banks’s Inspector Slade is a wonderful character, we meet him sporting a beret as he nimbly choreograph’s the policeman’s fundraising gala. He changes hats throughout, as he wears different ones depending on what he is doing, and is jovially polite to people who clearly hate him. Despite his eccentricities, he is of course brilliant and there is never any doubt that he will solve the thing.

In some ways this is a mediocre film made great by a single character but that misses some other really good performances. Ian Mclean plays Slade’s sidekick Sergeant Clinton and never allows Banks to steal the scenes completely, while heroines Greta Gynt and Liane Linden are likewise good.

The film may not be a masterpiece but it never purports to be one, it keeps it’s tongue firmly in it’s cheek and sets out to entertain. Which it undoubtedly does. It’s possible that a football fan might enjoy it even more.

My pick of this week (despite the presence of Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and It Happened One Night) is on Film 4 this Thursday at 3:00pm; Bad Day at Black Rock is one of those films that takes a Western plot and updates it brilliantly, and it’s one of Spencer Tacy’s finest thirllers. Miss it at your peril.

A film that I have had occasion to mention in my other blog (90 Pages) on a few occasions but it fits in well here too. When we think of Frank Capra films we inevitably think of It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It Happened One Night or Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and why not? They’re all classics. But they all draw  to some extent on an earlier Capra film, ‘American Madness’ (1932).

American Madness features as it’s centrepiece a run on a bank, almost 15 years before Capra made Wonderful Life. It champions the little man against the big corporate machine and espouses small town values as superior to corrupt big city dealing. It’s hero contemplates suicide, genuine drama underscoring it’s crafted comedy. It’s classic Capra.

And that’s not surprising, it was scripted by Robert Riskin, who scripted many of Capra’s triumphs. When we think of Capra’s values we are usually thinking of Riskin’s; it is he, not Capra, who is the liberal, Capra was a lifelong Republican. This odd teaming of ideological opposition is arguably what made their films so good. So good in fact that when Capra was making his first post war project, without Riskin, he resorted to many of his old collaborators ideas and made It’s a Wonderful Life, the film that has come to define him.

Even at the time there was a conflict in ownership over the Capra/Riskin collaborations, with Capra appealing to the Writer’s Guild to get co-author credit on his films. Capra was an insecure man, genuinely afraid that his contribution would be overlooked (or perhaps afarid that he had made no real contribution). And with good reason; the script for American Madness is very detailed, superlative sequences such as the spread of the rumour and the run on the bank are laid out there almost exactly as they appear on the screen.

But that should take nothing away from Capra; he recognised what a good thing he had and was smart enough not to change things for change’s sake. He also executed the sequences flawlessly. The run is a masterpiece of a scene, from silence to chaos in seconds flat, while the spread of the rumour bears testament to capra’s time as a silent film director; superb visual storytelling.  The bank robbery early in the story is another masterful peice of direction, again almost silent, dark and dramatic, Capra’s films were never less than black comedies (for all his reputation). And in this scene credit goes solely to Capra, it is one of the few additions the director is known to have made to Riskin’s script, and it’s a very important one.

I can’t sell American Madness as the equal of Capra’s other triumphs, but it is still a great film, and an often overlooked one.

My tip for the week is Papillon, Friday at 10.30 on BBC2. Slow paced and McQueen maybe a bit out of it’s depth but it’s better than it’s reputation suggests.

I promised myself when I started this blog that I would only write about silent films every other week at most. They are a pet subject of mine and I easily get carried away.

Well since last week was ’3:10 To Yuma’ I’m taking the chance to talk about a 1928 film called The Patsy, starring Marion Davies and directed by King Vidor. I saw the film a couple of weeks ago at the BFI (it featured some of the worst accompaniment I’ve ever sat through but you can’t have evrything) and, like so many films I plan to talk about in this blog, It is not a masterpiece.

Vidor, by this point of his career was no stranger to the masterpiece, having directed the superlative first world war film ‘The Big Parade’ and down-at-heel social drama ‘The Crowd’. Why would such a director lend his name to a mere romantic comedy? Well we have the star to thank for that, indirectly at least. Davies was not a huge star whom every director wanted to work with, but she was the mistress of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst (on whom Citizen Kane was famously based), a powerful man and close friend of Louis B Mayer, the head of MGM studios. Hearst wanted vidor and so he got vidor (MGM directors did as they were told if they wanted to keep working).

Davies’s association with Hearst inevitably means that she is judged harshly as an actress, and in the dramas that hearst wanted to see her in that harshness is well deserved, but as a light comedienne she is superb. Her timing is perfect and her impressions of other actresses of the day are very funny (even funnier at the time of course).

Davies is also done the favour of playing alongside one of cinemas greatest actresses; Marie Dressler. Her career was relatively short but no one played the grand dame better. A large woman who delivers a huge performance and who gets most of the laughs when the film is shown these days, because we never tire of monstrous mothers roaring at hen-pecked husbands.

There is nothing about this film that makes it stand out to the film historian (except perhaps for Davies’ involvement) but to tjhe enthusiast it remains a joy; simply because it is funny. And really, what more can you ask of a comedy?

I was going to reccomend ‘The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada’ as my pick of this weeks films, with the idea that it was about time I picked a modern one. But it’s on Sunday night and will have been and gone by the time this is published so I’m going for Th Valley of Gwangi on thursday at 1.35pm on C4. This is perhaps one you saw as a child but it’s worth catching again, not because it’s a great film (I can’t claim that) but because it’s fun in a nostalgic way, because any film with effects by Ray Harryhausen is worth watching (one man designing, building and animating gives you more of a character than any pixel perfect computer generation) and because the film is based on a story by Willis O’Brien, the father of stop motion animation and creator of King Kong.

The title sounds familiar, at least partly because of a recent remake starring Russel Crowe and Christian Bale, but surprisingly few people have seen the 1957 original with Glenn Ford and Van Heflin. It is remembered as one of the great Westerns, a classic of that uniquely American genre, but it is seldom mentionned in the same breath as The Searchers, Rio Bravo, The Man From Lamarie, Shane or the other true giants.

And in many ways that’s fair enough, despite it’s great central performances (Glenn Ford plays the bad guy for the only time in his career), it has problems. The beginning, really the first half hour, while well made, could come from any Western (some of it is a virtual re-tread of the superior High Noon), it lacks originality, a common flaw in Westerns. The ending, though it’s down to personal taste, I find a let down. But in between these two we have one of the great confrontations in cinema. Not a gunfight, just two men locked in a room together, one has a gun and yet all the confidence and power seems to be with the other man. In terms of taut, tense cinema, this is right up there with Twelve Angry Men.

Heflin is the dirt poor farmer roped in to help transport the wanted criminal (ford) to the station and onto the titular train. He is the good guy and yet his character is hard to like, brusque with his wife, he does not intercede in the robbery at the start, and he is seriously considering the bribe ford offers. By contrast Ford is a killer, but he is a charismatic and likeable one, polite and charming to Heflin’s wife, animated and articulate. Only occasionally do we glimpse the killer beneath.

In town the pair hole up in a hotel room to wait for the train, they know that ford’s gang is on their way but there is nothing they can do. The meat of the film is this wait, as ford needles at heflin, getting under his skin, biding his time and waiting for his chance. It is tough to base a whole film around this kind of confrontation, mostly verbal and extremely insular, you need strong characters and something real at stake, it’s all too easy to screw it up. But when you get it right, boy does it pay it off. And then you get a film like Twelve Angry Men, Guess Who’s coming to dinner, or 3;10 To Yuma. For all it’s faults, this film dserves it’s status.

My hot tip for the coming week is another absolute classic which you’ve heard of but probably never seen; All About Eve; tuesday film4 at 4:20. Watch out for the young Marilyn Monroe in an early role.