The Card (1952)

 "Oh, indeed. I thought you were a gentleman."

Ealing comedies are always fun to watch, lightly amusing and very well-acted and made, but they're also deceptively clever beneath the surface and have something to say, and this is no exception.

I've never read the original novel by Arnold Bennett, or indeed anything by him; I'm afraid this is essentially because he's been unfashionable ever since Virginia Woolf slagged him off. However, the script here is quite wonderful, a nice little light-hearted film of an unscrupulous yet somehow charming man who uses sneakiness and trickery to get on in life, but remains likeable enough for us to root for the loveable rogue, a difficult balancing act. Alec Guinness seems born to play the part, and his performance is triumphant- charismatic, broad and nuanced all at once, in a part where he not only stars but literally carries the whole film. 

Glynis Johns is also utterly magnificent and has perfect comic timing as a cheekily seductive femme fatale, and it's fun to see a minor role for Joan Hickson, many years before Miss Marple, still looking somewhat old.

This is a wonderful comedy of class, gentle greed and Edwardian social mores, but rings true today with its depiction of the sort of person who tends to end up rich and land on their feet. It's all very cleverly plotted and charms the viewer with the machinations of its loveable rogue. Not, perhaps, quite up there with the the best Ealing comedies, but a wonderfully fun way to spend ninety minutes.

The Man in the White Suit (1951)

“Tea break! We had to fight for it!"

This is, obviously, an extraordinary film on all sorts of levels; I'm hardly going to do other than praise this, one of the finest Ealing comedies. But its greatness lies not in its humour- after all, this is wry, ironic humour, not exactly a laugh a minute. No; this is a film which nicely skewers much of what's been wrong with this country since well before the War.

The concept is a brilliant one- Sdney, played with the usual brilliance by Alec Guinness, invents an indestructible and dirt repelling fibre which will free mankind from drudgery (according to Daphne, played with charm and splendidly cut glass vowels by Joan Greenwood), as well as destroy much of the industry and ruin both workers and management. What's particularly clever, of course, is that both viewpoints are correct: just not necessarily in that order. This is progress and, as ever, the omelette will come. It's just that the breaking of eggs will not be pleasant for many. It was this way with the Industrial Revolution, and with various smaller waves of progress ever since. These are big themes for an Ealing comedy, but handled with wit and verve in a brilliantly structured film.

Michael Gough has a nice little role, too, and Ernest Thesiger steals the show with his doddery campness as the wise Sir John. There are lots of nice little details, not least the wonderful tubes and bubbling of a very proper chemisty experiment. And, although I wouldn't know, the film seems to capture very well the reality of being an industrial chemist. Yet it also shows us a vanished world- one of strong trade unions and harmonious industrial relations, and of thriving Lancashire textile mills.

Yet it also scolds us as a nation, reminding us that our businesses are far too short termist, too focused on this year's dividends instead of the long term, and that this blinds us to shocks from foreign competition- and prevents us from reacting as we should to things like climate change. I think that, as much as musings over the immediate human price of progress, is the message of this film.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Flushing Out the Mole

"Poor George. Life's such a puzzle to you, isn't it?"

Ah. You know how I’ve been saying that yes, Tinker Tailor is bloody good, the acting is superlative, the slow pace is excellent and the whole thing is superb but not quite in the very first rank? Well, I’ve changed my mind. Sometimes it’s the impact of a final episode that can fully drive home a multilayered and complex subtext, and this final episode is both extraordinary in itself and defines the entire series. I suspect also that there are all sorts of scriptural references I’m not getting.

Yes, this is the episode where the mole is unmasked,  and the first ten or so minutes are a suspenseful whodunit, but that’s over quickly. Gerald is caught, he’s Bill Haydon, and suddenly the world is entirely different. The whole senior echelon of the Circus are summoned to hear the tapes of Haydon speaking to his handler, and you can see from the previously supercilious Percy Alleline that he’s utterly defeated. The tables have turned, and the outcast Smiley suddenly commands the room, a situation that lasts for most of the episode. Toby in particular is suddenly very, very oleaginous.

We see where Jim Prideaux has gone- he’s watching as Bill is taken to a camp and, quite obviously, roughed up. Everyone is shocked that good old Bull, outgoing, patriotic, the “laughing cavalier” should be a traitor. But Ian Richardson is extraordinary in explaining his motives to Smiley- they all started at the Circus when they were “golden with hope”, and Bill gradually came to hate America for its callousness towards its own poor, presumably meaning its cruelly inadequate welfare system and its lack of a decent health system- but was the Soviet Union any better? America may never have had an NHS, but neither did the USSR. Bill, though, with the cynicism of the defeated idealist, comes to see, as early as the Forties, that Britain is a fading, irrelevant power. None of this explains his motives satisfactory but that, in itself, makes him seem real.

Even his affair with Ann was directed by Karla- he was to “join the queue” to make any suspicion from Smiley feel like a personal thing. And yes, he shafted his old partner Jim. He is a traitor in every way. But he’s an unsavoury character in other ways- he tries to pay off not only a girlfriend but a “boy” who is “a cherub but no angel”. I assume we’re not talking over sixteen here. Brr. This was hardly approved of in 1979 but there was perhaps more of a tolerance for a kind of public school pederasty that makes the flesh creep.

Fittingly, Bill is killed by Jim amongst lax security, the traitor meeting a fate far more merciful that the traditional one at Tyburn but denied a melancholy, vodka-soaked exile. And Smiley is left master of all he surveys, his words conveying absolute authority as he explains he’s been “asked to look after things for a while.” But this is nicely undercut when we meet Ann, played by the splendid Sian Phillips, who is openly having relationships and living free and apart, treating George as an innocent friend to be patronised. And that’s Smiley; man of the world and yet not so, a fascinating character, one very much worthy of the great Alec Guinness.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Smiley Sets a Trap

"Ever bought a fake picture, Toby?"

We get closer to unmasking Gerald in a slowly gripping final episode, but we begin with a rather odd character, Jerry, player with delightful eccentricity by the legendary Joss Ackland. Yet Jerry speaks in a bizarre “Red Indian” argot of “braves” and things that are “heap big”, a retro type of casual racism from a very different age. This, like the BP petroleum station, reminds us that this was made fiery years ago and makes me, a young man of forty-two, to feel not perhaps in the very first flush of youth.

Jerry, while admittedly confessing to some xenophobia owing to Toby Esterhase’s Hungarian origins (very much played down in this adaptation) Jerry drips more suspicion on Esterhase, who forced him to sit on suspicious information of Soviet troop movements on the Czech-Austrian border just after Prideaux (who seems to have gone AWOL) was caught.  So Toby is lured to George’s lair and, in a series of gripping scenes where Alec Guinness demonstrates the art of acting at its finest, interrogated and turned, a pawn who knows not what lies behind the suspicious largesse of Witchcraft. With Esterhase an innocent dupe, the suspects reduce to three...

I like this. I like it a lot- and I saw an article in the Guardian about a week ago that praised Tinker Tailor to the skies. So far I’m finding it very good, indeed excellent, but not quite first class, in spite of the performances. Yes, there’s a certain subtext of national decline and doing the right thing in spite of that, without reward- yet I can’t help feeling that the slow pace and silences, while unquestionably a good thing, flatter the series somewhat by allowing the viewer to fill in the subtext.

Still, Smiley is setting a trap for Gerald; let’s see how it ends...

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Tinker Tailor

“You don’t break, exactly. You just run out of stories to tell.”

Yes, I know; it’s been nothing but Stranger Things for a week. I’m afraid Mrs Llamastrangler and I have become addicted, and what we watch together isn’t dictated by the needs of the blog in the way that my solo viewing often tends to be. Fear not, though; I haven’t forgotten this, or Batman and Robin, or indeed Agents of SHIELD or other things I need to return to.

This is a dark episode about Jim Prideaux, having been caught in Brno and extensively tortured and then hung out to dry by the Circus, telling us his side of the story while striving as a prep schedule teacher while living a life of genteel poverty in a caravan. It’s a sad, bleak episode and the lack of care for someone so traumatised in the service of his country is staggering. Then again, so are many other things in that most foreign of countries, the past. It’s heavily implied that Jim and Bill Haydon were lovers at uni, but also that gay relationships are implicitly acceptable pretty much only in this context (“We were children!”) and, amazingly, that recruitment into the security services was linked into this kind of circle, back in the days when both prejudice and the law meant that any deviation from heterosexuality was seen simply as a security risk. It all just seems so long ago.

Also tragic is the other tale we here of the operation going wrong, Control being secretive, Bill Haydon taking charge and, worst of all, Control starting to forget things. But none of that can compare to Jim’s stoic description of torture, how the days went by until his inevitable cracking, and the interrogation of Karla, immediately recognisable by the mention of Smiley’s old cigarette lighter. There’s a real sense of the Circus being old, hopelessly inefficient and riddled with compromising agents, mirroring a country in decline, a snapshot of how the country felt when it elected Thatcher’s Tories in ‘79. Yet there’s also a harsh lack of care, an acceptance of casualties, in a world where all that matters is jockeying for the position of captain of the Titanic.

This episode, more than the others, is as much about mood as it is about plot, and is quite a step up. But more than anything else it’s showing us just how very long ago it was in 1969, when I was two. I feel old.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: How It All Fits Together

”One day that lack of moderation will be Karla’s downfall.”

Things are developing now, plot-wise, but plot is not, of course, everything. The slow pace allows for depth, character and, I think, commentary both on how youthful ideology fades into cynicism, as well as reflection once more on how Britain's place in the world has diminished into- to use a '70s phrase- managed decline. All so much more grown-up than the delusions of today's political class that we, a medium power since at least 1956, can somehow survive against the great powers of today without the solidarity of the European Union. But I digress.

Perhaps the central scene is the flashback to Smiley’s interrogation of Karla in New Delhi in the ‘50s, where Smiley talks and talks and expresses a cynicism about the Cold War and ideology that he assumes his counterpart shares- but Karla, a fanatical Communist, says nothing. And there is another interrogation- of Peter by Percy Alleline, who now knows of Ricky Tarr and believes him to be a defector. But this in turn proves to Smiley that the Witchcraft source is linked to the mile in that both are run by Karla. Soviet penetration of British intelligence is complete, and now we have to tell the Americans, who don’t trust us anyway. Such is our place in the world.

Not everything here is worthy of praise- there are once again no female speaking parts(!) and I note that Fawn, the only character not from the world of public schools and Oxbridge, has his accent mocked and is judged only in terms of his physical prowess. But things are heating up, and it’s all very compelling.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Smiley Tracks the Mole

"Poor loves. Trained to empire. Trained to rule the waves."

The pace is certainly as slow as ever and, in fact, the structure of this series is completely unlike what we’d normally expect even back in ‘79. (Incidentally the offices of the Circus, with all the brown, the grey and the paper files, are a splendid artefact of Seventiesness). After last episode being pretty much an extended flashback, here we get Peter trying to burgle the Circus and ascertaining that the file on Irina has been deliberately ripped out, while George visits Connie and we get an extended flashback showing us all the suspects. That’s it.

Connie, though... she’s a fascinating and multilayered character, and not only by virtue of being a rare female presence in the Circus and, indeed, the episode’s only female speaking part. Sacked as Head of Research for, it seems, getting too close to fingering Polyakov as Karla’s local underling, she’s very bitter behind the sunny surface, and now struggling to find meaning in her life. Beryl Reid is superb but so is Alec Guinness; he says little, but somehow avoids coming across as cold.

We learn, mainly through flashbacks, that Control, and by extension George, always found the “Witchcraft” material a little too convenient, and Alleline’s arrogant pride a little annoying- and Alleline, indeed, comes across like a proper twonk. Then we have the cynical Roy, the enigmatic Bill, the ambitious Toby, suspects all. And it’s all a splendid opportunity to see a bunch of character actors at work.

It’s gripping. And, still, pretty much nothing has happened.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Tarr Tells His Story

"It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?"

Again the pace is positively glacial- plot-wise, Ricky Tarr reveals the presence of a mile high up in the circus, something Control knew about a good while ago, and Smiley is appointed to smoke out “Gerald”. That’s it.

But it isn’t plot that’s the purpose: this episode, an extended flashback with Hywel Bennett foregrounded as Tarr relates what happened, isn’t about that but about the pathos of Tarr, in Lisbon on assignment, coming across Irina, a Russian wanting to defect, and falling in love with her while trying to get out of her the big secret- there’s someone in Russia, known as Karla, who is running an agent called “Gerald” right at the top of the circus. And there’s more to it even than this; Irina is a complex character, with a deeply religious soul that thirst for meaning and the freedom to explore it.

And it is Tarr who almost certainly dooms her by reporting back to London in too much detail, and she is returned to Russia in circumstances which evoke the possible horrors and, indeed, martyrdom that await her.

Tarr’s broken reaction is real too, but not overplayed. And we find that only Smiley is brought back from retirement to which the mole, without involving the resources of the Circus itself.

It’s slow. It’s gripping. It stars Alec Guineas. This is extraordinary telly.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Return to the Circus

"I shall become an oak of my own generation..."

This is, of course, a justly renowned piece of telly and, as I saw it before many years ago, I’ll not be departing from the general view. I must confess that, to my mother’s disapproval, I’ve yet to read any John Le Carre, so I’m unfamiliar with any greater levels of depth and detail which no longer exist deep within the novel and, indeed, series of novels on which this is based. I comment only on what I see. But I see much.

The slow pace is truly extraordinary from the perspective of 2019, forty years later the pre-credits scene consists simply of the four mole suspects- Bill Haydon, Toby Esterhase, Roy Bland and Percy Alleline- slowly entering a room. but this allows for much subtle physical acting by the character actors portraying them. Similarly, very little really happens- we learn of the existence of the mile, Jim’s Czech mission goes south, the retired George Smiley is accosted by the gossipy and somewhat camp Roddy Martindale and endures am interrogatory lunch which gives us much exposition about the Circus, Smiley’s forced retirement, the uneasy atmosphere, and his hinted at marital problems. He is then summoned by Peter Guilin to meet Oliver Lacon and hear an apparently shocking tale from one Ricki Tarr. That’s it. That’s all that happens in fifty minutes.

And it happens slowly. There’s loads of tension in the scenes with Jim in Brno. We get to see Alec Guinness’ extraordinary acting mannerisms and use of cleaning his glasses to evoke a deep interiority. It’s fascinating to see the master at work here; no method actor he. It’s all about the exterior mannerisms, as he says in his autobiography, and that’s what makes him so bloody good.

We also get time to get an impression of the Circus as a downbeat, very male (there are no speaking female parts in the whole 50 minutes!), very public school and Oxbridge little club not trusted by the Americans. We get to breathe. And it’s wonderful.

I’m looking forward to the rest. I can’t help noticing, though, that Ian Richardson looks scarily Old at 45, and that’s me in three years...

Cromwell (1970)

"An England without a king is unthinkable!"

I watched this film principally because I wanted to see two great actors- Richard Harris and Alec Guinness- play two iconic roles from history; Oliver Cromwell and Charles I. And they are, indeed, magnificent. Their performances- Harris as a principled sociopath slowly descending into a dictatorial sociopath and Guinness as a politely arrogant congenital liar- are superlative and alone enough to make the film worth watching. The film succeeds brilliantly if seen as a character piece based on its broadly valid idea of Cromwell- a man who can honestly give everything for the supremacy of Parliament and then simply dismiss it when it does not live up to his expectations. For this reason the film succeeds as drama in spite of being so incredibly rush and in spite of its ending so suddenly.

And yet... no film set in the past can be historically accurate in full. I accept this. Events must be compressed into a shorter period of time and simplified to fit the medium of cinema. And yet... here we have Cromwell as one of those MPs whom Charles tries to arrest in January 1642. We have Cromwell present at Edgehill. We have the Earls of Essex and Manchester making speeches in the Commons. We even have arch-republican Henry Ireton (a shockingly young Michael Jayson) trying to persuade Cromwell to take the crown, in spite of having died during the (glossed over) Irish campaign in 1651. All this is a little much to swallow; these are not small things.

I'm also uncertain about the dialogue; a film set in the mid-seventeenth century should either use modern dialogue or contrive to use contemporary speech but contrive to favour those sentence constructions and that vocabulary that would be understood today, preferably the second. Instead we get a bizarre mish-mash of speech which mixes archaisms such as "withal" with modern coinings such as "international". The effect is clumsy and distracting.

Still, it all looks magnificent and, in the final analysis, it's all about the acting. And, judged by this criterion, the film is superb.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

"Now, in those days, I had hardly any trouble with the Sixth Commandment..."

This is, I believe, the blog's first Ealing comedy, and it's certainly a fine one to start with. It's a gentle comedy, witty, original and a highly entertaining way to while away a couple of hours. Dennis Price is an excellent star, Alec Guinness plays all his parts with aplomb, but the real star is the script.

This is a very British film about class, as the impoverished yet high-born Louis d'Ascoyne plots to bump off his relatives, all of whom look suspiciously like Alec Guinness, so that he can become the 10th Duke of Chalfont. This is done via some entertaining and delightful murders, a witty script, a clever twist at the end involving a love triangle and Arthur Lowe, and a superbly effective non-linear structure as Louis, to be changed in the morning but nevertheless fawned over as a duke, writes his memoirs from his condemned cell.

There's a startling use of the "n" word towards the end which jars somewhat, but there's little count in criticising a film made in 1949 for racism when all involved are long dead. It's a witty and delightful film which should be seen by all, and has made me keen to see many more Ealing comedies.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

"No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees."

I was expecting to write about Syria, Iraq and the current turmoil in these countries, partially under the yoke of the so-called Islamic State. But I'm not going to. Sykes-Picot gets a cursory mention, there's a definite implication, not dwelt on, that Britain and France are going to end all hope of an independent Arab state, yes. But that's not what it's about. This is a film about soldiers, not politicians, about T.E. Lawrence as a man, and about how David Lean's camera, like a certain type of Englishman, loves the desert.

Why, there are even a couple of crowd scenes where you can actually catch a glimpse of a woman or two. I think. This has to be, by a large margin, the most oestrogen-deficient film I've ever seen.

So what if Lawrence? We begin, in a nice bit of structure, with his death in s motorbike crash in 1935, and we hear from various characters, whom we will encounter later, at his push Westminster Abbey funeral. Our impressions from this are that Lawrence, while capable of great things, was hard to know and just bloody weird. The rest of the film does nothing to dispel that.

Peter O'Toole puts in a truly great performance of a personality so nuanced it can only be real. Lawrence's peculiar type of masochism and obvious homoeroticism are shown, not told. This is clearly a sexual orientation that can only be described as "public schoolboy". This is the inevitable result of fagging, boarding, cold showers and regular savaging by the school leopard. But I think there's a tension here between modern psychological understanding of mental conditions and the literary abs epic tradition of heroism.

Omar Sharif, too, is awesome. So is Alec Guinness is, too, but he's also, er, white. Now, it's easier not to be racist in 2015 than in 1962 when popular culture largely confined practices that make us squirm, but that's not to say we can quite let them off the hook. Still, let's not dwell on that. Let us instead observe that a white actor in a sea of real Arabs stands out rather awkwardly. 

Still, that's not enough to prevent the film being awesome; the epic desert landscapes alone see to that. This is a truly epic film- with an intermission!- and one of the finest ever made. It's also the longest I've ever blogged.

Return of the Jedi (1983)

“He’s more machine now than man- twisted and evil.”

I saw this at the pictures when it was originally on, you know. I was six. I went for a pee during the scenes in Jabba’s palace. Anyway…

A new, bigger Death Star is… les than entirely original. But at least it provides us with a suitable sense of threat. And the first few minutes gives as a real sense of the pomp and might of the Empire. We’re also made to anticipate meeting the mysterious Emperor himself.

Anyway… it’s nostalgic, but at the same time worrying, to see C-3PO and R2 D2 once again traipsing the hills of Tunisia… er, Tattoooine. Still, it’s not long before we get to the glorious monster mash that is Jabba’s palace. And Threepio’s reactions are perfect in honing our reactions to it. It’s clear that so much more effort has been put into this than the comparable scenes at Mos Eisley. The proof is in the vastly greater number of Kenner action figures that arose from this.

The tension is increased by the revelation that both Lando and Chewbacca have not been heard of since they disappeared within the environs of Jabba’s palace, although of course the impact of this is bathetically diminished by the fact that it comes from the highly-strung Threepio. Anthony Daniels’ performance at the point where the door opens is fantastic. In fact, I have to take this opportunity to praise his wonderfully camp yet perfectly pitched performance throughout the three films.

Incidentally, Bib Fortuna was the first action figure I owned. In 1983, he cost me £1.50. I never owned the Gammorean Guards, alas.

Threepio delivers a message from Luke Skywalker,  which is conciliatory while at the same time exuding a sense of threat which foreshadows the magnificent action sequences which await us. And yet… continuing my theme of droids=slavery, isn’t the sight of Luke (And yes, I’m aware it’s all part of the plan, but…) offering to swell these two droids, in whose personalities we, the audience, have invested so much, well, incredibly disturbing? I mean, there are pretty graphic scenes of droids being tortured here which would never be accepted if they were done to flesh-and-blood beings. I’m sot sure what sort of ‘ism that is, but it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. The hero of the trilogy, more than anywhere else, is complicit in the worst excesses of slavery.

Anyway… a plucky bounty hunter, who delivers Jabba’s respect by delivering Chewbacca and earning his, er, respect, turns out to be Leia, and sneaks into Han Solo’s room to rescue him. This is rather tear-inducing, as she tells the blind and vulnerable Han that she loves him. I would do anything for a woman like that. There would be tongues.

There’s also a trap door, beneath which is a monster, the Rancor. So far, so Bond villain, although Jabba seems to be this galaxy’s Dinsdale Piranha.  Leia rescues Han, introducing herself as “someone who loves you”. Oh, if I was Han, my tongue would slowly flick for hours…

Luke’s attempted bargain, through his message from R2, is respectful yet essentially threatening. Actually, shall we just skip to the sail barge stuff? Except, we should point out that there’s implied sexual abuse of Leia (Threepio “can’t bear to watch”), by Jabba, who is of course a slug, both slimy and an absurdly massive phallic symbol. I suspect we can assume the worst here, and it’s clearly implied. Rather strong for a family film. I’m glad she strangles the bastard to death.

Anyway… Leia, appropriately, strangles Jabba .Luke survives the Rancor (which looks fantastic). He, Han, Leia and Chewbacca are sentenced to an agonising death by Sarlacc. Lots of Jabba’s pawns, and Boba Fett, suffer this horrible fate. All our heroes survive, under less-than-plausible circumstances- how, for instance, did Luke know that R2 , randomly appointed a waiter, would be in position to throw him his lightsabre? Signs of George Lucas scripting again …

Anyway, they all get away, and Luke makes a side trip to Dagobah. Yoda is dying, but Luke conveniently arrives just in time for Yoda to make an inspiring deathbed speech. It must be the Force. In spite of what we’ve been told, Luke will be a fully-fledged Jedi Knight as soon as he faces Vader. Hmm.

We have an interesting contrast, in alternated scenes, between the dying Yoda and the vigorous and powerful Emperor, played magnificently by Ian McDiarmid, who is clearly strong in the Dark Side of magic- er, the Force. Luke must face Vader, apparently, even though it was such a no-no last time and bugger all has happened since.

The rebels make some rather dull speeches. Apparently, Han hasn’t finalised his command crew for Endor (a “forest” moon, and again a world characterised by just one kind of terrain), purely for dramatic effect, again instructing us that George Lucas (oh dear) is co-scripting this. Oh dear. It’s all rather forced. Luke arrives at the most convenient moment possible. Plus, Luke and Vader sense each other on the hijacked shuttle’s approach. Yes, it’s a trap, of course, but these scenes have a very uncomfortable sense of character being sublimated to plot convenience.

Isn’t it odd that there are also many kinds of Imperial stormtroopers, for example forest scouts? It’s almost… heaven forbid… merchandise orientated. Still, it’s visually stimulating set piece, and oddly foreshadows a million computer games.

There’s an interesting cameo from Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan, trying to circumlocute himself around certain claims he made in Star Wars. But it’s now explicit that, not only is Vader Luke’s dad, but Leia is his sister. This means she’s fostered. Presumably, then, she’s not actually a princess.

The fast, exciting speeder bike stuff looks great: very well shot, and very movie serial. In fact, it foreshadows a million computer games. But… this is the point where we meet Wicket, our first Ewoks. They’re cute teddy bears, with even cuter babies. And yet, right, excuse me, for being pretentious and interpolating a postcolonial reading, but aren’t the Ewoks, Stone Age civilisation that they are, ripe for exploitation by the Rebel Alliance?

I think the plot wants us to forget this sort of stuff, though; Threepio is a god, they’re impressed by magic, and therefore they wish to help their new mates-cum-eventual-conquerors with a bit of asymmetrical warfare. Er, ok.

Oh, and aren’t these speeder bikes a bit blatantly dangerous for a place with lots of trees? Health and safety, that’s all I’m saying.

Anyway, it’s all a trap by the Emperor. A rather reckless one as he’s buggered in the end but, still, there is much tension between him and the Emperor.

C-3PO may be a god, but he has a “really bad feeling about this.” I think this is the point where the phrase becomes a dully-fledged Star Wars cliché. Still, his stories are well amusing.

The main focus is on the Death Star, where Luke has surrendered to confront his father. These scenes do rather drag somewhat; after McDiarmid and Jones, Hamill is the third best actor here, and actually, he’s not bad. His disfigurement really has buggered his career. Don’t drink and drive, kids.

So, Luke gets tempted, but ultimately convinces Darth to throw the Emperor down a conveniently placed shaft. Honestly, health and safety in the Empire is absolutely dreadful. We see Darth’s face as he dies,. It’s nice, but is one of those inevitable anti-climaxes.

We get a happy ending. The Emperor is dead. Er, what happens now? Are remnants of the  Empire still around? Even if that’s not so, who will fill the power vacuum, as the galaxy is no longer under a single, authoritarian, ruler? Luke? Might there be a bloody civil war, or several? It could get rather complicated, and I bet the Ewoks get colonially exploited whatewver happens. Nice to see the the ghosts, though…

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

“I am your father.”

The opening titles are identical to this film’s predecessor until we get to the texty bit (And, yes, here we do indeed get an “Episode V”. I’m still not treating it as part of the film’s actual name, so nyaaah.). So much so, in fact, that the original cinemagoers much have wondered if the same film was being shown by mistake.

Said texty bit confirms that not much has happened during what must be only months since the end of Star Wars. The rebels are still in retreat, at this point on the “ice world” of Hoth. This is our first blatant example of the tendency of the Star Wars universe for worlds to be characterised by just one type of terrain. It isn’t possible, it seems, for, say, tundra and rainforest to exist on the same planet.

We begin with an exciting set-piece concerning Luke Skywalker being attacked by a monster, escaping, and being rescued from exposure by Han Solo, saving his life for the second tome. This is good, fun, movie serial style entertainment, of course, but it’s also a crucial moment for Han. After all, the previous film established him as something of an ambiguous figure, a semi-criminal, self-interested type, albeit one with charm and a conscience, but he only really earned our trust at the very end. Here, we get an early emphasis on his loyalty and heroism, which earns the character our trust. Also, it sets up the tempestuous proto-romance between him and Leia. How appropriate that she should be quite the ice maiden at this point. She has great hair, by the way. Again.

But the main point of this sequence sequence (apart from explaining away Mark Hamill’s disfigurement) is, of course, Luke’s vision. Here we see Obi-Wan as a ghost for the first time, and he’s telling Luke to go to Dagobah, wherever that is, and to get himself taught by Yoda, whoever that is. And yes, you’re right; it is a little absurd of me to have phrased that as though I hadn’t seen this film a million times.

The rebels know they’ve been found, and we get a long, exciting sequence as they all try and evacuate while Darth Vader and his underlings relentlessly pursue them. Vader is even cooler here, from the first shot of him, in which we see the back of his heads from behind as he gazers out at the stars. Later on we get a glimpse of the back of his head for real, underneath his helmet. He gets to kill two senior underlings for failure in amusing ways, and one of them is Mr Bronson himself, Michael Sheard. Darth just can’t get any cooler.

The whole sequence with the AT-ATs kicks arse, except for the fact that it reminds me I never one as a kid, although I did have the Millennium Falcon. But the ultimate result is Luke and Artoo heading for Dagobah, while Han, Leia and Threepio are just trying to get away from their Imperial pursuers without a working hyperdrive. At this point, they’re completely on the back foot, with the Empire seemingly just mopping up the remaining bits of resistance. Only Luke’s mission offers anything aside from this bleak narrative, and this stage Dagobah offers little obvious hope.

Luke is amazingly lucky, though: with a whole planet to choose from, he manages to crash land right next to Yoda’s house. What are the chances of that, eh? Presumably we can ascribe it to the Force, or to the great script god Irvin Kirchner, who is producing a notably witter script than Lucas did last time. Yoda’s fantastic. He may look like a Muppet, but that’s because he is. And I’d take this Yoda over some CGI crap anytime.

Things are hotting up between Han and Leia, as they have a bit of a snog until Threepio comes along and ruins it all. Speaking of Threepio and sexual stuff, I seem to recall Simon Pegg casually remarking in an interview that Threepio was gay. And he blatantly is, isn’t he? Although what the significance of this may be I have no idea. And what does this imply about his “relationship”, if we can use the word, with Artoo?

Meanwhile, Yoda is taking some persuading to take on Luke as a pupil. Luke is a dreamer, with his head in the clouds, apparently. Well, yes; that’s sort of his entire personality. The subtext here is that he’s going to have to give that up. The lessons begin, and Luke really doesn’t seem to learn very much.

The bit with the Millennium Falcon being inside the creature’s mouth is great, but they’re in trouble. Especially as Vader is sending bounty hunters after them. With the exception of Boba Fett they’re onscreen for no more than a few seconds but, naturally, this didn’t stop Kenner from making toys of them all. Bossk, Zuckuss and IG-88 are the ones I remember. Incidentally, what’s a droid doing as a bounty hunter? Are there “free” droids?

Han, Leia, Chewie and Threepio are off to a mining colony on Bespin to find an old acquaintance of his called Lando Calrissian. I think Bespin is supposed to be a gas giant, so keeping “Cloud City” going must be an incredible drain on apparently limited resources, as this is not exactly a habitable place. Still, best not to think about it too much.

We meet Lando, and he’s a con man, albeit a charming one. Come to think of it, he’s basically Han from the beginning of Star Wars, except that he’s successful. Success has given him responsibility, and responsibilities have given him dependants. This has consequences, as we’ll see. It looks ominous. It certainly does to Luke, who foresees bad things and rushes off against the advice of both Yoda and Obi-Wan. Yoda gets an interesting line, though: “There is another”.

Lando sells them out, of course. And it’s all a trap for Luke, of course. Vader has it all planned; indeed, we see him discussing this with no less a figure than the Emperor himself. He’s very much in control and throwing his weight around, changing the details of his agreement with Lando wherever he sees fit. Han is to be tortured, purely so as to bring Luke running after him, and then Fett is to take him onward to Jabba the Hutt.

There’s a massive set-piece swordfight between Luke and Vader, of course, in which Luke loses both the fight and his right hand, and gets a certain devastating revelation. And Lando helps Leia, Chewie and the droids to escape. But this is no happy ending, and the stirring musical coda leaves us in no doubt that this is to be continued…

Star Wars (1977)

“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

I’ve seen this film so, so many times, but not since 1997, when I saw the restored version at the cinema. And that event is a bit of a watershed, isn’t it? Before then, George Lucas was widely regarded as a genius whereas nowadays he… isn’t. A case in point: I saw this on Disc Two of the DVD, as an extra. It hadn’t been cleaned up and the sound was awful. There’s no denying it, though- it really is as good as we all remember.

The thing about Star Wars (or, to give its full and official title, Star Wars) is that, for all that it famously revolutionised what would be expected of sci-fi special effects, it doesn’t actually look very flashy, Kurosawa-style directorial touches aside. It looks thoroughly convincing, yes, but the parade of monsters in Mos Eisley, for example, isn’t anything like as much of a spectacle as the scenes in Jabba’s palace from Return of the Jedi. None of this does any harm, though; the effects are all the stronger for trying to convince rather than to amaze.

It’s also notable that, much as Alien gets the credit for creating the trope of the dirty, lived-in, space opera environment, there’s an element of that here, too. But none of that takes away from the real, deliberate, fairytale quality, or to the clearly intended nods to the movie serials of many decades earlier. The opening text is an example of both, I think.

For the first time, we open on a bit of spaceship porn, as per all of these movies. The opening blurb handily allows us to start halfway through the story, as Princess Leia’s shop is attacked by Imperial troops desperate to retrieve the McGuffin she has in her possession. Interestingly, though, we see most of this through the, er, eyes of two “’droids”, C-3PO and R2-D2. Being low status characters, these two can instantly play a role in the narrative familiar from, again, Kurosawa, but also stretching way back through the history of the “comedy peasant” trope. It helps that they’re both so endearing, and Artoo is so cute. Their rapport is wonderful, which is critical, as they are more-or-less the heart of the first half-hour of the film.

So, our two droids are dispatched to Tattooine on a secret mission, pursued by the troops of the fantastic Darth Vader. Darth must be the most brilliant looking baddie ever, and James Earl Jones has the perfect voice for him. Here they’re both captured by Jawas, and this leads to something about the Star Wars films that has always troubled me. Because Threepio and Artoo are portrayed as sentient beings with personalities and feelings, yet they are the “property” of others, slaves in fact. Indeed, we see Luke Skywalker, the hero of the trilogy, buying them both from these slave traders along with his Uncle Owen. If the hero is allowed to do this, does this mean the film is ok with slavery?  There’s certainly no indication of any characters having any ethical qualms.

Luke is established as young, in his teens, suffering a rather humdrum home life on a farm, and being denied his rather more glamorous destiny by his boring old uncle. It’s not hard to see why a large portion of the audience would identify with this. Sure enough, Luke is soon introduced to a bigger and more exciting world by hermit Obi-Wan Kenobi, one for which he was destined. Much of the film’s audience must have been hoping for a similar fate. It’s no accident that fairytales are full of narratives like this.

Obi-Wan tells us that he’s a Jedi Knight, he fought in the “Clone Wars”, and that he’s a friend of Luke’s late father, also a Jedi Knight. The Jedi Knights were, apparently, great heroes in the “Old Republic”, before the coming of the empire, after which they were hunted down by Darth Vader, a Jedi turned bad. We’re told explicitly that Vader killed Luke’s father. This is fairytale stuff and, interestingly, in its political elements is clearly inspired by the Roman Republic and its slide into empire.

The Jedi are basically good wizards, like Gandalf and his mates, and the Force is simply magic. For all its sci-fi trappings, this is unmistakably a work of fairytale fantasy.

Luke’s uncle and aunt are conveniently killed by Imperial Stormtroopers, which handily allows him to accompany Obi-Wan on his mission to Alderaan. But first they need a pilot, and this brings them to Mos Eisley. Here we meet smuggler Han Solo (who definitely shoots Greedo first), who agrees to take four passengers to Alderaan for oodles of cash, mainly because he owes several more oodles of cash to someone called Jabba the Hutt.

I have to pause here to praise Alec Guinness. George Lucas doesn’t, as Harrison Ford has famously said, write the best dialogue, and Obi-Wan gets some of the worst lines, many of which look cringe-inducingly bad on paper: see the quote up there at the top. And yet Guinness makes even these lines seem acceptable. That’s bloody good acting.

Incidentally, I adore the interaction between Han and Obi-wan when Luke is being trained in the ways of the Force, blinded. Obi-Wan is a character who belongs in a fantasy film, as shown most blatantly in his comments about a lightsabre being better than a blaster. Han, on the other hand, is a character who belongs in a sci-fi film, and so of course he is sceptical about magic and can see that a sword, even a fancy one made of light, is obviously no good against a blaster! This is fantastic metatextual fin, winking at the audience and alerting us to the clash of genres through their respective spokesmen.

Interesting, is it not, that the Millennium Falcon has a navigation computer which takes ages to make the calculations needed before they can “jump to lightspeed”? This may be a world of magic powers and casual interstellar travel, but their state-of-the-art computers are well behind my iPhone.

I seem to be reviewing a lot of films with Peter Cushing in, and here he is again as the Grand Moff Tarkin, and deliciously evil he is too. It’s he who informs us that the Imperial Senate has been dissolved by the emperor, and that the Empire is now to become a fully-fledged totalitarian state. It’s also he who sentences Leia to death, and who cruelly vaporises her home planet of Alderaan even after she’s told him the location of the rebel base. The dastardly swine. Good job she lied.

Our heroes are drawn to the Death Star by its tractor beam, like flies to a web, and we now get to the most fun bit of the film, as our heroes set out to disable the tractor beam and rescue Leia. Carrie Fisher is great as the princess, subverting all the stereotype of the passive damsel in distress by kicking whatever ass she ever happens to come across. These sequences are also crucial in that we get to know and like Han Solo, who is established as cynical, but also funny, brave and with a heart of gold underneath. This is still very movie serial, of course; the bit in the garbage compactor is the most movie serial thing ever. That is, until we get to Luke, Leia and the missing bridge…

Our heroes escape, but not without an exciting dogfight, and not before Obi-Wan, mysteriously and calmly, simply stops fighting and allows himself to be slain by Vader. But their ship has a tracer hidden aboard, and the crew of the Death Star now know the location of the rebel base. Fortunately, though, the plans to the Death Star just happen to rather conveniently reveal a massive and rather implausible weakness. Can the rebels destroy the Death Star before it destroys them?

Luke volunteers to take part in the assault, and seems to be given a rather senior role for someone who’s only been in the Rebel Alliance for five minutes. We know the goodies are going to win, of course; Tarkin tempts fate by refusing an evacuation, and Vader, who we know isn’t going to die, leaves the Death Star to fight Luke in a ship of his own. But the rebels have an uphill struggle, and can’t count on any help from Han, who has buggered off with his money.

Of course, it’s all right in the end, as Han makes a heroic return and Luke uses the force to destroy the Death Star. Our fairytale has a fairytale ending, but the story has only just begun…